Beach, just outside Neighfair
Dusk

The closer we got to the walls of the old fortress the more I started to realize how big the old base really was.

“Equestria to Dusk, you home?”

I glanced over at Dart before turning my attention back to the walls of the base. “Ya, I am… Just thinking.”

“I’m assuming you got a lot on your mind.”

I nodded and finally turned around, leaning against the hull of the boat. “Take Comet for instance. He seems so…”

“Confrontational?”

“Ya.”

Dart leaned against me and sighed. “Comet went back on active duty a week after you were captured. Strike followed a few days after that... “

“Something tells me there’s more to this than you’re saying.”

Dart nodded. “Comet has a bad habit for picking fights, and Strike has shown some serious mental instability. The two of them are good in a jam, but beyond that…”

I just nodded. “Beyond that they’re just good for giving you headaches.”

“Exactly.”

I felt the boat shudder as it rode up onto the sand, alongside a rotted dock. “Then let’s forget about them for now.” I hopped over the side as a few of the soldiers dragged the boat onto the beach. “Blaze Squad, form up!”

I made my way up off the sand to the head of the old dock, where the rest of the team shortly joined me. “So what’s the plan Dusk?” Comet asked half-heartedly.

"Well you, Strike and Specter are sticking with Gramps and getting this beachhead running. Steeljack and Dart are with me.”

“And where are we going?” Dart asked.

“This is a military base.” I pointed out. “We find the control center and see what we can get working.”

“Right, along with hotshot over there?” Comet jabbed. “What’s to say he won’t-”

“Shut the fuck up Comet!” I yelled. “I can take the occasional jab. But since we got to this damn city it’s almost like you’re on your period!”

Comet and Strike both exchanged glances before Comet walked back down to the beach. “That seemed a bit harsh…” Dart muttered.

“What?” I exclaimed. “What did we just talk about back on the boat?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Steeljack added. “Rule one of dealing with those two… Don’t snap at them.”

I just rolled my eyes and started my walk up the crumbling steps of Neighfair’s main entrance. And the closer I got the more I began to feel that something was a bit-

“We got casualties.” Steeljack said as the main door finally came into unobstructed view. He was right of course; four skeletons wearing tattered olive-drab uniforms lay just feet from the main entrance.

I knelt down and managed to find a rusted dog tag on the corpse closest to the door, but the pitting and rust made the name illegible. “What do you think Steeljack?”

“They’ve been here a while.” He replied as he knelt down and grabbed the old dog tag from me. “Probably died when the bombs or shortly after from the radiation exposure.”

I got up and walked up to the door, stopping short of shoving it open. “Then how the hell would this protect them?” If Steeljack made any moves I didn’t see them. All I saw was his boot knocking the old wooden door off it’s hinges with a crack akin to that of breaking a bone. “Right…” I swung the shotgun off my back and clicked on the flashlight that was on the side rail. “I’ll take point.”

***

“Anyone see anything?” I whispered as I moved my flashlight across the empty room.

“Just more dust.” Dart muttered back.

That's when I heard the click of a circuit breaker before the lights in the room came on, along with the rapid succession of lights coming to life in the hallway behind us after so many years of laying dormant. “Found the main power!” Steeljack yelled from a utility closet tucked in the far corner of the room.

I shut the flashlight on the gun off and swung it onto my back. “How the hell does this place still have power?” I made my way over to the utility closet, stopping short of pushing Steeljack out of the way when I read the label on the breaker. “Secondary Generators… Steeljack, was that off?”

“I just reset the breaker.” He answered. “Honestly I didn’t think anything would happen.”

“Talk about good luck…” I muttered back. “But you know what else uses power?”

“There’s a bunch of shit I could list, but I’m going to assume that you’ll tell us anyway.”

I felt a wry smile grow across my face and decided to roll with it. “Computers. Specifically the ones that are probably in the control room.”

“Ya…” I heard Dart whisper. “Inventory, base defenses, everything would be right at our fingertips.”

“And we just need to find it.” I pointed out. “So… Ideas anyone?”

“There must’ve been a floor plan for a place this big.” said Steeljack. “Find the plan, and we can find the command center a whole hell of alot easier.”

“Well why are waiting around? Let’s get going!” I walked across the room to a closed door and half mindedly threw it open, only starting to pay more attention when I realized that there was something in the hallway staring back at me.

And judging by the gun it was pulling off it’s waist, whatever the hell it was isn’t all that friendly. “Contact!” Steeljack yelled as he pulled me back into the room and slammed the door shut.

"What the hell was that?” I asked. A fist punching right through the door didn’t help answer any of the questions that were swirling around in my head.

“No idea.” I heard Steeljack mutter as the pony-shaped thing demolished the door that separated us. “Dart, you want to find out?”

Click

“Damn right I do!” Dart rushed forward and managed to whack the creature with the butt of her gun.

It staggered slightly at the impact, but managed to swing it’s rifle around and clip Dart’s shoulder with it hard enough to knock her into the wall. “Dart!” I yelled. “Alright bucko, you asked for it!” I closed the gap between the two of us and slugged the creature’s face, followed by a strong throbbing sensation that ran down my arm.

“Puny pony.” The creature growled as he wrapped a hand around my throat.

“Ya… Real puny.” I grunted as the creature picked me up. “You know who else here is puny?”

“He’s probably talking about me.” Steeljack jumped on the creature’s back and started wrestling with it’s mask. “Now come on, what are you hiding?”

I managed to finally break out of the creature’s grip and unhooked the latch holding it’s mask on. “Come on bud-” Once I flipped the mask off the creature’s face I found myself stopped dead as I caught the glare of its yellow eyes. “What the hell?

Steeljack backpedaled away from the creature and similar questions must have been rattling around his head. “That looks like a pony.”

He wasn’t kidding. Whatever this thing is, it looks like a pony. Instead of fur or even skin, his face was made of some sort of plastic with some seams along the side of it’s head where it met other pieces of the same material. As it leveled it’s weapon at us I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “It looks like it wants to kill us.”

Steeljack continued to show he was in rare form today as he ripped me out of the path of the plasma bolt before he stepped in and ripped the gun away from the creature. It tried to catch him with a right hook in response, but Steeljack caught the fist and managed to wrench the creature’s arm around and toss it to the ground. “That was too easy.”

That’s when Dart stepped in and planted her boot on the creature’s chest. “You’re right.” She stuck her gun to it’s head and clicked off the safety.

BANG!

For a brief moment I shielded my eyes from a bright flash that came from the creature’s head, letting my arm down after my eyes readjusted. At Dart’s feet was the creature, .issing it’s head with sparks arking off the exposed wires coming out of what was it’s neck. “It’s… It’s a robot.” Dart muttered.

I walked over and picked up a piece of the skin-like material that once coated the robot’s face. “We should call this in.”

Ten minutes, that’s how long it took for the rest of the team to reach us. For the entire wait I kept running a single question through my head; who makes a robot that looks like a pony?

“Dusk?” I glanced over at Specter before returning to my thoughts. “Pay attention Dusk!”

A quick shudder got me to break my trance and allow me to focus. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I was saying I’ve seen something like this before.” Specter droned.

“You have?”

“That’s what I’ve spent the last five minutes going over.” The annoyed stallion retorted. “I’ve heard a few different names… Android and cyborg are some common ones.”

“Some common ones?” I asked. “Is there anything else?”

“There is.” Specter handed me a piece of the facial material. “Synth. I don’t know who came up with it, but I’d wager it stands for synthetic pony. They’re some sort of blend of machinery and fake flesh meant to look like a pony.”

“Someone has to make these things.”

“And no one knows who’s responsible.” Specter replied. “These things just pop up in weird places for no apparent reason. This is just the first time I’ve heard of a synth showing up in an old military installation.”

“Specter, do these things run in groups?” Gramps asked.

Specter shrugged. “The only time I ran into these things back in Manehattan they were operating in a platoon-sized unit… So I’d have to say yes.”

“Then the odds are good we’re not alone.” Gramps muttered as he pulled out his radio. “Jericho this is Meteor, come in.”

Bzzzttt…

“Jericho, please respond.”

Bzzzttt…

“That doesn’t sound very reassuring.” I heard Comet mutter.

Gramps shook his head and tucked his radio back into his ammo pouch. “Steeljack, Specter, you two come with me. We’re going to go find Jericho.”

“So we just stick with Dusk?” Strike asked.

“Sure, why not.” Gramps muttered as he led Steeljack and Specter back down the hall towards the entrance.

I glanced at Comet and Strike before looking over at Dart. “This isn’t going to end well, is it?”

Dart offered a shrug. “Probably not.”

***

“...So, see any good movies lately Dusk?”

I stuffed down the voice in the back of my head yelling to smack Strike into next Tuesday for the umpteenth time in what seemed like forever.

You see he picked up an annoying little tick after he returned a few years ago. From what little Dart whispered to me as we made our way through the base he had spent some significant amount of time in solitary confinement, so the psychological explanation was an underlying need to make sure that he wasn’t locked in a small room all alone.

She also mentioned the reason for his inability to fly; some scientists had removed parts of the bones in his wings and replaced them with some sort of metallic alloys. While the doctors said he could fly with some rehabilitation, he couldn’t seem to make progress and gave up about a year before I got back.

“Hey Dusk, you still there?” Strike droned.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes Strike I’m still here. And no I haven’t seen any good movies on account of being cut open and being stuffed in a freezer when I wasn’t being used as a living pincushion.”

“Oh…”

For the rest of the walk Strike kept his mouth shut… With my luck I either pissed him off or brought him to the point where he might start crying. You see that’s the problem with ponies you know are mentally unstable; one minute you’re they’re best friend while the next you’re public enemy number one. Eventually we reached a staircase capped by a metal trap door at the top. “Anyone want to place bets on what’s up there?” Dart asked.

“Who gives a fuck?” I asked as I charged up my horn and blasted the hatch up into the room above us.

Dart rolled her eyes and clambered up the stairs with me right behind her. Daylight was streaming in from the windows that lined the walls of the room. Conveniently, the room was full of terminals that offered quite hums as they sat waiting for inputs from ponies that were long dead. “I think we found the command center.”

I slid down onto the stool next to one of the larger consoles and started cycling through menus. “Base defenses, communications array… Radar?” I muttered, trying to rationalize how ponies who never invented transistors might have gotten working radar.

“Wait, they have radar?” Dart asked as she stuck her head over my shoulder to check the screen herself. “I wonder what else they have…” She backed out to the main menu and went into the menu list. “Here we are, inventory.” The listing came up with a small map of the base in the corner. A hangar on the far side of the base was starred on the map. “Let's see… We got three armed vertibucks, fifteen UCs-”

“Whatever those are.” I pointed out.

Dart nodded. “Anyway we got those, a warehouse full of spare parts, about ten thousand gallons of fuel and an armory with enough guns and ammo to arm a full-strength battalion. And where it looks like no one got onto the base since the bombs dropped… We’re about to make out like bandits.”

I got up and made my way over to the side of the room overlooking the inner confines of the base and spotted the hangar on the far side. “Within teleport range…” I muttered. “Hey Strike?”

“What’s up?” The pegasi asked as he took a place next to me.

“Oh nothing…” I said as I charged up the spell. “We’re just going on a field trip.” I grabbed Strike and in an instant the two of us crossed the vast space between the command center and the storage hangar. I glanced over at Strike for a moment and realized he was steadying himself on the hangar door.

“I don’t suppose now is a good time to mention that I’m not all that good with teleporting?” Strike asked sarcastically.

I shrugged and motioned for him to help me haul the door open. Two centuries of rust, dirt and other debris slowly gave way as the door ground and shuddered along it’s track. We eventually stopped it with just enough space for a pony to slip through. “Just follow my lead.” I stepped into the hangar, focusing on the stream of sunlight that came in through the cracked hangar door. The two of us slowly made our way deeper into the hangar, past field guns plastered with surface rust and some sheeted vehicles.

"Talk about heavy artillery…” Strike muttered. Behind me a light clicked on and it’s associated beam was slowly moving across the hangar. “You think those guns would still work?”

“Probably.” I walked over to one and ran my finger along the inside of the barrel. It came away coated in a waxy grease. “Someone prepped these things for long-term storage… Just clean the preservative out and we should be able to use them.” I stepped away and kept walking deeper into the hangar. At the end was a large object under a silk-white sheet.

“What do you think it is?” Strike asked.

I hesitated for a moment before pulling the sheet away. As I studied the craft I felt a smile begin to creep across my face. “It’s our lucky day Strike.” I ran my fingers along the inside of the barrel of the chin-gun of the heavily armed Vertibuck and came away with the same preservative that lined the field gun’s barrels. “It’s our lucky day…”

Author's Note

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the first official chapter of Broken Mirror Part II! While it's not the longest thing I've written, it sets up next chapter's events rather nicely. And our first encounter with a Synth... Granted that's just one, but later on we'll be seeing more of those nasty buggers.

In the mean time I started writing a one shot as an in-universe explanation as to why Dusk has been showing up in Fallout: Equestria - Mending Hearts and most recently Starlight Glimmer Looks for Love (where, I might add, in his brief appearance Dusk had a mental breakdown that I can totally see happening under the right circumstances). As such expect to see Blueblood get tormented by omnipotent beings.

In the meantime, anyone got questions? Like what you're seeing so far? Hell, maybe have some gripes? There's a comment section and the Mirrorverse Codex. Read and comment away, because I want to hear from you fellow denizens of this corner of the internet. Until next time gang!
-Striker