Beyond the First Impression
Bonbon's Bonbons, like many buildings in Ponyville's small commercial district, doubled as both shop and shopkeeper's home. Unlike some buildings in the area, it distinguished itself only with a sign in the shape of a wrapped candy hanging above the door.
That and, for a few seconds, a plume of smoke wafting its way into one of the upstairs windows.
A cry of "Holy Celestia!" came from upstairs, wrecking the sedate atmosphere. Hooves further trampled it as they galloped down to the store level, revealing Lyra Heartstrings with a letter in her magic and a face-splitting grin on her muzzle. "This is incredible! This is amazing! Bonnie, where's Twilight?"
Bonbon blinked. "Why would I know?"
Lyra spared a split second to look around the otherwise empty shop before saying, "'Cause you're an awesome super-secret agent?"
"Decommissioned super-secret agent," Bonbon huffed.
"But you still put trackers on the Bearers of Harmony so you know where they are in case of monster attacks and can keep doing your duty with plausible deniability?"
Bonbon met Lyra's grin with a deadpan expression. She held it for several seconds before looking away. "Pinkie Pie keeps eating the trackers."
"But you keep replacing them?"
"Yeah, yeah I do." Bonbon sighed. "How'd you know?"
Lyra's smile went from manic to fond. "Because I know you."
Bonbon returned it. She said, "Flip the sign for me, please?" as she reached under the counter and pulled out a briefcase identical to the one she'd stashed in City Hall.
After moving the sign in the front window to "Closed" and locking the door for good measure, Lyra moved to her side. "How many of those do you have, anyway?"
"Enough. It's an earth pony thing. You've seen Pinkie Pie dip into her emergency stashes."
"I figured that was just a Pinkie Pie thing."
"You've clearly never seen the Apples' hat closet. We really like redundancy." Bonbon opened the briefcase. Within, a row of six crystals glowed in familiar colors above a complex geometrical diagram full of curving lines and runes that were oddly difficult to focus on. Lyra recognized it as an illusion spell matrix. Bonbon poked the lavender crystal, making the matrix light up and project a three-dimensional map of central Ponyville. Twilight's cutie mark blinked in one very distinct building. "Well, she's close by."
"Sugarcube Corner. Perfect!" Lyra kissed Bonbon's cheek. "Thank you!" The other cheek. "Love you!" And one on the lips. "Bye!"
Bonbon could feel the dopey smile spread across her muzzle as she watched Lyra gallop off. "The things I do for best-friendship," she sighed.
Lyra burst into Sugarcube Corner and skidded to halt by the front counter. "Twilight! You have to come with me! This is the find of the century!"
Few others were there, as the bakery was currently in a post-lunch lull. Most just focused back on their pastries of choice once they saw it was Lyra raving and prancing in place. Twilight gave a quizzical frown as she turned away from Pinkie Pie. "What is?"
"I just got a letter from New Frontiers. Cryptozoologist, we met through Bonnie, yadda yadda, point is she's found something incredible. Sent a letter to me via synthetic dragonfire."
Pinkie gave a low whistle. "Must be pretty important if she spent that much."
"But what is it? And why me?"
"She also sent a photo." Lyra separated the picture from the letter and passed it to Twilight.
Her eyes widened as she took in the picture. "Oh. Oh my. That is a very large minotauroid golem." Even scorched as it was, presumably from transitioning between worlds, it seemed far too well-made to be a mundane statue. A pink unicorn mare with a blonde mane, presumably New Frontiers, stood by the figure for scale, showing how the helmeted head resting on the ground next to her was nearly as big as her barrel.
"Not just minotauroid." Lyra's grin grew to worrisome proportions. "Humanoid." Indeed, the construct had no horns, and the muzzle was all but nonexistent.
Pinkie frowned. "Wait, I thought we pretended that the mirror world didn't exist most of the time."
"No, it just doesn't come up much," said Twilight. "Sunset Shimmer and I co-authored a paper on it in the Canterlot Journal of Xenocultural Studies."
Pinkie nodded. "Oh, right, the CJXS."
"Gesundheit," said Lyra. She turned back to Twilight, all but pronking in place. "So yeah, you're basically the closest Equestria has to an expert on this thing." She came to a halt. "Also, Moondancer's there, and I never got a chance to help coax her out of her shell. Seriously, you couldn't have grabbed me along with Pinkie?"
Twilight shrugged her wings. "I may be getting better at flying, but I can't airlift two full-grown ponies. I don't have room for two full-grown ponies! Spike had to hang onto my tail on the way back to Canterlot!"
"Eh, point." Lyra's grin returned. "Still, this way, the three of us can bond. Over science!"
"Well..." Twilight's horn lit up, and a thick day planner manifested before her. She flipped to the current date. "It looks like I have only one friendship adjudication scheduled for today aaaand it's Fluffy Clouds." She sighed. "I don't like to badmouth ponies behind their tails, but that stallion's composure has all the resilience of spun sugar. Pinkie, do you think you can handle him?"
"Sure! I've been meaning to work more with spun sugar."
Twilight couldn't help but smile. "Perfect. Lead the way, Lyra."
The site was about an hour's trot from Ponyville, in the grasslands between it and Canterlot. Twilight and Lyra said little along the way, both eager to see the artifact for themselves.
Just as a spot of black showed on the horizon, a shout came from above. "Halt!" A royal guard swooped down and landed in front of them. He glowered and spread his wings. "Who goes there?"
Lyra looked back and forth between the guard and the alicorn. She settled on the former and pointed a forehoof at the latter. "Seriously?"
The guard's stern expression didn't shift an inch. "Standard operating procedure, ma'am."
"You do not know me, mortal?" Twilight squared her withers and locked eyes with the guard. "You do not recognize one who walked the Path of Harmony to its conclusion?" She spread her wings, her eyes glowing with power, her mane waving in an unfelt wind. "Then allow me to enlighten you!" Twilight sprang into the air and stayed there. She did not flap her wings, she simply hung suspended as though gravity were something that happened to lesser beings.
A legion of voices issued forth from the alicorn. "I am Philia and Terminus, binder and separator, unity and uniqueness! I am the machine that is greater than the sum of its parts! I am Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship!"
Twilight landed, and in a blink, the oversized nerd with whom Lyra had galloped here took the place of the incarnate goddess. Twilight held out a forehoof. "And it's very nice to meet you."
The guard bumped the offered hoof. "Likewise, Your Highness." He turned to Lyra. "And you are?"
Lyra's jaw had dropped at some point during Twilight's introduction. A few choked sounds came out of her throat before she said, "Are we just ignoring that? Was that also standard operating procedure?"
"Yes," muttered a blushing Twilight. "At Luna's insistence." She took a deep breath. "Suffice to say, she can fit an unreasonably high number of grapes in her mouth, I lost a bet, and now I have to do that when asked to identify myself in a regal capacity for the next decade."
After a moment, Lyra snorted. "See, this is why we need to hang out more often."
"We really do."
The guard cleared his throat. "Ma'am?"
"Oh, right. I'm Lyra Heartstrings." She pulled the letter out of her bag and held it in front of the guard. "New Frontiers asked for me personally. Also, note the not-changeling-green aura."
He took the note in hoof and looked it over before nodding. "She did mention you. Alright, everything seems in order. Proceed."
Less than a minute later, they were able to see the mysterious object in full detail, light trails of smoke still wafting off of its burnt form. Moondancer stood by it, wearing her usual ragged turtleneck, speaking with the mare from the photograph. Twilight noted the cutie mark, a heart without context, representing a love of the unknown according to Lyra.
New Frontiers perked up and turned to them. She smiled and approached. "Hello!"
“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight gave a sheepish laugh. “Of course, you probably already know that.”
“The wings are a bit of a tipoff," Frontiers said with a smile. "Would you be willing to answer a few questions about your ascension some time?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. "As soon as Celestia answers mine. Now—“ Her jaw dropped as she looked over New Frontiers' withers. “Moondancer, why are you licking the alien!?”
Moondancer looked up from the creature’s head and smacked her lips. “If you can think of a faster way to get a chemical analysis of the thing, I’d like to hear it.”
Twilight squeaked out a few incomprehensible noises before saying, “Litmus Paper’s Concise Chemical Countdown?”
“Don’t think I’ve ever… Oh. Right. Yeah, that was a few hundred books ago. I went with Exotic Cuisine’s Polymorphic Palate Permutation." Moondancer frowned. "Unfortunately, just because I have a dragon’s sense of taste doesn’t mean I actually know how to process what I’m tasting. I’ll have to ask Spike.”
“That thing could be poisonous! Radioactive! Thaumohazardous! Who licks an alien!?”
Moondancer just smirked at Twilight, slowly raising one bushy eyebrow.
Twilight flushed. “I told you that in confidence!”
“Well, this is new,” said New Frontiers. “For once in my life, I don’t think I want to know.”
“I kind of do,” said Lyra.
“Oh no. We are not discussing what may or may not have happened while I was under the influence of a pubescent simian endocrine system. Especially not if it finds its way to Twinkleshine and her gossip column. We are focusing on the giant golem.”
"It's not a golem. It's a machine." Moondancer's horn lit up, and the immense object followed suit. The outer parts faded into invisibility through what Twilight recognized as Onion Skin's Tiered Transparency Transmutation, revealing pistons, gears, and further mechanisms, which faded out in turn as Moondancer gave a tour of the object's innards.
As the construct returned to full opacity, Twilight forced her jaw closed. "This is incredible! I don't even know what some of these parts are!"
"Whatever they are, we know they're not of this world," said New Frontiers. "No one on Equus could build something like this even if they wanted to. Do you think humans built this?"
"It looks a lot like them." Moondancer said as she released her spell. She frowned. "More robust proportions, though."
After a few moments, Twilight said, "I don't think so. Their technology may be incredibly advanced, but from what I've seen, this sort of construct is found only in their fiction. I could check with Sunset Shimmer, but it doesn't seem likely."
"Well, not just their fiction." All eyes turned to Lyra. "What?"
"Please, elaborate," said New Frontiers.
Lyra tilted her head. "Seriously? I'd expect you of all ponies to know about this."
Frontiers shook her head. "I focus on concrete leads and old stories. New inventions are... well, that. New inventions."
"Well, it's a lot like that one Power Ponies comic with the robot legions of Alpha Centauri."
"Robot?"
"From the Czoach robota, meaning 'forced labor,' first used in the play 'Russet's Universal Robots.'" Lyra frowned at the trio of dumbfounded faces. "What? I'm allowed to know things!"
"Heh." Moondancer gave a half-grin. "Never expected that comic books could shed light on something like this."
"Yeah, well, point is that humans don't have a monopoly on the idea of mechanical life."
"'Life' seems a little strong," said Twilight, "but we're definitely looking at mechanisms far more advanced than anything we've conceived of. Especially nonmagical ones. And it's indisputably humanoid."
New Horizons looked to the sky and smiled. "Well, if there's another world out there, I see no reason why there can't be more. Indeed, this 'robot' seems to be strong evidence for it."
Twilight frowned. "Unless Discord's messing with us, but this doesn't seem like his style. He'd probably fill the thing with..." She shuddered a bit. "Snakes, like it was a prank can of peanut brittle."
"Assuming it's genuine," said Moondancer, kicking the charred construct, "what do we do with it?"
"A good question." New Frontiers began to pace. "Teleporting it may be a bad idea; there's no telling whether it will stay in our world. And it's not like we can carry a full research lab out here in the middle of nowhere."
Twilight glared at her and pointed at the Canterhorn with a wing. "We can literally see Canterlot from here. We are not—" She took a deep breath. "Sorry. I can get a little defensive about Ponyville. I think it may be a sort of territorial alicorn instinct."
"Fascinating if true. Still, the question stands."
"I have an idea," said Twilight, "but we're going to need to find—"
Rainbow Dash dove down like a meteor with attitude. "Hey, Twilight. What's the awesome thing?"
"Isn't this supposed to be a secure area?" said Moondancer.
"Yeah, about that." Dash went back up just as half a dozen guards pounced on her position, all shouting "Halt!"
Dash sped by nearly at ground level. Twilight's long experience with the pegasus allowed her to make out "Little help?" through the Cloppler shift.
On the next pass, Twilight put herself between the guards and their quarry. "Gentlecolts, please, stand down!"
They did so, though their glowers made their displeasure clear. Dash looped around and came to a relative stop, hovering and smiling. "Thanks." She narrowed her eyes as she watched the stallions return to their posts. "Buncha jumped-up warhorses."
Twilight looked askance at her. "You're in the Wonderbolts Reserves."
"Yeah, and?"
"What are you doing here?" said Lyra, cutting off a royal tirade.
Dash nodded at the construct. "Like I said, checking out the awesome thing. What is it?"
"We can't yet say for certain," said Moondancer.
Dash hovered over it, considering it from all angles. "Y'know, it actually looks kinda familiar."
New Frontiers gasped. "It does?"
"Yeah, I fought something like this once."
Jaws dropped. "You what!?" cried Twilight.
"Yup. Coolest dream I ever had."
The others groaned. Dash turned to them, then her face twisted like she was about to sneeze. Her mouth fell open, and a shrill voice not her own rang out. "Megatron is no more! I—"
Dash coughed and smacked her chest a few times. "Sorry about that. Gilda came over last night, brought dinner, we caught up, and even the griffin food ponies can eat leaves you really gassy."
After several uneasy looks, Lyra spoke up for the group. "Uh... not a problem."
"So, what's the plan with this thing?"
Twilight smiled. "Actually, it's a good thing you showed up. Could you arrange an airlift team? Whatever this is, teleporting it may compromise it."
Dash saluted. "On it."
"Great! Once it's in Canterlot, we can start dismantling it." Twilight pranced in place. "We'll learn so much!"
Author's Note
Here's the closest thing I can offer for context. And yes, that is a Death Battle reference.
Dash is only in the reserves because it seemed best to set this before Starlight could be "helpful," which would probably result in her reactivating Megatron so he could bring himself to Canterlot.
Also, it is not easy to come up with a ponification for Czech.
