Our Town base, three days later

Invictus marched through the base, the sound of turrets opening fire mixing with bombers crashing into the earth as he tried to find Starlight. Dox bots marched past the Commander, the small squads unlikely to do much else aside from harassment of the enemy lines, yet effective all the same. The few drones that survived had almost always brought back scrap and machinery containing new blueprints since the attacks had begun, adding to Invictus’ arsenal. As he searched for the surprisingly helpful organic, a portion of his attention was sent to the project at hand.

He momentarily flicked his visual sensors over to the massive gun platform in the center of the base, surrounded by anti orbital Umbrella turrets. The blue glow of the nanolathes of several Engineers flowed into the construct, slowly generating more and more of it. Dozens of built in systems calculated that the weapon was only 58% complete. Despite this, it loomed over the base, casting a shadow over the eastern base. Invictus turned his senses back to his objective as he found Starlight, surrounded in inefficiently connected comms devices.

”Organic Starlight, has there been any response from the organic commanders?” Invictus asked, part of him relocating the defenses of his mineral base to respond to a new threat, another part tasking an engineer to patch up a hole in the defensive lines.

“Nothing, Invictus.” Starlight sighed, flopping on the ground. “The Equestrian military is either too busy to listen to someone saying that Invictus wants to talk, or they don’t want to talk with the guy who destroyed Canterlot.”

”Assessment: It will be imperative to eliminate Synchronous presence before complete annihilation.” Invictus replied. ”Spending resources to eliminate ‘Equestrian Military’ before Synchronous would limit success rate to 28%.”

“I know, but it’s difficult to get these ponies to talk.” Starlight grumbled. “So, how long are you going to let this ‘Synchronous’ Commander attack this base? Surely you could break the siege and destroy the enemy bases.” She gave him a look. “I know you’ve scouted all of them out by now.”

”Resources at minimal capacity. 75% of mass and energy production is being processed into main project.” The Commander pointed his nanolathe arm to the gigantic gun. ”15% Of resources going into base defenses here and in location designate: Appleloosa. 10% of resources into unit production. Result: Not enough resources for attack.”

“Oh. I would have thought you’d have had more resources than that?” Starlight replied, tilting her head.

”Negative. Several resource production sites were destroyed. Resource production rates at 30%.” Invictus replied as several bot squads were annihilated under the salvoes of his turret systems.

“Okay, that’s fair.” Starlight grumbled, checking another radio frequency. “You’d think that the ponies of Equestria would be smart enough to fight these moonbots. Apparently they don’t even talk to each other.”

Invictus tilted his metallic head, incidentally dodging a shard of metal flying from the wreckage of a destroyed tank. ”Inquiry: Moonbots?”

“Yeah. You can call them Synchronous if you want, but that’s a mouthful. They came from the moon, so moonbots.” Starlight shrugged, a shield becoming briefly visible around her as it deflected shrapnel.

Invictus processed this information, surprising itself with a 15% processing efficiency rate for this simple matter. After 3 seconds, Invictus finally processed that which would have normally taken 0.02 seconds. ”As you wish, Organic Starlight.” He turned and began walking away. A small breach had occurred in the western defenses, and needed to be patched up before it grew into a major problem.

Ponyville Royal Guard Base

Celestia watched as her communications officers galloped back and forth from their posts, getting reports from the many battles being waged at that moment and sending them to the other Commanders on the battlefield.

“Lieutenant Grim is being pushed back in the northern Rainbow Falls defense line, and is requesting reinforcements from Commander Far Light!” One said to another, who began talking into his headphones.

“Still no word from Captain Bulwark, your highness.” Someone spoke, causing the Princess to look away from the chaos of war to find one of her personal information officers, looking up at her expectantly. He was a unicorn with a dark grey coat, and a slightly disheveled silver mane. “It’s likely his forces perished in the destruction.”

“I see… thank you, Silent Comet.” Celestia sighed, a pain now all too familiar burning in her chest. “And what of that transmission from Invictus?”

“It’s still playing, your Majesty. Many commanders believe it to be a trap.” Comet replied, a datapad hovering next to his head. “They think these new enemies are working with Invictus, and this is all a ruse to crush us more easily.”

“That is a possibility. These orange machines have been gathering near Invictus’s bases, correct?” Celestia asked, glancing around to see if anypony was off duty.

“Yes, Princess. Our scout planes have been unable to get close to the bases as the orange forces shoot everything down.” Comet hold up his datapad, showing several odd blips above the planet. “They’ve got radar platforms above the atmosphere monitoring everything around the base, and their response forces are too quick.”

“I see.” Celestia nodded. “Our forces are too far spread to launch an attack on them… we’ll have to wait it seems.” She sighed. “How are the Captains?”

“Captain Armor’s forces are holding. He’s begun launching attacks on the orange machines in his area of control.” Comet replied quickly, pulling up a few images on his datapad. “Captain Hoof has cleaned out the enemy bases in his sector and is moving to reinforce the others. He reports that the enemy appears to be focusing on something other than us.”

“Why would this enemy be diverting its attention from us?” Celestia asked. “The only enemy of note to them aside from us would be Invictus. And we don’t know if they’re allied or not.”

“I don’t know either.” Comet shrugged. “The ARM Commander is almost finished with the defenses, and then he’ll begin sending reinforcements to the other battlezones.” He then glanced at his datapad. “Also, Miss Sparkle and her friends have almost completed their training. They should be done in time to work alongside the Commander.”

“Good, thank you Comet.” Celestia nodded, and he saluted before running back to his post. “We have to hope that the lines will hold long enough…”

Invictus FOB ‘Our Town’

Invictus let out a mechanical growl as his Ubercharge flew from his gun, annihilating a squad of Dox bots and tanks. His own war machines rushed ahead of him, attempting to close the rapidly growing breach in his defenses with their bodies and bullets.

The breach that had opened up earlier had escalated in severity much more rapidly than Invictus had anticipated. It seemed that the Synchronous Commander was more alert than what Invictus had calculated, and he had been forced to divert additional forces to plug the breach long enough to rebuild the defenses. When that hadn’t worked, he had hesitantly diverted resources from the Cannon into building more combat machines. At the moment, the enemy tide was being held back, with reinforcements from the factories rushing into the fray every few minutes, but Invictus was acutely aware of the other forces pressing in on the other sections of the wall. Unless the Commander could plug this hole in the line within the next ten minutes he estimated that he had only 13 minutes before the defensive lines would fall, and they would be surrounded and destroyed.

”Invictus!” Starlight suddenly blurred out of static in the Commander’s audio receptors. It seemed she had uncovered his personal comms line. ”Bad news, the Moonbots are hitting the southern line hard. I don’t think it’ll hold for much longer unless we-“

”Affirmative, Organic Starlight. I have noticed.” Invictus replied, cutting her off as a stray bullet landed against the armor of his shoulder. It did not pierce his armor, but it did drop the effectiveness of that armor by 15%. ”I cannot dedicate forces to reinforce that area. I can only send construction units to build more turrets.”

”Then I’ll go and support them.” Starlight grumbled. ”I’ll leave one of the other ponies to monitor the comms.”

”That is ill advised, Organic Starlight. Probability of survival is at 22%.” Invictus warned, but she had already left from her post. ”Organics.” Invictus grumbled, just before a series of explosions erupted from the front of his line, annihilating the Bots for at least three meters back. ”Boombots. Great.”

While Invictus dealt with the oncoming tide of enemy machines, Starlight appeared atop a boulder overlooking the southern turret line. Orange machines threw wave upon wave of bullets into the glowing wall segments in front of the turrets, several breaking under the volleys and letting the shells fly into the stationary turrets. Blue construction bots ran back and forth between the turrets, the blue nanolathe energy flowing from the stumps of their arms into damaged turrets, or into brand new ones.

But it wasn’t enough. Just from observing the ebb of battle for only a few moments was Starlight able to see that the wall wouldn’t hold much longer. The enemy apparently had more resources than Invictus.

Far behind her, the anti orbital turrets threw laser bolts high up into the air with a loud fwomp, destroying a radar satellite that had drawn too close. This happened occasionally, and it had given Starlight an odd, possibly insane idea. Unbeknownst to her, the destruction of the radar also dropped the enemy’s vision to that of the robots crashing into the turrets. In short, they could not see her, or what she was planning to do until it was too late.

Her horn lit up with magical energies, the purple light growing brighter as she concentrated on her task at hand. Invictus might not think she’d be capable of much help in this fight, but she was determined to prove that machine wrong.

“Alright, moonbots… head on back to where you came from.” Starlight said after a few more minutes of generating magic. Her spell then activated, the large amount of magic stored in her horn rushing out to accomplish the task they had been given. In the next instant, several hundred machines disappeared from the front line in a pink flash, creating a massive hole in the attacking forces.

Millions of feet above the planet, the machines reappeared directly above the base, and far off on the surface of the moon, the Synchronous Commander was incredibly confused for the first time in centuries as to what just happened.

Back down on the surface, every Umbrella turret turned towards the sudden enemies in their firing range, and unleashed hell upon them. With every shot, dozens of the machines died, their wreckage rushing back down to the planet below. Within minutes, the entire force was gone, bits of metal raining down upon the FOB.

Starlight panted, smirking in victory as she teleported back to the base. She used up a lot of energy with that massive teleport, but she had at least done more than sit around and do nothing.

The pony she had set to replace her slowly came up to her. “Uh, Starlight? Invictus wants you to go to him. Like, right now.” Starlight smiled and thanked the alabaster pegasus, before teleporting to where he was. Immediately the sounds of explosions and gunfire reached her ears, and she found herself behind a wall of robots, all shuffling forward towards their likely destruction.

”Organic Starlight, how did you relocate 672 enemy units into the upper atmosphere within .002 seconds?” Invictus asked, walking through the sea of robots, towering above them.

“Oh, you know…” Starlight tried to catch her breath. “I only used... a large scale teleportation spell. No problem at all.”

Invictus took in this information, processing it. ”Can you do it again?” He asked, new artillery guns firing into the orange horde.

“Uh… not yet…” Starlight said after a second, looking around at the seemingly endless wave of blue robots rushing into the fray. “Teleporting all of those machines all at once drained my magic a lot…”

Invictus nodded. ”Affirmative. Replenish magic supply before the enemy overwhelms us.” He then turned back to the battlefield, unleashing a carefully timed Ubercharge into a blob of orange Dox bots and destroying all of them within a single explosion.

As Starlight turned to head back to the village, her ears flicked as she heard something new. “Invictus, do you hear that?” She asked, turning back to the Commander. “It sounds almost like… laser fire…”

Invictus paused, picking up the noise from his audio receptors as well. Both his weapons and that of the Synchronous used physical ammunition for their basic machines, and the only forces that Invictus had encountered with laser weapons were…

One of the Dox Bots at the front of Invictus’ line picked up several machines breaking through the Synchronous forces piling towards the breach from the south, their colors bright blue and the silver of armored plating. Behind them was a series of damaged quadruped machines, red beams of light flying from their front left legs.

Invictus immediately accessed the camera feed from several other machines around that section, keying in to their audio receptors.

”Destroy these Tartarus-damned bots!” A gruff voice roared from one of the lead quadrupeds. ”We will make them pay for Manehatten a thousand times over!”

Invictus ran through several dozen theoreticals in under a second, eventually choosing one and acting upon it. He redirected his forces closest to the sudden appearance of Equestrian forces to support them.

Captain Bulwark grunted as a bullet tore a part of his shoulder plate off, several Construction KBots surrounding him and attempting to make repairs. He and the other ponies in Commander armor were the only military survivors of the crash, and Bulwark had lead them all the way here. They had spent the past three days repelling attacks from these new orange machines, and the remains of several former bases were all that remained of their struggle.

“Forward!” He roared, sending the group of kbots and vehicles ahead of them. The Peewees lead the charge, their rapid fire plasma guns spitting molten death to the soulless machines, their gun barrels red with heat. Behind them came a group of Stumpy’s, their cannons firing precision shots and annihilating other vehicles with minimal effort. Once the enemy began to move to deal with their sudden intrusion, the KBots fell back behind the Stumpy line, the tanks’ heavier armor taking the brunt of the damage while the Peewee’s fired around them.

“Captain!” One of the other survivors, Bulwark’s last surviving Lieutenant by the name of Bulky Breaker, called. Underneath his battered armor, his wings had been broken from the impact of the crash. “Invictus forces, One o’clock! They seem to be fighting the orange bots!” Bulwark looked to where his Lieutenant had pointed out, and just as he had said, blue variants of the orange machines were rushing out towards them. They traded fire with the orange machines, earning twice as much return fire but narrowly evading most shots.

“So Invictus wants to play too? Very well, we’ll take his forces down too!” Bulwark growled, angrily pushing the memory of Invictus’ warning out of his thoughts.

“Sir… Invictus’ machine’s aren’t firing on us.” Bulk said, gesturing to the blue machines. They seemed to have formed a wall between Bulwark’s dwindling forces and the endless tirade of their apparently shared enemy. From where they came from was now a widening gap in the flow, and within seconds Bulwark understood what was happening.

“Everypony! Go! Invictus seems to have made an opening for us!” He ordered, redirecting the KBots and tanks under his command to do the same before rushing towards the gap.

Author's Note

Alright! I was gonna continue this chapter further, but I am trying to get a reasonable update schedule back up (slowly but surely) so here It is!

I hope you all enjoyed (and are still paying attention to this story), and be sure to follow me for any future stories I make!

Oh and be sure to upvote the story.