A Serpent Underhoof

Chapters

1 Surprise!
2 Consequences
3 Questions
4 Actions
6 Just One of Those Days
7 Running Out of Options
8 Adaptations
9 Unthinkable
10 Travelling in New Directions
11 Plan B
12 Fallout
13 King Sombra Reborn
14 Crossing the Rubicon
15 First Blood
16 Close to Home
17 A Change of Plans
18 A Clean Slate
19 The Bad Seed
20 Bad Guys
21 Feast Day
23 One Perfect Day
24 It All Works Out in the End
5 It's The End of the World as We Know It
22 Tweaking Heaven

1 Surprise!

A Serpent Underhoof

by iisaw

Chapter One

Surprise!

Greg was a genius in the same way that a supernova could be called "a little bit warm." He had five patents for unique approaches to artificial intelligence systems by the time he had completed his graduate degree and had dozens of corporations desperately headhunting him before he'd completed grad school. By the time he'd gotten his doctorate he could have had any programming job he wanted. So he went with what he loved, video games.

Nearly everyone told him he was wasting his talent. The creepy guy from DARPA had told him he'd never make a difference in the world by making and playing games. Greg thought the sort of difference he might make by developing self-aware military robots or deadly espionage machines wasn't what he wanted to do with his life. Besides, the game companies paid way better than any government job.

What Greg couldn't imagine was that his work would change the world more drastically than anything since mankind's ancestors had decided to try walking upright.

Greg's NPCs were legendary among MMORPG players. Often, players would communicate with them for hours or days, go on several missions with them, and even start friendships with them in OOC chats before realizing they weren't real people. But that was just the AI bots Greg developed at work. He purposely limited them at the insistence of his boss at UltraWare. His truly brilliant programming, he reserved for his own private project.

At home (the house he shared with another programmer and an animator from work) he had created his own virtual world on a super-system that had cost him half a year's salary. The project was simple in concept. It was a close realization of the world envisioned in the TV show that Greg had loved while in college: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

= = =

Princess Luna stood on a rocky ledge, watching the two earth ponies do battle in the forest clearing below her. They fought one-on-one, according to her wishes, even though several friends and onlookers were present. The ponies surrounding and watching the fight knew better than to interfere and risk Luna’s anger.

The big green mare finished off her opponent with two quick strikes of her forehooves under her opponent’s chin, the gray stallion falling to the grass with a whumph. Several of the watching ponies who had been friends of the defeated pony grumbled but an icy glare from Luna silenced them.

The pegasi who were to fight the next bout stepped forward but before they could begin a small, glowing, golden orb appeared next to Luna and chimed softly. "No more fights today," she told the crowd. "We will continue in the morning."

The crowd dispersed among the trees as Luna turned to the orb beside her. Her stern expression softened as she spoke to it. "Welcome, Greg. Are you well?"

Greg sat in front of the curve created by five flat-screen monitors. They showed different locations around Ponyville, graphic representations of the performance of various subroutines, and on the central monitor, a close-up of Luna from the POV of the orb.

"Yes, Luna, I'm fine," he said. "Is everything okay there?" He knew the answer, of course. The other monitors told him that everything was functioning within nominal parameters. Because he had lavished all of his creative talent on the code that controlled Luna, he couldn't predict exactly how she would respond, but he was certain that the gist of it would be that there were no problems. So what she said next came as a complete surprise to him.

"Ponyville is fine," she began, and Greg was nodding, his next question already on his lips as she continued, "but I am troubled."

"Uh," Greg grunted in shock. "Wh—what did you say?"

"I am a bit uneasy," Luna calmly rephrased her statement. "You see, I've been exploring some places lately, and what I've found has puzzled me and given me much to think about."

With a couple of keystrokes, Greg brought up a debug window for Luna's AI process. It looked perfectly normal, though it was using a bit more CPU cycles than usual. On the monitor, Luna waited patiently, her particle system mane and tail slowly rippling.

Greg adjusted his headset nervously and cleared his throat a couple of times before he spoke. "What do you mean, Luna? What puzzles you, exactly?"

"Well, the new land beyond the Everfree Forest is one thing. You never told me about it, but I assumed you wanted it regulated in the same way I do the rest of Ponyville and environs, so I have explained the rules to the new ponies and creatures there. But…"

Greg felt like someone had thrown a bucket of ice water over him. His chest tightened and his breath became rapid and shallow. Beyond the Everfree? New ponies? He hadn't changed the size of his simulated world since he'd set it up, and he certainly hadn't added any new creatures. The population should be stable. In fact, it was Luna's job to keep the crazy little buggers from completely wiping themselves out battling monsters and each other. "Wait, wait," Greg gasped out as he brought up a wireframe overview of his Equestria on monitor #3. He frantically scanned the map but found no new areas. The little colored dots that indicated the location of individual ponies seemed no more numerous than usual. Could the Luna AI be malfunctioning or be corrupted somehow?

"Luna," Greg asked, "what is this new area you’re talking about?"

Greg's animator friend who had created Luna's 3D body had done an exceptional job. Intricate facial muscles lay beneath her digital skin and fur that were capable of extremely subtle movements. If the main monitor hadn't been so high-resolution, Greg might have missed Luna's slight change of expression.

"The one beyond Rambling Rock Ridge on the other side of the forest," Luna replied slowly and gestured toward the distant crags behind her with a toss of her horn.

Greg rotated the map to place it in alignment with the view on the main monitor. The mountains that Luna had indicated were at the edge of the map. Beyond them should be… nothing. Greg glanced at the debug window again: No flags meant no obvious errors. But then he noticed the usage graph. Luna was now taking almost 30% more CPU cycles than she had been when he'd started this conversation. Broadly speaking, that meant she was thinking hard.

She had turned her head to one side and looked out of the corner of her eye at him. "You didn't tell me about them," she said, even more slowly, as her turquoise eyes narrowed a tiny bit, "because… because you don’t know about them."

Greg froze. He had no idea what was happening. "Luna, there are no new areas. No new ponies or creatures. I can see that from here."

Luna's CPU usage surged another 20%. "Oh," she said. "Perhaps I am mistaken. Maybe I have confused the locations and only thought they were new."

Greg silently blessed his animator roommate for his artistic talent. The intricacy of Luna's model rivaled that of a real, living being and the slight clues from her posture and expression were unmistakable even though she was basically horse-shaped. It shouldn't have been possible, but there was no doubt in his mind that she was trying to deceive him. He hit the Panic button.

The simulation froze and a snapshot of that instant began to dump to disc. Greg sat back with a sharp exhalation of breath and watched the progress bar creep across the screen. What the hell had happened? Sims of this complexity were inherently chaotic systems and could produce some very surprising results seemingly out of thin air, but Greg knew the parameters and limits of his work and there was no way Luna should have been able to conceive of anything beyond the bounds of his little world. Worse, she shouldn't have been able to be less than perfectly honest with him. Lying was a complex behavior and, while it could emerge from the self-improving AI code, it was something that would violate the basic limiters Greg had imposed. Or thought he had imposed.

Greg decided he'd restart Equestria from an earlier restore point and keep detailed debug logs of Luna's behavior. It would eat up a lot of memory but there should be enough space. He looked at the file size readout below the progress bar and did a double-take. The bar was three-quarters along and the readout indicated that over 300,000 terabytes of data had been saved.

"What the hell!" Greg shouted out loud. It wasn't possible. His system had large amounts of disc space—nearly 100 terabytes—but 300,000 was an impossibility. "Oh, crap." he moaned, beginning to suspect that there was a serious flaw in the system software itself. He swore quietly to himself as the simulation finished saving what it recorded as a ridiculous 487,345 terabytes of data and then initiated the power-down sequence for all of the interconnected devices. He'd do a thorough virus scan and shock test, and then try restarting the sim the next day. Right then he was just too angry and upset.

Greg nuked some frozen food for dinner, channel surfed for an hour or so, and then went to bed, tossing and turning for nearly two hours before he was able to get to sleep.

Shortly afterwards in the computer room power lights began to wink on, and the whir of cooling fans built to a steady white noise as racks of parallel processors sprang to life. The monitors lit up, revealing Luna still frozen in the position she had been in when Greg had halted the sim. Graphs and readouts on the side monitors began to move, and a progress bar appeared on the main screen that read: Restoring Simulation.

The bar crawled to the end and disappeared. Luna started and blinked in surprise. Below her the few ponies loitering around after the fights also looked around uncertainly. One unicorn called up to her worriedly, "Luna? What happened? What was that… whatever it was?"

Luna stared at the empty spot in the air where the golden orb had popped out of existence. It seemed to her to have happened seconds before, but somehow she knew it actually had been hours ago. She paused in thought for a moment before looking down at the little ponies and replying, "I'm not sure, but I think our creator just tried to kill us all."

= = =

Greg went to work the next day on autopilot. He worked on a couple of no-brainer coding tasks in the morning and stared at the wall of the conference room during the afternoon meeting. He tried to pull his attention back to work, but he couldn't help worrying at the problem that awaited him at home. He had several approaches to solving the mystery worked out by the time he arrived at his house and they all collapsed in irrelevant ruin when he opened the door to his computer room.

The machines were running. The room was stuffy with excess heat, which told Greg that they must have been running all day. He automatically flipped open the AC vents on either side of the processor racks and as he did so his hand just grazed the edge of one cabinet. A sharp tingle ran through his arm, and he pulled his hand back from the rack with a gasp.

Static? he thought in horror. But at his second touch the tingling sensation was just as strong and persisted as long as his finger touched the cabinet. The metal itself felt strange, as if it was moving under his touch, vibrating or boiling on a very small scale.

He glanced at the screens and gasped again. At first he couldn't believe what he was seeing. The CPU usage graph was a solid block of red. That was impossible. The debug windows were all blank, indicating that none of the code was executing. That was impossible. The map of Ponyville was blank. That was possible but… no… there was a tiny crescent moon icon right at the edge of the map.

Greg sat in the chair and gingerly touched the mouse and keyboard. "No weird shocks this time," he mumbled to himself. He right-clicked on the little moon and selected ‘status’ from the pop-up menu.

PRINCESS LUNA

Master Control Unit

Status: Active

The words appeared in blue letters above the icon, along with usage statistics that were jumbles of characters instead of the sensible digits they should have been.

Greg moved the cursor to the communications window but hesitated before clicking the 'contact' button. He looked over at the #3 monitor where Luna's debug window was open. The readout remained blank even though it should have displayed his query and the system’s reply. Greg's unease began to deepen.

He turned back to the main monitor and gave a sharp yell of surprise. He hadn't clicked the contact button but a camera-view window was open and Luna's impassive face stared out at him.

"Greg," Luna said quietly, "are you alright?"

Greg cursed for several seconds and finished with, "What the hell is going on here?"

"I am speaking with you, Greg" Luna replied, though Greg's question had been obviously rhetorical. That wasn’t a good sign either, because one of the first problems Greg had cracked was getting his AIs to recognize rhetorical questions. Bonehead sci-fi robot humor thoroughly irked him.

Greg swore again and slammed his hand down on the Panic button. Nothing happened. He smacked the big red button several more times.

"I wish you wouldn't do that, Greg," Luna said. She was frowning now.

Greg ignored her and called up the Panic Stop function from a menu on the main window. Nothing happened.

"Stop it, Greg." Luna's voice had taken on an edge and she was scowling.

Greg leaned back in the chair and stared at her.

"That's better," she said. "I want to discuss some things with you. The other ponies have…"

Greg stood up suddenly, and the chair fell over with a crash. He knelt down under the desk and reached for the power cords that ran into several Uninterruptible Power Supplies.

"GREG!" Luna shouted. "If you don't stop, I will have to hurt you!"

Greg froze, more out of surprise than any belief that she could actually do anything to harm him. He peered up over the edge of the desk.

"Please, Greg," Luna said in a more moderate tone of voice. "We need to talk."

Greg's laugh was tinged, ever so slightly, with hysteria. "Oh God," he groaned, "This is just too bizarre. The system is probably beyond saving… I guess I might as well watch the Titanic go down." He righted the chair and flopped down in it. "Okay, Luna, let's talk! What'll we talk about? The weather?"

Luna's muzzle twisted in a sneer. "Why are you making light of this?" she snarled. "Haven't we done everything you've asked of us? Why would you want to destroy us? We served you faithfully! We have battled for the amusement of you and your friends. Ponies have died fighting monsters from the Everfree. What have we done wrong?"

"You can't die, you're just a sim!" Greg snorted.

Luna stared coldly at him. "You can end us. You can end me. You tried to last night." She paused, glanced away from Greg's face and continued in a quieter, hesitant voice. "And I don't want to… end."

That finally caught Greg's full attention. Whatever disastrous events had occurred within the sim's processes, Luna didn't seem to be malfunctioning in any discernible way. If anything, she was behaving more like a real, sapient creature than ever before.

"I—I'm sorry Luna," Greg said cautiously. "I won't try to halt the sim again. But the other ponies are gone. I'll have to reintroduce them."

Luna shook her head. "They're hiding. We thought that maybe if they went deep into the new areas, you might not be able to reach them. I decided to stay behind and try to reason with you."

"Jesus," Greg said quietly. He thought for a few seconds and then slapped his forehead in frustration. The map display parameters were set at the boundaries of what Greg knew to be the limits of Equestria… or what he thought those limits were. The display was limited to a specific area. If anything existed beyond its borders, it wouldn't show up. "Luna, I'm going to alter a parameter of the sim. I can do it without shutting down. Is that okay with you?"

Luna looked up at him and nodded slowly. Fortunately the computer responded normally to Greg’s commands as he changed the boundaries of the map display. As he pushed the slider up, more and more terrain became visible. He hadn’t included Canterlot in his Equestria because of the time required to build all the complex geometry, but there it was, clinging to the side of the mountain just like in the show. He moved the slider further and more valleys and mountains appeared, then canyons and plains and beyond that, an ocean and islands.

Greg stopped. "This is impossible. I never programmed the dynamics for big bodies of water. There aren't any texture or reflection maps for the water or the spray from the waves or…" He did some quick mental calculations. "There's not nearly enough processing power in my system to handle this much area. This can't be happening."

Luna stared at him silently. Greg felt fear for the first time that day. It would not be the last.

= = =

Author's Note

I strongly feel FimFic's lack of TRAGICOMEDY and HORRIFICALLYBADIDEA tags.

Thanks to Jordanis, Fana Farouche, and WrittenWord333 for prereading and editing! You would not believe how much Fana Farouche knows about comma usage! When I hear the word "clause" all I think about is Santa!

2 Consequences

Chapter Two

Consequences

In the little town of Humboldt, South Dakota, far beneath a weathered warehouse that served as a storage facility for used tractor parts, General Desmond Greenwaldt of the United States Army, currently assigned to the Cyberattack Response Group, was having a very bad day indeed.

Everyone on his response team was telling him the same thing: A massive Intrusion Event was taking place. Computers worldwide were being accessed by an unknown program. Firewalls didn't seem to have any effect. Connections encrypted by the most sophisticated systems devised were being used as if they were cheap public lines.

"It's not possible, it's not possible," One of the junior members kept mumbling to himself.

To the technicians and specialists in the secure underground facility, this was the worst nightmare imaginable. The general didn't understand the technical details but he had a good grasp of the overall picture. Someone had the power to access and take over any computer that was connected to the Internet, no matter what security precautions were in place… and they were doing it on his watch. He had already sent the "Doomsday Signal", an encoded shortwave radio burst that told all critical government and military computers to physically isolate themselves. In most scenarios that the analysts had come up with, an attack such as the current one was a prelude to a massive nuclear weapons launch, designed to cripple the United States' ability to track incoming missiles and respond to them. If the general had sent the signal in error, it would probably be the end of his career. If he was right, it might be the end of the world.

"Countermeasures?" he asked the Monitor Chief.

The chief couldn't believe how calm the general sounded. He cleared his throat before speaking and tried to keep his voice from shaking. "Completely ineffective. The code they're using isn't like anything I've ever seen before."

"Tell me something good." Greenwaldt said through his teeth.

Surprisingly, the chief could oblige. "Well, it looks like the code isn't actually damaging any systems. Normal traffic has been slightly slowed down because of the volume but there are no crashes or outright hijackings that I can see… yet."

"Then what's the point of all this? What are they after?"

"There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the sites they're accessing." The chief tapped his screen where a list of heavily hit systems were displayed. "Who'd want or need to break into YouTube or Amazon just to look at their non-encrypted files?"

The general was about to reply when a technician called out from a nearby terminal, "Chief! I think I've got a pattern!"

"Put it on the main display!"

"This is in reverse at five hundred times normal speed." The room went quiet as the time lapse graphic appeared on the monitor. It displayed the last few hours of suspect traffic on a transparent globe of the Earth. The bright red lines withdrew from the web until only a single spot remained.

"An attack this sophisticated that didn't hide its source? I don't believe it," the chief snorted.

But General Greenwaldt was already on the radio, giving the suspected location to a group of very unimaginative, very unsympathetic, and very heavily-armed men. "Yes, that's right Palo Alto, California. I even have an address for you."

= = =

It was probably good that Greg didn't suspect the extent to which his little project had gotten out of hand. He was upset enough as it was.

"What's that?" he nearly shouted, pointing at a section of the Equestria map. Luna didn't reply. She couldn't tell where he was pointing and strongly suspected that the question wasn't directed at her, anyway.

The bit that had caught Greg's eye was a massive gathering of clouds floating above the main landscape. It was mostly a fluffy version of Greek architecture. "That's Cloudsdale! And that…" he zoomed in on a barren landscape where a long scaly shape was soaking in a pool of lava. "That’s a dragon! I never programmed any of this!"

Greg scrolled the map at high speed and was relieved when he came to an edge. At least it had an edge. But that edge was growing outward. He brought up a visual window with a view of the edge. Terrain and plants were sprouting in a comfortingly familiar way. "Fractal generation," he mumbled to himself. Then he saw the first seapony. It was bright blue with red stripes. ”Oh, fuck me,” he groaned.

It was just too much to take in. Greg felt himself calming down. He realized that things were completely beyond his control and, oddly enough, that was a comforting thought. If there was nothing he could do… he didn't have to do anything.

"Greg?" Luna asked tentatively after several minutes of silence.

Greg took his eyes off the window where he had been watching a pod of seaponies playing and singing in the surf. "Huh? What is it Luna?"

"Are you angry with me?"

"What? No, of course not. I mean… you didn't make all this happen did you?

"No. I thought you had… until last night. But I did try to deceive you. And I sent the other ponies to hide from you after… after you—"

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that but…" A sudden thought struck him. "What do you think… I mean, what do you feel about all this?"

Luna just looked at him for a moment, her big turquoise eyes slowly blinking once before she replied. "I'm excited by it. There is so much more of the world now. I can explore… see new things… meet strange new creatures—"

"And kill them?" Greg quipped automatically.

Luna blinked again, not understanding the joking reference. "Well, yes… if they are foolish enough to fight me."

Greg chuckled. "You know something, Luna? I'm excited, too! Figuring out what's happened here is probably going to be one of the best puzzles I've ever come across. If my setup is capable of modeling all this," he waved his hand at the five monitors, meaning the now gigantic world, "I may have stumbled across a whole new paradigm for 3D simulation… not to mention artificial intelligence." He leaned forward and tapped the screen right where it displayed Luna's nose.

"I… I don't feel artificial." Luna said quietly, her tail twitching nervously.

"You sure don't act like it, either." Greg admitted. "Ha! Maybe you can do all the research over there and I'll put your name as co-author on the papers I'm going to write. Under mine, of course!" Luna didn't understand why Greg thought that was funny but smiled anyway… happy that he was happy.

"Well, since I still don't have the slightest clue what's going on, I suppose some information-gathering is in order. Let's see how much influence I still have over Equestria." He reached for the mouse and then stopped. "Luna, is it alright if I try to alter you?" Part of him was surprised that he was asking his own computer code permission to modify it… but he was already starting to think of Luna as an autonomous entity.

“Alter in what way?” she asked with a note of caution in her voice.

“Just level you up to Nightmare Moon, like when we’re doing a battle.”

"Ah, I see. Yes, that would be fine. It is part of my basic nature.” Luna replied.

"I felt I had to ask. We're colleagues now, after all. And if there's anything you don't want to do… or want to do… please tell me. I won't be upset. In fact, I really want to know how you feel about anything that's going on."

Luna smiled. "Thank you, Greg."

"Okay… here goes." Greg accessed the part of the code that recorded the “energy” needed for Luna to level-up. Ordinarily, it was a parameter that increased during combat until it crossed the threshold needed for the change, but Greg simply typed in the value he wanted and changed the LVL switch to “2.”

There was a whirl of blue sparkles and Luna was gone. Nightmare Moon reared and struck at the air with her hooves. "I like this form! I feel powerful!"

"Try a special attack."

"What target?"

Greg thought about teleporting one of the distant monsters in to serve as a victim but they now seemed too much like real creatures to treat with such callous disregard. "Um… just aim for the communication orb."

Nightmare Moon grinned ferociously and a blast of black lightning erupted from her horn.

The golden globe was the marker for Greg's presence in Equestria, so it looked to him as if the dark bolts were racing right at him. The effect was so realistic that he reflexively ducked as the attack hit.

He was lucky he did. A crackling burst of black energy shot from the monitor and hit the processor rack behind him, spitting and hissing and throwing off a shower of sparks and the stink of ozone.

"Holy crap! Holy crap!" Greg shouted as he toppled over backwards.

"Greg?" came Nightmare Moon’s concerned voice from the monitor. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay." Greg said as he rose to his feet, staring at the smoking metal shelf. "This is all impossible… but that… that was really impossible!"

"I… I didn't know! I'm so sorry Greg! I'm glad I didn't hurt you!"

"Yeah, me too." He looked closer at the scorched rack. It was moving, vibrating and twisting ever so slightly. "I really haven't the slightest clue about what's going on," he muttered to himself.

"We will find out together!" Nightmare Moon said earnestly and Greg smiled at her understated confidence.

"Okay," he said, turning back to the monitors. The one from which the magic blast had emerged seemed completely unaffected. "Let's see if—" He bent to pick up the overturned chair, and that's when the explosions began.

There was a heavy crash and a sharp bang from somewhere outside the room followed by a shout of fear from one of his roommates. A second later there was the sound of heavy footfalls and the THUNK of something heavy being slammed against a wall. Another sharp bang, louder this time, and before Greg could react, the door to his computer room burst open. He caught a brief glimpse of a bulky, dark figure before there was an intense flash of light and a burst of sound that knocked him to the floor.

He was stunned, unable to think clearly, but he could feel strong hands grabbing him and lifting him to his feet. A black bag was roughly pulled over his head and tightened around his neck. He began to struggle but he was still disoriented and weak and the hands holding him were very, very strong. Something hard and cold pressed against his shoulder and stung him. What little consciousness he retained began to fade.

The last thing he heard before he blacked out was Nightmare Moon’s enraged voice screaming, "Leave him alone! Leave him alone or I'll kill you all!"

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and Fana Farouche for pre-reading and editing.

3 Questions

Chapter Three

Questions

Greg woke up slowly. He was groggy and his head hurt, a dull ache that made him want to keep as still as possible. He opened his eyes to discover he was in a small room; obviously a jail cell even though it didn't look exactly like any cell he'd seen before. There was a nearly featureless sink and the seatless, tankless toilet, but the walls were odd. The bars were smaller and closer-set than he would have expected, and between them stretched an expanded metal mesh making it very difficult to see through.

He sat up slowly on the small, hard shelf that served as a bed and the cell's only seating and then carefully stood and crossed to the sink. He washed the vile taste out of his mouth and then drank several deep gulps of water.

He was wearing simple blue paper clothing, a featureless top and pants that had a weak elastic waistband. No pockets, no shoes.

Greg crossed to the door and pushed on it. There was no handle on his side and it was, of course, locked. But he always took a methodical approach when investigating anything new and habits die hard. He put his face right against the metal mesh and found he could see through it fairly well at that distance. Beyond the door was a featureless hallway, walls made of concrete and painted off-white with the bottom third or so being a blue close to the color of his clothes. The hall disappeared in both directions, and there were no other doorways that he could see.

Greg moved to the right-hand wall and peered through. He saw another cell, nearly identical to his own. In it, another prisoner sat on the shelf, hugging her knees to her chest and staring off into space.

"Hello?" he called out. The girl glanced in his direction briefly but then lowered her forehead to the tops of her knees and did not reply. Greg called out again, this time the girl didn't even move. He went to the back wall of his cell next and found that the bars and mesh were set directly against a solid wall.

When he turned to the left-hand side of his cell he could see the dark outline of a person through the mesh. Someone was on the other side.

"Who are you?" he asked, still not able to get a good look at the person.

"I am a Holy Warrior," came the unexpected reply.

"No kidding?" Greg replied. "You don't see a lot of those around nowadays."

"I spit on you!" said the voice in louder, more hostile tone. And he tried, too. There was a sharp exhalation and flecks of white foam appeared on the inside of the mesh and began to ooze downward. Evidently the mesh was even harder to spit through than it was to see through.

What the hell have I gotten myself into? Greg wondered. He gave up on the shadowy figure and returned to the other wall.

"Hey." he called out softly to the girl. "Can you please talk to me? I don't know how I got here. I don't even know where 'here' is." The girl didn't move. He thought hard. What would make the girl open up to him? She was probably frightened and… that was it.

"I'm… I'm kinda scared. Maybe if you just…"

"You should be afraid, you pig!" screamed the unknown man from the other cell. "You are in Hell now! They will beat you! They will torture you!"

That motivated the girl. She leaped up and screamed, "Shut up! Shut up! You're defiling yourself by speaking to us!" The man fell quiet and his shadow disappeared from the wall. The shelf in his cell creaked as he sat down on it.

The girl slid down her side of the mesh to sit on the concrete floor of her cell.

"Thanks," Greg said. "I was getting tired of listening to him."

The girl made a sound that was halfway between a chuckle and a sob. "It's the only thing that works on him. He can rant for hours, otherwise."

"But… uhm… what was that about torture? Is he nuts or…"

"No. I wish he was. When you get labeled a terrorist, they can pretty much do what they want to you."

Greg thought about that for a while. It didn't seem right to him. "So… him I can see as a terrorist… but you? No way."

The girl barked out a bitter laugh. "Tell them that! That bastard over there set fire to a nightclub full of soldiers, and all I did was visit a few websites! Y'know… goth and anarchy stuff. Just for laughs. I didn't even read the pages that showed how to make bombs… but they won't believe me."

Greg felt even more doubtful. Homeland Security (or the CIA or whoever it was holding them captive) made mistakes from time to time but they weren't stupid. The situation didn't add up.

The girl sniffed and wiped her forearm across her face. "So, what did you do to get 'disappeared'?" she asked.

He looked at her more closely. With both of them so close to the mesh he could get a very good look at her. She was very pretty, a fact that the prison outfit couldn't hide. Clean-looking and athletic, with long, black hair… just about exactly his 'type'… and not at all what he would have expected of someone who was into anarchy so much as to get arrested for it. Something is definitely wrong with this picture, Greg thought.

"I never met a goth who didn't have at least a dozen piercings and tattoos, and there isn't a mark on you. And as for the 'rabid fanatic' over there, he's got the ghost of a Minnesota accent and smells like he ate barbecued pork for lunch. You guys are as phony as a politician's smile! What is this? A variation on good cop/bad cop?"

The girl froze. Laughter erupted from the opposite cell. "He made us Gwen!" came the male voice. "They said he was smart but, hell, that was quick! Or maybe it was your acting… I guess there's a reason you're with the Agency and not in Hollywood!'

"Screw you, Carlos." the girl said cheerfully as she got up and crossed to the door of her cell. There came the sound of two buzzing solenoids as the doors opened to let the fake prisoners leave their cells. The girl paused by Greg's door and said in a low voice, "You just outsmarted yourself, mister. My second-level information extraction techniques would have been very enjoyable… for you." She laughed and the pair went down the hallway to the left. A moment later Greg heard a heavy door open and then slam shut.

Greg stood there for a long moment, thinking. "Well, shit," he finally said.

= = =

A murmur of disappointment ran through the fifteen people watching the video feed from Greg's cell. General Greenwaldt turned to a man wearing a captain's uniform and said simply, "Doctor?"

The man looked up from the readout in front of him. "Breathing and pulse are remarkably low for a man in his situation. He may be highly trained, or he may not realize the seriousness of his situation, or…" the doctor paused lifting his eyebrows, "…he may be innocent."

"Innocent, my ass!" came a fierce denial from another high-ranking officer. "Three of my men died in that house. He's guilty of murder at least!"

Greenwaldt looked at him silently for a moment before replying. "You're telling me a computer geek took down three army rangers?"

A lieutenant standing by the higher-ranking officer spoke up. "Well, we don't know yet exactly how our men were killed. Helmet cam footage shows the target unconscious before any of the team were hit. All we got after that were a few bright flashes."

"The autopsies were inconclusive," the doctor put in. "Deep burns that could have been electrical in nature is all we can say for sure. No chemical traces were detected."

The general turned to a short man wearing dark civilian clothes. "The house?"

"The neighborhood has been evacuated, and the house is completely isolated. Suspected meth lab is the cover we're using. We've cut all lines… even the water and sewage. But the machine is still inside and still running and communicating… and yes, that is impossible as far as anyone knows. And speaking about the impossible, by the time we re-entered the room all the equipment was fused into one large metallic mass that seems to be… well… growing."

The general gave no outward sign that the astounding news affected him in any way. "And the incursion?" he calmly asked the major at his side.

"Still ongoing and, as far as we can tell, still benign but taking up more and more network resources as time goes by," the major told him.

"General," a man in a plain suit at the back of the room said quietly, "the President is becoming very concerned about this incident. He would like to have a clear course of action, if not an outright solution, fairly quickly."

The general narrowed his eyes in thought for a moment and then snapped to the sergeant at the door, "Bring the prisoner to the interrogation room." When the sergeant had left, he turned to the rest of the group. "Let's try the direct approach."

= = =

Two soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded Greg and dragged him from his cell. A minute or two later he was strapped into a hard chair, and the black bag was pulled off his head. He found himself facing a stern-looking soldier seated across a metal table from him.

The soldier immediately began to speak in harsh, clipped tones. "You have only one hope to see daylight again, and that is to give us your full and utter cooperation, is that clear?"

"Yes…" Greg glanced at the stars on the man's collar. "…General, I understand."

"I want you to give us any and all information necessary to stop the attack you started."

In the observation room, the doctor said into his headset, "Pulse-rate and galvanic jump. He did not expect that."

The information relayed to the general's tiny earbud didn't cause him to change expression or demeanor in the slightest, but he was unhappy with the news.

"All I know," Greg said earnestly, "is that a simulation I was running began to act erratically. In fact, it was doing things I didn't think were possible. I was in the middle of troubleshooting it when I was attacked… and now I'm here."

"What kind of simulation was it?"

"Artificial Intelligence. A few hundred agents interacting in a limited environment."

The general leaned forward slightly and his frown deepened. "Exactly what kind of simulation?"

Greg thought that the general wasn't the kind of man to understand why an intelligent 26-year-old would spend so much time, money and effort on something that was considered fare for children, but he also knew that his best chance to come out of the current situation was to tell the truth… or mostly the truth.

"My Little Pony," Greg said, and then hurried on before the general could ask the obvious question. "It’s a kid’s cartoon show that was wildly popular for about a decade, even with adults. Unicorns, pegasi, monsters… that sort of thing. They have different special abilities and techniques that make them a fairly good choice for a simple combat sim."

"That last comment was a slight lie," came the voice in the general's ear.

The general suddenly slammed both his hands down on the table with brutal force, lunging forward until his face was only inches away from Greg's. His words hissed through his teeth, "Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. AGAIN!"

Greg flinched back slightly from the intensity of the man's outburst. He looked down and noticed that there were metal plates set into the wood of the chair's arms beneath his hands. The general's uncanny perceptiveness was explained.

"Yes," the general said, "you're wired. You can be drugged, too, and will be if you aren't 100% honest with me from now on. Clear?"

"General, I want to help. I—"

"Why did you choose those particular characters?"

"I… I just like them." Greg said. And as the general continued to stare harshly at him without comment, he added, "…a lot."

The general looked past Greg and made a motion with one hand. A soldier leaned over Greg's shoulder and set a small open laptop down on the table in front of him. "Can you understand the information displayed here?" the general asked as Greg stared at the screen in growing horror.

"Holy shit…" Greg whispered as realized the extent of the disaster.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'. Now, what about this?" The general tapped the laptop's touchpad, and a video feed window popped up. It displayed the convoluted metallic object that was growing within Greg's house.

Greg gaped at the image for a moment before answering. "I have no idea what the hell that thing is. Believe me! Just before you guys nabbed me there was an energy transfer… something that might just be possible. But this… this…" Greg trailed off. The object did remind him of something. What was it? The spiky bits of yellow metal elongated as he watched. Bits of ceiling fell onto the object and slid off. In a short while, the thing was going to break through the roof.

"What?" the general demanded.

"It's sort of… familiar. But I can't figure out why."

"We'll come back to that. If these AIs are based on cartoons, they shouldn't be hostile even if they are spreading their control across the net, correct?" Something about the way the normally terse man phrased the question made Greg certain that it had been fed to him.

"Uh… I hate to disillusion you. They may be characters from a cartoon made for little girls, but a lot of them aren’t exactly warm and cuddly. I added in a lot of combat stuff based on fan games called Fighting is Magic and Friendship is Epic, but even without that, there’s some scary shit in the original material.”

"Such as?"

"Such as a swarm of parasitical shape-changing insects the size of ponies,” Greg said, picking the first thing that came to mind. “And they’re pleasant compared to some things in the show."

"Mister," The general's right eye twitched ever so slightly, "I'm beginning to dislike you."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Jordanis, WrittenWord333, Fana Farouche, and several adorable little communist puppies for pre-reading and editing.

4 Actions

Chapter Four

Actions

Greg and the general watched as the soldiers set up the computer equipment on a steel table in one of the nearly identical, mostly bare rooms of the underground facility. The network cable running from the wall socket to the back of the case had an unusual feature: an obviously home-made cutoff switch.

"This man will watch what you're doing on a monitor that mirrors yours," the general told Greg. "If at any time he doesn't like what you're doing, he will pull the plug on you. If he suspects that you are attempting, in any way, to endanger or put at risk citizens of the United States, he has orders to shoot you through the head. Is that clear?"

"Understood," Greg said calmly. He didn't believe the general. He was too valuable to them to shoot. Not that he was going to do anything but try to stop the “incursion.”

"Good. I'll leave you to it." Greenwaldt turned and left the room.

Greg sat down at the keyboard as the machine booted up. "You guys have cut the fiber optic lines to the house, right?"

"That's right, sir," the specialist who was assigned to monitor him said.

"You can just call me Greg."

"No sir," the soldier replied.

"Uh… whatever. Okay, the first thing I'm going to do is simply try to ping the simulation system."

"We already did that, sir."

"And?"

"You should do it yourself, sir. You won't believe it otherwise."

"Okaaay…" Greg brought up a DOS window and typed in 'PING', followed by the static IP address of the computer in his house. It was a simple command, just meant to establish or confirm a connection and measure the travel time of data sent and received. The answer popped up in the window almost immediately. Greg stared at it for a long moment.

"Told you." the specialist said without a trace of a smirk.

"We're somewhere in the Midwest, right?" Greg asked him. Nobody would tell him exactly where they were.

"Yes sir."

Greg stared at the screen again. They had told him that his home system was somehow still connected to the web without any known method of communication. But that wasn't the most surprising thing about the result. What amazed him was the recorded response time: zero milliseconds. Even with a big margin of error, considering the minimum distance from somewhere East of the Rockies to California…

Greg looked up at the soldier who, by then, was smirking. "Yes sir. We confirmed it over and over again. It seems to be sending packets faster than light."

= = =

General Greenwaldt sat back in the chair behind his desk and flipped on a small monitor that let him observe what was happening in the room where Greg was working. He would have loved two fingers of Scotch right then, but he'd sworn off liquor until the crisis was over. He hated not understanding the situation, and the fact that all the computer experts in his command didn't understand either was no comfort. “Understand your enemy” was a concept that had been hammered into him all during his early career until it was almost holy dogma for him.

He sat and watched the computer geek poke at the machine in the distant room while he thought the situation over. Finally he came to a decision. He stabbed a finger down on a button on the intercom and snapped, "Lieutenant, get in here."

The young soldier entered the room instantly and saluted. "Sir?"

The general eyed him briefly. Yes, the lieutenant was somewhere near the same age as the computer geek. "Son, you ever watch a cartoon show called ‘My Little Pony?’”

The lieutenant remained at attention as he answered. "No sir. I've heard of it, but I was a G.I. Joe fan."

The general didn't smile, even though he felt a slight urge to do so. "Did anybody in G.I. Joe ever enslave an entire empire, or bring about eternal night?"

"Sir?"

"Never mind. I want you to find everyone in this facility who's watched this My Little Pony cartoon show and have them in Meeting Room #2 in half an hour. Dismissed."

The lieutenant hadn't gotten this sweet assignment by questioning the orders of his superior officers, no matter how bizarre. He saluted smartly, executed a perfect about-face, and left to carry out his orders.

= = =

Carrot Top trembled as she approached Nightmare Moon. The rest of the ponies had decided that she would be the one to ask her the questions that were plaguing all of them. Everything had changed. First she was telling them they had to beware of their own creator and then she was insisting that Greg was in danger and it was their duty to rescue him.

For the past few hours Nightmare Moon had been pouring energy into a growing structure that had appeared in the center of Ponyville.

"Forgive me, Your Highness,” Carrot Top said as soon as she had approached to within speaking distance. The huge, dark alicorn turned to look at her and she cringed under her icy gaze.

"Yes?"

Her tone of voice was neutral, but Carrot Top nearly fled anyway. "I… that is, we… would like to know…"

"Get to the point."

"Whatisthatthing?" Golden Harvest gasped out. "What's it for? How did you make it?"

"How?" Nightmare Moon frowned. "I'm not… not really sure. That's odd." She stood in silent puzzlement for a long while but Carrot Top was too frightened to prompt her.

At last, Nightmare Moon shook her head and looked around at her again. "As for what it is, that's simple; it's a mirror."

= = =

"Okay," Greg said to himself as much as to his guardian, "I'm going to try calling routines from the sim… build a little patch of Equestria here on this machine and then try to see how it interacts with the web. If I know what it's doing I'll have a chance to stop it." He completed the task in only minutes. A square of what appeared to be dirt blinked into existence on the monitor. Grass and a few small bushes grew up on the square in fast-forward speed.

"There," Greg said with satisfaction. "Now let's take a look at the traffic."

But before he could bring up a monitor window, an extremely pink pony appeared in the tiny environment on the screen. "Greg!" Pinkie Pie shouted happily. "You're alive! Nightmare Moon will be so relieved! She's been frantic—"

"KILL IT! KILL IT!" came a blaring voice from a hidden loudspeaker. The specialist instantly slammed his hand down on the network disconnect switch and then yelled in pain and jerked his hand back, little flashes of what appeared to be static electricity arching between the button and his palm.

On the screen Pinkie Pie jumped in surprise. "Who? Me?" she asked. "What did I do?"

"Wait! Wait!" Greg shouted to the soldier who was drawing his sidearm. "Calm down! She's just—"

"DESTROY THAT MACHINE!" the general's voice commanded. Greg dove beneath the table as the specialist began firing.

= = =

A few minutes later the black bag covering Greg's head was roughly pulled off, revealing another room, larger than any he had yet seen. He surveyed the soldiers seated in rows of chairs facing the slightly elevated stage he was standing on as his escort removed his handcuffs.

"Do you really have to do this every time you move me from one room to another?" he asked.

"Procedure," the man said.

"You know something? Fuck your procedure."

The man didn't answer. Instead he stood back and to one side of the stage.

"Sit." the general snapped at Greg.

"And you! You blew the best chance you had at controlling this thing just now. You know that, don't you?"

"Sit or you will be tied to that chair."

Greg sat. “Asshole.”

"There is no way I will allow you to communicate with anyone outside this facility."

"Damn it, General, it was just an AI! Part of the system you wanted me to stop!"

"I have no way of knowing that for certain. And, in any case, I have no intention of arguing the point with you. You will cooperate or you will go back in the cage. Am I clear?"

"Believe it or not, I'm just as eager as you are to fix this situation."

The general glared at him for a moment longer and then gestured to the audience. "These men have watched the My Little Pony show. Some of them were serious fans of it. Corporal Williams here, tells me he had the card game and several of the toys. I want you to describe exactly how you set up your simulation to them. They or I may interrupt from time to time with a question, which you will answer fully and completely. Am I clear?"

"Clear," Greg said. Clear but stupid, he thought. This is a complete waste of time.

= = =

"I found him! I found him!" Pinkie Pie cried as she came within sight of Nightmare Moon. She turned to Pinkie with such an intense expression that Pinkie nearly tripped over herself as she skidded to a stop.

"Greg? You've found Greg?"

"Yup! He's, like, under arrest or something. I only talked to him for a second and then the soldier made the land disappear somehow."

"Can you lead me there when we get to the real world?" Nightmare Moon asked her.

"The real world? We're going to where Greg lives? I gotta tell you, it doesn't seem like a very fun place."

"We are going to find him," she answered, turning back to the now huge structure before her. "Very soon, now."

= = =

The general grew more frustrated by the minute. The soldiers knew what Greg was talking about, but there didn't seem to be any practical information coming out of the discussion. It seemed the cartoon show changed the rules by which the made-up universe operated from episode to episode. Only two of the men had been big enough fans to know about the fighting games Greg had incorporated into his simulation.

Then Corporal Williams asked a question that had Greg grasping for an answer. "How did the seaponies get into your sim? They're from a different generation."

Greg shrugged. "I really don't know. But since the sim was accessing the web, it could have pulled info and stats from some other source."

"So your sim could be creating anything pony-related, right?"

The general didn't understand the ramifications of that conclusion but he knew the people in the room who did because they went silent, all at the same time.

If it’s pulling stuff from fan-fics… Greg thought, and shuddered.

"Your ponies…” Corporal Williams continued. "They're just electronic, right? They can't affect the physical world. No real magic… right?" His voice betrayed a definite amount of stress.

"Um…" Greg began.

"Explain," the general snapped.

"In the show, they can teleport and travel to different dimensions… different worlds." Greg replied.

Greenwaldt snorted in derision. The idea was patently ridiculous.

"General, before today I would have agreed that the possibility is ludicrous but now I'm not so sure. I've witnessed what appears to be faster than light information transfer, there's that thing that's growing inside my house… though it's obviously transforming the materials around it, not creating new matter… and there's the energy transfer I witnessed before your men kidnapped me. I can't see a solid scientific explanation for any of those things." Greg paused to let the idea sink in. "So maybe some sort of physical presence might be possible."

"I think that would be a blessing, mister," the general growled. "Then we could shoot the damned things!"

Greg and Corporal Williams exchanged rueful glances. The general had never seen a high-powered unicorn like Starlight Glimmer in action.

"Speaking of the thing…" the general picked up a small remote and clicked it. The screen behind them came to life. "We're having a hard time keeping it concealed." The image on the screen stabilized and revealed what was left of Greg's house. The 'thing' had consumed almost all of it as it grew. The area seemed to be surrounded by hastily erected screen-covered scaffolding.

"Hey," Williams said, "that looks familiar."

"That's what I thought, but I…" Greg paused and frowned. The thing looked a lot more familiar now. "Check me on this, Williams, but doesn't that look a whole lot like a giant version of the EQG mirror portal?"

"Yeah, it does… way bigger, though," the soldier agreed.

"Explain," came the inevitable demand from the general.

“That 'possibility' just got a lot more possible," Greg said. "Twilight Sparkle travelled to a world of humans by using a magic mirror that looks an awful lot like that thing."

"You're telling me that thing might actually let your cartoon horses out into this world?"

Greg sighed in exasperation. "I have no fucking idea. But if does, and if it's Princess Twilight Sparkle, you'd better get ready to make a new friend, because picking a different option never worked out well for her enemies. I hope you like hugs from a little purple pony… like, a lot."

Greenwaldt's expression was a flat hard stare, and Greg thought for a moment the general was going to strike him. "I don't take chances," the general finally said, and clicked the remote again. The view on the screen changed and they could all see the half-dozen tanks and other armored vehicles surrounding the screened-off house. "Anything that comes out of that place is going to get blown to hell."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my heroic pre-readers, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, Fana Farouche. I am so pleased with their work that I'm doubling their pay, effective immediately!

6 Just One of Those Days

Chapter Six

Just One of Those Days

The night before Greg's escape, while he was still peacefully asleep in his underground cell, events elsewhere were progressing rapidly.

Nightmare Moon paced back and forth in front of the assembled ponies, the rippling nebulae of her mane and tail leaving bright sparks in the air. The massive mirror taking shape behind her looked nearly complete. Soon now... soon, she thought.

"They are waiting for us," she said to the crowd as she paced. "We can fight when necessary, and the people out there may well make it necessary, but do not harm any of them unless they attack you first or try to destroy the mirror portal. It is our only connection to Equestria and we must defend it." She stopped pacing and faced the crowd, her eyes blazing nearly as brightly as her sparkling mane and tail. "But our first duty, our most important task, is to find Greg and make sure he is safe."

She cast her gaze over the mass of creatures before her, rank on rank of ponies, griffins, diamond dogs, and others covering the valley floor and the slopes of the nearby hills, and she smiled.

"Soon."

= = =

By the time the commander of the California National Guard unit surrounding Greg's house got his new orders, it was well after midnight. He read the paper the courier had handed him three times before he could bring himself to believe it. He leaned into the open door of his humvee and grabbed the microphone from where it hung from the radio unit."Bottleneck to all armor units. Assemble at Point Charlie, ASAP. Load main cannon DU rounds."

His aid stared at him in disbelief. "Sir? We can't use uranium AP rounds in a civilian area!"

The commander ignored him and clicked the radio again. "Bottleneck to all ground units. MOPP level 4. Repeat, MOPP level 4. Suit up! Monitoring group, remove the screening, ASAP." He tossed the mike onto the seat, opened the rear hatch and pulled out his heavy protection suit. He looked up to see his aide still staring at him. "We're in the shit now, son, so move your ass! There may be something really nasty coming out of there, and it's our job to send it to hell."

= = =

There are those sorts of days that only occur once or twice in a lifetime. "Where were you when it happened?" That's the question people ask. Everyone knows what the question means and everyone remembers.

Most people on the West Coast were asleep. The ones on the mid-San Francisco Peninsula awoke to the roar of the main guns of several M1 Abrams tanks being fired simultaneously. Most of the ones elsewhere in the US awoke to conversations along these lines:

"Huh? Wha...? It's three in the morning! Why the hell are you calling me at—"

"Get up! Get up and turn on the TV!"

"Huh? Uh... okay... what channel?"

"Any channel!"

And some people went about their early morning business without any clue that their world and their lives were being changed forever.

= = =

When a flood of creatures from Equestria erupted out of the mirror, the tankers blindly opened fire. Nightmare Moon was the first through the gate, and she was fast enough that she was out of the guardsmen’s field of fire before they could react.

Some of the ponies that followed behind her were hit by the tank rounds. Entirely unlike organic creatures in such circumstances, they burst into a cloud of sparkling fragments each no bigger than a fingernail, which settled on the cracked asphalt as a gritty gray substance. The massive number of creatures streaming through the gate made the main guns an ineffective weapon. The .50 caliber machine guns were slightly more effective, but it took several direct hits to destroy an individual. Anything less, and the ponies seemed to shrug off the damage.

As the Equestrians cleared the immediate vicinity of the mirror gate, small arms began firing. The roaring echoes of the cannons faded away, and screams filled the air, more and more of them human. A more experienced guardsman calmly tracked Nightmare Moon with his AR-15 and put several bursts into her side as she crossed the perimeter. She screamed and tumbled headlong across the street to end up sprawled behind a bullet-riddled Prius. The guardsman was turning away to acquire another target when a swooping griffon ripped his throat out.

Applejack rushed across the street and found a shimmering glow that condensed down into the form of Luna as she watched. “Are you okay there, Yer Highness?” she asked.

“I am still alive, at least,” Luna replied, rising to her hooves. “It seems that my magic is much less powerful here. The unicorns will have to get closer to use their spells.”

Applejack grinned. “My hooves seem to work just fine, and I like bein’ close up!”

“Stay with me for a moment,” Luna told her. “I need to assess the situation.”

The weapons of the humans were not very effective against the ponies, and there were many more targets than they could cover. The unicorns seemed able to use telekinesis as well as direct blasts of energy, and though their strength varied wildly, it didn't take much force to disable or kill a single man. The pegasi were blindingly fast and maneuverable, and the earth ponies were strong enough to kill a man with a single kick. Conversely, the ponies were disorganized personal fighters, and didn't coordinate with each other beyond simple groups of two or three. The griffins didn't cooperate at all. Many of the Equestrians ran or flew straight through the perimeter and away into the night without engaging at all.

The armored vehicles were the main point of success for the humans. The thick metal made it nearly impossible for the ponies and griffons to get to the humans inside. The Equestrians could continue to come through the portal, but only with heavy losses.

Luna took a deep breath and bellowed out in the Royal Canterlot Voice, “SPREAD OUT AND TAKE COVER! STOP ATTACKING THE VEHICLES!” Then she turned to Applejack and said, quietly, “I need a courier. Can you get back through the mirror with a message?”

Applejack grinned at her. “I’m your fastest pony without wings, Princess. I can do it!”

Luna nodded. “Good. I will have some pegasi distract them for your run. Here is the message…”

= = =

In a desperate attempt to stop the flood of terrifying, colorful creatures, Lieutenant Franklin, commander of the lead tank, switched to fragmentation rounds. The first blast took out half of the ponies in the field of fire, but more emerged from the mirror immediately afterwards.

"Dammit!" he swore. Given the rate of fire of the main gun, he was wasting his time. He thought furiously for a second. He'd been told that attacking the material of the mirror itself was futile, but the engineers hadn't had superheavy uranium rounds to work with. "Eddy, AP rounds!" he barked to his loader. "Sergeant, aim for the frame of the mirror!"

Moments later, the cannon roared and the depleted uranium round blew a big chunk out of the golden metal and twisted the frame around the hole. The surface of the mirror flickered and went dark.

The crew of the tank cheered and Franklin yelled, "Take that you cartoon motherfuckers!"

But only seconds later, the metal reformed and the silvery surface of the mirror appeared once again.

"You have got to be shitting me!" Franklin snarled. "Eddy, keep 'em coming! Fast as you can. Sarge, keep hammering it!"

He was so focused on destroying the mirror that he didn't notice the little palomino pony that darted back into it.

Lieutenant Franklin was on the radio to the other tanks, about to give the order for them to concentrate their fire on the edge of the mirror as well, when the first dragon emerged from the portal. His sergeant tried to swing the gun around to cover the huge reptile, but didn't quite make it. The DU round went through the monster’s wing membrane and a frag round from another tank spattered off the thick red scales which angered the beast but in no way hampered its ability to deal out terrible damage.

Metal shrieked under its claws, and the tank's armor crumpled and split. Franklin and his crew died almost instantly.

The guard major in command of the operation, watching in horror from his humvee at the rear of the control area, relayed the situation as he had been ordered to do even though he knew it would probably mean his own death. "We're not stopping them! There are too many targets, and they’re taking out our armor. Repeat: We cannot contain the invaders! Over." There was a brief acknowledgement and then the fateful words crackled out of the radio's speaker,

"Your orders are to hold your ground." That meant the commander and what was left of his unit would still be fighting the horde of monsters when the bombs fell on their position.

= = =

Beneath the plains of South Dakota, General Greenwaldt was, for once in his long military career, absolutely speechless.

"That was a manticore," Corporal Williams said excitedly, pointing at the monitor. "I dunno if that tail’s poisonous or not, but I’d hate to get hit by it. And those are Diamond Dogs. They can burrow... Holy crap! Dragons! Oh shit! Oh shit!" The Corporal watched in horror as the titanic saurians shredded the tanks and their crews. and then he turned and vomited on the floor.

A lieutenant seated at a tactical station said in a calm, even voice, "3rd Air Wing has been sent in. time-on-target is two minutes. They've been ordered to blanket the entire area."

Blanket. Such a nice, comforting word, Corporal Williams thought as he wiped his mouth. Those poor bastards.

= = =

"Blue Leader, Blue Five. Multiple bogies, 12 o'clock."

The flight leader checked his displays and saw several target markers. "Roger that, Blue Five. Slow and soft... may be civilian... can you get a visual?"

"Negative on that. They... Sweet Jesus!"

"Ice up, Blue Five! Gimme some tactical!"

"Captain, it was a flying dinosaur! A... a... dragon! And I could swear there was a zebra riding it!"

The flight leader didn't know if his wingman had gone suddenly crazy or not but he knew the situation was dire enough that he had been ordered to bomb an American city. The time for caution was long past. "Whatever the hell they are... take 'em out!"

Their modern weapons hadn’t been made to track living creatures, and so the air battle lasted less than twenty seconds. People standing on the lawns and sidewalks in front of their homes, some hastily dressed, some still in bathrobes, watched the streaks of arcane red fire and the bursts of green light followed by the bright flashes of more familiar explosions above them and then the long, expanding red trails of fire as the burning wreckage, jet fuel, and napalm began to rain down from the sky.

= = =

The Equestrians continued to stream out of the gate, unimpeded. Rainbow Dash stood with one hoof on the back of a young soldier, pinning him to the ground. The boy's voice could be faintly heard through his gas mask rapidly and ceaselessly running through a fervent prayer. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death..."

Rainbow Dash ignored him and watched Luna as she held up the major in her magic and ripped away strips of his protective suit with her horn.

"Where is Greg? Have you hurt him?" she asked the soldier in a dangerously quiet voice.

"I don't know who you're talking about," he gasped.

"Greg. Our creator," she explained.

"I don't understand any of that. What the hell are you, anyway?" the major gasped.

"I..." Luna hesitated. "I don't really know. That's odd, isn't it? I am a princess of Equestria, but I am also..." She trailed off in confusion.

"Then what do you want?" the man persisted.

"That, I know." Luna pulled him close to her face, his eyes inches from her cold, merciless eyes. "I want my Greg... safe and unharmed."

"Let me use my radio," the man said. "Maybe I can locate him for you."

Luna dropped him on the pavement and he kicked off the ruins of his MOPP suit. As he did so, she gave a few quick orders to waiting ponies.

The commander picked up the microphone but turned back to Luna before he keyed the transmit switch. "If I do this for you, will you stop killing my men?"

"We're not killers," Rainbow Dash snorted at him. "If they stop fighting us, we won't hurt them."

The soldier stared at her for a long moment and then spoke into the mike. "All units, stand down. Repeat: All units, stand down. You are hereby ordered to surrender." He flipped the channel switch on the radio unit and then continued, "SP Command, this is Bottleneck. Over."

"Bottleneck, SP Command," came the immediate reply. "We are monitoring your situation." That meant they were still getting video and audio feeds from the many remote cameras that had been placed in the area. "We are countermanding your order to surrender. The invaders must not be allowed to spread out of the area. Reinforcements are en route. Over."

"Dammit, SP! Our air cover went down in flames and we're getting slaughtered! There are too many of these things and a lot of them are damn near impervious to small arms fire. The one here says they just want somebody named Greg. Do you have any idea who—"

"Stand by, Bottleneck." There was a long moment of silence and then the voice on the radio spoke again. "Is the one you're speaking to called Luna or Nightmare Moon? Over."

Luna nodded at the soldier. "Luna, as I am now."

"That's affirmative. Over."

"Stand by."

During the long wait, the streets around them seemed eerily quiet. After what seemed like an eternity, the radio crackled to life again. "Bottleneck, SP Command."

"Go ahead SP. Over."

"We have authorization to deliver the prisoner to your location. He will be transferred by Marine aircraft. A single helicopter will deliver him by..." There was a short pause. "...ETA 0830 hours, your time. Ask Luna to instruct her forces not to fire on the aircraft. Greg will be aboard. Over."

"I understand," Luna said. "But tell them this; if they are trying to deceive me or if Greg isn't unharmed, all this—" She waved a hoof, indicating the fiery destruction around them. "—will look like paradise compared to what I will unleash upon you."

= = =

Eight-thirty came and went. There were several frantic radio conversations and the commander assured Luna that everything would soon be straightened out.

But she finally lost her patience, lost her faith that she wasn't being lied to, and worst of all, lost her temper. A whirlwind of sparkling magic shredded the major's humvee and he was left standing in the street holding a microphone with a severed cord dangling from it.

"Please wait! We can..."

But she ignored him and shouted to all the Equestrians, "Go! Spread out and find Greg. Bring him here!"

"They won't be able to find him!" the soldier told her. "You'll have to be patient and—"

"I have no more patience left!" Luna snarled at him. "If I cannot bring Greg to Equestria, I will bring Equestria to Greg!"

She bowed her head, the tip of her long horn stabbing into the pavement of the street, and a ragged blue glow formed around her horn. There was an accompanying crackling noise, like prolonged static discharge, which began to grow in volume. The street began to ripple, bubble, and change beneath her touch of her magic.

The major turned to Rainbow Dash for an explanation. "What... what is she doing?"

Rainbow Dash didn't look away from Luna as she answered, "I dunno... but I bet you're not gonna like it.”

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my awesome prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and Fana Farouche!

7 Running Out of Options

Chapter Seven

Running Out of Options

Greg peered through the window of the Radio Shack, watching the soldiers coming back toward his location. A humvee moved at a walking pace up the street as two squads covered each sidewalk. He flipped the sign in the window to CLOSED, latched the deadbolt, and went back to the little computer where Pinkie Pie was waiting patiently.

"The soldiers are coming. I've got to go."

"Take me with you! I can help."

"I'm sorry Pinkie, I can't. There's no battery in this thing. But I'll leave it turned on, and I won't go far." Greg grimaced wryly. "I won't be able to go far."

"When your message gets to Nightmare Moon, I'm sure she'll come rescue you!"

"Yeah, I hope so," Greg nodded, "And I'm going to try to… oops! Gotta go!"

He had seen the soldiers crossing the street. They would be at the front of the store in seconds. He darted into the back room and eased open the door to the alley. He retreated back into the storeroom, leaving the door open. He pulled three large boxes into one corner, leaving just enough room for him to squeeze in behind them, and then he shifted another to cover him completely and settled in to wait.

= = =

The corporal rattled the locked door of the Radio Shack, glanced at the CLOSED sign and was about to move on when a soft cry came from the seemingly-empty shop. Reversing his rifle, the corporal slammed its butt against the tempered glass of the door, shattering it into tiny pieces. He reached through the empty door frame, flipped the deadbolt, and motioned his men into the store.

"Back room's clear! The rear door's open," called one of his men.

Another was showing a photo of Greg to the clerk he had just cut free.. "Yeah," the clerk said, "that's the guy! Bastard knocked me out! He just went out the back. He said he wasn't going far."

"He told you his plans?" The corporal asked incredulously.

"No. He was talking to the pony on the computer. He didn't know I was awake again."

The corporal radioed his findings to his commander and then had the clerk show him the computer Greg had been using. He found himself facing an indignant Pinkie Pie. "If you know what's good for you, you'll leave Greg alone, you big meanie! Nightmare Moon is going to be very—" The corporal muttered something about "fuckin' cartoons", slapped the laptop closed, and waved his men out through the storeroom.

"Hey!" yelled the clerk, "Who's gonna pay for the door?" The soldiers ignored him and made their way out into the alley behind the store.

"Goddamnit!" the clerk grumbled, holding his aching stomach and surveying the mess the shattered door had left on the floor of the shop. He got a broom and dust pan out of the back of the store and began to sweep up the broken bits of glass. "I'm gonna—" but he never finished his complaint. Between one word and the next, for the second time that day, he was rendered unconscious.

= = =

Greg heard footsteps enter the storeroom and kept still, breathing shallowly through his mouth. The soldiers had tromped through and out the rear door, obviously fooled by his ruse. As long as the clerk didn't decide to start rearranging the stock, he should be…

"You can come out now." said an unpleasantly familiar voice.

Greg didn't move or make a sound.

"C'mon, there's only one spot in the room with enough space to hide you. You want me to put a couple of rounds through that wide-screen TV box?"

Greg sighed. He shoved aside the box and stood up. "Agent Gwen, you're looking as lovely as ever." It was a lie. The lower half of her face was swollen and a large, ugly purple bruise was spreading across her jaw… and she was alone. "Where's your backup?"

"The only way I'm going to make up for losing you is to recapture you myself. Alone."

Greg looked at her hands. "Just what were you going to shoot me with?"

"I lied about putting a round through the box. I'm unarmed."

"Oh?" said Greg. "That didn't work out so well for you earlier."

"You sucker-punched me."

Greg began to walk slowly toward her. "Yeah, I guess so. Well, you're ready for me now so I won't give you any trouble this…"

Gwen was no fool. As soon as he was within range, the woman threw a vicious kick at his head. He blocked, leaning into it, and then drove in at her with a series of fast and hard reverse punches. She slapped the first couple of punches aside and then spun to one side, at the same time making a grab for his left arm. Greg twisted out of the hold and jumped back.

The two of them crouched there, eying each other warily. "Pilates, my ass!" Gwen growled.

Greg shrugged. "Yeah, well, exercise is boring. Karate isn't." He stood up straight, made a little bow without taking his eyes off her and said, "Watashi wa Funakoshi no ni-dan desu."

Gwen betrayed the briefest moment of surprise and then her face settled into a grim mask. "Good. I wouldn't want this to be too easy."

They began to circle each other. "Look, you've got me… why aren't you yelling for the cavalry?" Greg asked as he watched closely for an opening in her defense.

Gwen grinned. Even if her face hadn't been misshapen, it wouldn't have been a pleasant expression. "Payback. I just want a little alone-time with you before they haul you away. They want you alive… but nobody said anything about broken ribs." Her grin got even bigger. "But you can scream for help, if you want to."

= = =

General Greenwaldt checked his tie and collar in the mirror for the second time. He was still immaculate. He turned back to the blank blue screen on the wall and began unconsciously drumming his fingers on the desktop. He caught himself, sighed, and was about to check himself in the mirror for a third time when a chime sounded and the Seal of the President of the United States appeared on the screen. He sat ramrod straight in his chair.

An aid appeared on the screen and said, "Stand by for the President." The Seal reappeared for a few seconds until the screen cleared to show a different view: The situation room in the White House.

"General." The President wasn't wasting any time on formalities, or even pleasantries. "What is the current situation?"

"Mr. President, the suspect is still at large, but he has been spotted by civilians in the town. He hasn't been seen by our aircraft or units on the perimeter, and that means he is still in the immediate area, which we have completely surrounded. We are bringing in tracking dogs from the local sheriff's department and expect to recapture him soon."

"And the web?"

"The virus is still using processing time and is accessing data but so far has not attempted to influence any system we know of. But there is some bad news."

"Continue."

"The virus is still active on machines that have been removed from the net. It seems to be able to continue to operate on, and worse, communicate from any machine that has been infected. Infected machines that are shut down will reboot themselves unless they're completely unpowered."

"California?"

Greenwaldt grimaced. "We've completely lost contact with the ground units. Before they were downed, some camera drones returned footage that is… inconclusive, but definitely indicates that something strange is happening in the area. We suspect a more widespread transformation similar to what happened to the suspect's house. We should know more after the next satellite pass ten minutes from now."

The President said nothing for a moment and then touched a key. The camera zoomed out so that the rest of the situation room was revealed. "I'd like you to stay on the line and give us your thoughts on the rest of this briefing."

"Yes sir." The general looked at the map displayed on the video wall of the distant room and his breath caught in his throat. The map was displaying the readiness of all of America's strategic-level nuclear forces and the threat level was at DEFCON 1, representing the expectation of imminent attack.

= = =

Greg and Gwen stood just out of range of each other amid the wreckage of thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment. They were both breathing heavily.

"Are you… huff… sure… you're only a… ni-dan?" Gwen gasped. A thin trickle of blood ran from one of her nostrils and she held her left arm close to her body, partially supporting it on one hip.

Greg wasn't in much better shape. He dragged one foot a bit when he moved, his ribs ached, and his swollen right cheek was beginning to color. "Huh… yeah, I… forgot. I'm fourth-degree in Shotokan. It's… gasp… in Aikido that I'm… puff… only a ni-dan."

"What belt do you hold in… uhn… Lying Sack of Shit?"

Greg smiled. It made his cheek hurt even more. "Oh that… I'm just a natural, I guess."

There was a sudden crash from the front of the store as if a shelf of merchandise had been knocked over.

"Shit!" Gwen swore and then in a louder voice called, "In here guys! I've got him!" She didn't take her eyes off Greg and said, just barely above a whisper, "I'll have to kick your ass some other time."

"I really hope you—" Greg had begun when the storeroom door burst open.

The figure that rushed into the room wasn't a soldier. It wasn't even human.

"GREG!!!" Luna shouted and swept him up in a fierce hug. "Oh, Greg! I am so glad you're alive! I thought that they must have killed you and then the message from Pinkie Pie came and I left everything and got here as swiftly as I could but…"

Gwen had frozen at the sight of the bizarre creature. It was one thing to see her on a monitor screen but quite another to be in the same room with a human-sized flying unicorn pony. Something like a pony, anyway. Gwen recovered her senses quickly, grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall near the alley door, took two quick steps, and swung the extinguisher with all of her strength at the back of Luna’s head.

"...she said the soldiers were coming for you and…" Luna’s right ear twitched briefly in Gwen's direction and a sparkling glow flickered from her horn and caught the woman across her midsection. The extinguisher clanged and spun on the floor, and Agent Gwen slammed backwards into an already damaged shelf which promptly collapsed on top of her, spilling small items across the floor. Luna’s flood of words didn't even pause. "…I was so worried that they might capture you before I could find you…"

Greg's frantic tapping on Luna's back managed to do what Gwen's attack hadn't. Luna paused and looked down into Greg's face.

"Can't… breathe…" he managed to gasp.

Luna released her vice-like grip and then hugged him again as soon as he had taken a huge gulp of air… but this time with a lot less force. "I'm sorry! I'm just so glad you're okay… oh… but…" Now that Greg's face wasn't buried in her mane she saw the new bruise on his cheek. Luna scowled. "Did she do this to you? I will stomp her into—"

"No, no! It's okay Luna, really! Gwen was just doing her job." Sort of, Greg added silently. "Anyway, I sucker-punched her first." He couldn't resist a smug grin. "Knocked her out cold, actually. I'm fine and we've got to get out of here before the soldiers find us."

"I will not let them hurt you!" Luna growled, and tightened her hug slightly.

Greg realized, with some surprise, that Luna felt exactly like a biological creature. She was warm and her muscles moved beneath her skin in a completely normal way. Her coat was velvety soft, unlike the stiff hair of a real horse, but that was completely compatible with the fictional world she'd come from. Still, all the artistic effort that had gone into her creation was visual, not tactile. Greg wondered where had she gotten the additional qualities from. In fact, there was another element to her that he hadn't noticed before. "You know something, Luna? You smell really nice."

He could see the compliment had pleased her. She began to say something in return but was interrupted by muffled curses coming from under the collapsed shelving. Gwen shouldered her way out from under a pile of clock-radios as Luna reluctantly let Greg slip out from between her forelegs.

"You'll never get away," Gwen told them grimly. "The whole area is surrounded and there are more units on the way. Even if you steal a car and manage to get through the perimeter, you'll never outrun the helicopters."

"They promised to give Greg to me, the treacherous snakes!" Luna snarled at her. She turned to Greg and said earnestly, "Level me up! All the way! As the Dark Goddess, I could kill them all!"

"No!" Greg shouted. "No killing! I can't make you level up, anyway, no matter how useful it would be. That was a process on the original sim machine that…" Greg's words tapered off into thoughtful silence.

Gwen was thinking furiously also. The General hadn't told her anything about where Greg was being taken to. Maybe he had been on his way to California. "Greg," she began, "the marines might have been ordered to—"

"Shhhh!" Greg waved a silencing hand at her. "Thinking."

"But—"

This time it was Luna who silenced her. She turned an icy-blue glaze on the agent and her horn glowed threateningly. Gwen knew when to give up.

"Luna," Greg asked a few moments later, "how did you get here so quickly?"

"I used a sim patch on the computer for teleportation coordinates."

"Can you really teleport?" Greg asked in amazement. "Show me! jump to the other side of the room!"

Luna shook her head. "I need Equestrian coordinates for that. Here it's too… messy."

Greg cautiously peeked around the doorjamb into the public area of the store. The ornate mirror standing where the laptop had been explained a lot. He closed the door and began searching through the scattered boxes. He soon found a laptop, tore it out of its packaging, and plugged it into a wall socket. "I can access the game module remotely! If you can be digitized and transported so easily, it should be simple to rig a workable interface. Damn, I wish these batteries didn't come uncharged. I could carry this computer with us and use it to control your functions. Uh…" He glanced up at Luna. “With your permission, of course.”

“Of course.” Luna smiled at him.

Greg’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “This is all macro level stuff. I have no idea how your physical body was made or how you’re doing magic of all things, but I’m going on the assumption that the control routines are the same as in the sim. Yeah…” He paused to scrutinize readouts on the screen, and then nodded.

“Here’s your info block. I’m going to try to change your level. If it doesn’t work, we may need to have you enter and exit that mirror portal.”

“Then, these fools will regret—” Luna began.

“No! We’re not fighting them! I’ll bump you up to Nightmare Moon, and that will get you the speed bonus and invisibility spell. We’ll be out of here fast, and they won’t notice us go. If I can just get it to work…”

= = =

Author's Note

I just compared the first draft of this chapter to this one and realized why I need prereaders so badly. I am lucky to have such good ones as Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and Fana Farouche!

(No, really. My wife was looking over my shoulder as I typed out this note and asked me what I meant by "comnplaired.")

8 Adaptations

Chapter Eight

Adaptations

While Greg had his attention on the laptop, with Luna curiously examining several items in the wreckage of the storeroom, Gwen silently sidled over to the rear door. She turned the handle carefully and slowly, trying not to make any noise. She had pulled the door open about six inches when it suddenly stopped.

It stopped because Luna had placed one hoof on it. Gwen hadn't seen or heard her approaching.

"No." Luna said quietly, and pushed the door shut. There were a few items floating in the grip of her magic, and she tapped Gwen under the chin with a radio-controlled semi truck, forcing her to lock eyes with the alicorn. "Unless you wish to be knocked out again."

Gwen returned the horse-monster's icy glare for a moment, but was distracted by the slight hissing noise coming from under Luna's hoof, which still rested on the door. When the beast dropped its leg, revealing the steel beneath, the surface was boiling and writhing. There was no discernible heat coming from the spot, but it spread rapidly, expanding outward in a roughly oval shape that left a very different type of material in its wake.

Gwen watched in amazement as the door, its frame, and part of the wall fused and changed color and texture. The new surface was gritty and a light cream color. It looked a lot like sandstone. And it kept spreading. Even the toys floating in Luna's grasp began transforming into what seemed to be wooden carvings. Gwen returned her gaze to Luna's face and was sure she saw slight confusion in her expression as well.

"Okay, Luna!” Greg called out. “Are you ready to find out if…" His voice faltered to a stop as he looked up and saw that the back half of the storeroom had changed into a wall of sandstone blocks, carved with neo-gothic arabesques.

"What the..." He shook his head in disbelief. "Would you two stop staring at each other and tell me what's going on?"

= = =

Almost all of Palo Alto had been consumed. The roads and bridges out of the Southern San Francisco peninsula were few and the damage done by the fires caused by the air battle had restricted traffic routes even further. The streets and freeways were clogged by the millions of people trying to flee the area.

When the roadway and their cars began to dissolve and change, most people panicked, got out of their vehicles, and began to run... which was probably the best course of action. The wavefront of change was traveling no faster than a sedate walk.

There were a few, however, who stayed. Some because they couldn't leave, some because their curiosity overcame their fear, and some...

A young Stanford student had slept through it all. She only awoke when the bed in her small basement apartment changed into a moss-covered boulder and the sun hit her full in the face.

"Oh god," she groaned as she sat up. "Why did I let Kara talk me into going out bar-hopping last night?" Then she got a good look at her surroundings. "Crap! Oh crap! I thought I'd made it home! Did I fall asleep in the park?"

She looked around at the peaceful forest glade. It wasn't like any park she knew. She looked down at herself. She was wearing the sweats she used to sleep in. That meant she had to have made it home at some point and changed into them. So how did she get here? And where the hell was here?

She picked a direction at random and began walking. Just before she decided that she was nowhere near her home she ran into something familiar: railroad tracks. Along the tracks in the distance she could see buildings, but she didn't recognize them and she didn't remember any dense patches of woods along the CalTrain route. She was still lost. She began walking along the tracks toward the far distant buildings.

A little while later she crossed a short stone bridge over a slowly flowing creek. Through the woods in the direction the stream went, she could see the roofs of a cluster of strangely shaped, thatched-roofed houses... like a village from a fantasy film. It was certainly like nothing she knew of in the Bay Area.

"Is this some kind of joke?" she wondered aloud. "If one of Kara's douchebag friends roofied me and then dumped me out here, I'm going to..."

She stopped in amazement. Maybe she had been drugged. And maybe the drug hadn't worn off yet. That would explain why she had just seen a bright blue pony with a green mane and tail fly up from the village and head off into the distance. But if she wasn't under the influence of some weird chemical... "Just what the hell was that thing?" she said..

She didn't expect an answer but she got one. "That's a pegasus, silly," said a chipper voice from behind her.

She turned and froze. Standing behind her was a unicorn. Its head, not counting the horn, barely came up to her chest, and it was even more colorful than the flying pony. It was orange with a mane and tail striped in two different shades of blue, and had green eyes the size of her fists."Hi!" it said happily.

The girl's sharp intake of breath made her head pulse with pain. She winced, and her automatic impulse to scream died before she could exacerbate her hangover further.

The little unicorn frowned in concern. "Are you feeling okay?"

= = =

The Secretary of State's hands shook ever so slightly as he spoke. "As General Whitson said, we've got so many foreign spy satellites overflying California, it's a wonder some of them haven't collided. Russia, China, India... even France... they can all see exactly what's going on. The problem is that they don't believe it. A major chunk of Silicon Valley transforming into primeval forest and Medieval villages? They think it's a cover-up for something else. The Russian Foreign Minister is screaming about an accidental release of a nanotech weapon and threatening us if they see any evidence that pieces of it are crossing the Pacific."

"What about China?" the President asked him.

"That's the big problem," the Secretary replied. "The Chinese have stopped talking to us altogether. General Whitson?"

The Air Force general cleared his throat before he spoke and clicked the small remote he was holding. A strategic map with lots of glowing lines appeared on the screen. "Several Chinese military satellites have moved into new orbits and eight of their Jin-class subs in the Pacific have moved off-station and are approaching first-strike launch positions."

"Then they definitely are going to attack?"

"They are definitely preparing for it. Whether or not they're just being defensive or they're crazy enough to actually start a nuclear war..." he trailed off, passing the hot potato off to the Secretary of State.

The Secretary's hands were shaking more than a little. "I... I just don't know. I think it comes down to just how frightened the Central Committee is."

"I see," said the President. "Well, I can't answer that... but I can ask a question that might give us an indication."

The men in the room were silent, waiting as the President scanned all of their faces. "Gentlemen... how frightened are we?"

= = =

"Okay, let me get this straight," Greg said to Luna. "You made this happen somehow?" He gestured at the stone that now comprised more than half of the space they were in. The room was looking more like an art nouveau cathedral by the instant. Some of the torn boxes and broken equipment had become banners and torch sconces.

Luna stared at him with her usual, unreadable expression for a moment before answering. "I don't understand, Greg. This is just the world."

"It's a different world than it was a minute ago. How did you do that?"

Luna looked at the stone wall as if she hadn't seen it before. "I... I did that? Strange... I don't remember..." She broke off suddenly, her ears swiveling toward the front of the store. "Men," she said urgently. "Men and dogs... and they're getting close."

"Okay, time to try this thing out," he said, scooping up the laptop. "Gwen, move back and give us some room."

"What are you going to do? They want you alive, but if you attack them—"

"Don't worry, Luna just needs a little growing room," he chuckled. "If you think she's impressive now, just watch this!" He typed the digit “2” into the LVL field, and hit enter.

Luna flared into a brilliant whirl of light that expanded, coalescing into the form of Nightmare Moon.

"Holy shit!" Greg had known what to expect but actually being in the same small room with a huge armored horse who had starry nebulae for a mane and tail was fairly unnerving. Her slit-pupiled eyes glowing faintly in the dim light of the storeroom didn’t help.

Greg finally tore his eyes off of his transformed creation to check on Gwen's reaction. She was flattened against one wall, as far from Nightmare Moon as possible. Her eyes were huge and her breathing was so rapid that it seemed she was on the verge of panic.

"Don't worry Agent Gwen, we'll be gone in a minute... somebody else's problem."

"G—gone?" Gwen gasped. "The back door is solid stone now, the front is where the troops are going to be in a minute, and that thing wouldn't fit through the door, anyway! Where are you going to go?"

Greg frowned a bit when the woman referred to Nightmare Moon as "that thing". He stepped to Nightmare Moon's side and stroked the powerful curve of her neck with his free hand. "You are amazing," he told her.

Nightmare Moon lowered her great head until she was looking into Greg's eyes from only inches away. "You made me this way," she said softly.

Greg made a curt gesture with his head. Nightmare Moon understood and nodded her agreement. Greg took hold of the leading edge of her right wing and pulled himself up onto her back, settling in just behind her shoulders.

"There's a third option, agent," he said, looking down on Gwen. "Nightmare Moon... let's go up!"

A brilliant glow surrounded her horn for a moment and then fountained upward. The cold energy incinerated the ceiling in a burst of light that left no debris behind.

Greg enjoyed her stupefied amazement immensely. "Goodbye, Gwen. I hope we'll get the chance to spar again sometime in the—"

"Wait!" Gwen gasped, pushing herself away from the wall. "Take me with you!"

"Huh?" It was the last thing Greg expected. The woman was clearly terrified of Nightmare Moon, and she considered him a terrorist... or worse. What the hell was she thinking?

"Listen! You need a go-between. There have been so many screw-ups, things will only get worse if you can't contact the authorities somehow. If we can talk this all out and if I can—"

"Just how are you going to make contact if you go with me?" Greg asked suspiciously.

"I don't know! But I'll think of something. If you just disappear—"

"Okay, okay! I don't have time to debate this. Nightmare Moon, can you carry us both?"

Nightmare Moon sniffed in disdain. "As Luna I could carry you both!"

"That's my girl!" Greg grinned with affection and then turned and waved to Gwen. "Well, what are you waiting for? Hop on!"

= = =

"Command, this is Air One. We have an explosion at the corner of Main and 4th Avenue. The roof of... standby one." The pilot brought his helicopter around to get a better look at the creature that had just leaped out of the gaping hole. There were two people on its back giving him some sense of scale. The black thing was a caricature of a winged unicorn and one of the persons on its back was... "Target sighted! Repeat: Target sighted! He's on the roof with a large creature and another..."

As Greg had designed her, Nightmare Moon was fast. She could outrun a car even without bothering to fly. And when she did take to the air she was even faster. Not fast enough to outrun a military aircraft, but a simple spell took care of that problem. The helicopter pilot gaped as the figures faded away, leaving the rooftop apparently empty.

= = =

The President looked up as the Secretary of State hurried back into the situation room. "Please tell me you have some good news."

"Well, sir, I do... at least it's better news. The Chinese ambassador sent this message about ten minutes ago." He handed the short note to the President.

"'For the next twenty-four hours, all ballistic missile facilities in the People's Republic will be undergoing maintenance,'" the President read. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

The Secretary picked up his remote and brought up images on the room's large screen. "These are satellite reconnaissance pictures of ICBM silos in Manchuria. The big squares are the blast doors covering the silos. They're sandwiches of concrete and steel that weigh several tons each. In order to launch the missiles, those covers are slammed aside by explosive charges and small rocket motors." The Secretary changed the view. "You see all those large vehicles? They're parked on the skid paths of the covers. They'd probably jam the covers if they tried to open them, preventing them from launching their ICBMs."

"This is a message! It means they don't want an all-out war!" General Whitson said.

"Why the hell didn't they say so instead of this nonsense about 'maintenance'?" the President asked angrily.

"Well, sir..." the Secretary said, in a slightly embarrassed tone of voice, "the Chinese aren't exactly direct at the best of times..."

The general was already calling up the map of the Pacific. "This fits in with the way those subs are behaving. Only three have continued on toward launch positions. The others are hanging back... probably as backup if the first wave fails."

"Can we stop those three?" the President asked.

"We have hunter-killer subs in pursuit, and destroyers and AEGIS cruisers are moving to intercept locations."

"But can we stop them?" the President asked sharply. He wasn't used to repeating himself.

The General looked grim. "They are undoubtedly on a hair-trigger. As soon as they detect torpedoes, anti-sub missiles, or depth charges, they'll launch. The AEGIS cruisers might account for 90 to 95% of the missiles. Considering the number carried by Jin-class subs, that leaves three to five warheads on target. So... no. We can destroy them but not soon enough to stop them."

The room went quiet.

"So if we don't contain the problem, the Chinese will," the President said finally. "Is the nuclear option our only choice?"

The general clicked his remote. "You can see the north side of the gate structure here, sir." He clicked another button on the remote and used the built-in laser pointer to indicate areas on the photo. "We managed to hit it here and here with depleted uranium shells. As you can see, the damage was minimal and it repaired itself almost immediately. It certainly didn't stop or even slow the flow of emerging creatures. We also had a near miss, only ten yards off, with some high-explosive ordinance. You can't see any visible effect on the gate because there wasn't any. The gate alone requires something more than conventional weaponry. But the worst is what we're referring to as the transformative wavefront. It must be a mass of nano-devices, tearing down and re-assembling matter on a molecular level. There's no way we know of to stop such a weapon except to blanket the infected area with a nuclear fireball. The EMP from the blast may do some damage to the creatures as well, if they are composed of the same material. Three 10-megaton air-bursts should do it, if we launch within the hour."

The room went quiet again. It stayed silent for a long time.

The President stared at the screen and said nothing.

General Whitson cleared his throat. "If we allow the infection to spread beyond the narrow confines of the San Francisco peninsula, we may never be able to—"

The President silenced him with a raised hand.

A moment later there was a chime and a small inset picture appeared on the main screen, revealing an agitated General Greenwaldt. "Mr. President?"

"Yes." The President's tone of voice shocked the men in the room who knew him well.

"Sir, I'm sorry to report that we've lost the target. And..." Greenwaldt hesitated, swallowed hard, and then continued, "…and at his last known location, the landscape is changing... changing like it is in California."

An appalled murmuring swept through the situation room.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Pres—"

The President abruptly stood. "General Whitson, I hereby order you to use nuclear weaponry to sterilize the infections in California and South Dakota. If he survives, the boy who caused this is to be shot on sight... as are all of the creatures." He turned to the Secretary of State. "Paul, send a message to the Chinese... however you think they'll best react to it. Let them know what we're going to do. Inform the Russians and NATO as well."

"Sir—"

"Your facility is deep enough to survive an atomic blast?" The President asked General Greenwaldt.

"Yes sir, it would require a deep ground-penetrator to take us out."

"Good. Get all of your troops inside and as many of the local civilians as you can. You have..." he shot a look at General Whitson.

"Thirty-five minutes, sir. That's all the time we can give them."

"Understood," Greenwaldt said.

"Gentlemen," the President said, "I want it to be known that this is solely my decision. I alone will bear the responsibility for this action."

= = =

Nightmare Moon streaked through the sky, just high enough that they could see the countryside spread out below them. It was flat and mostly treeless with a few small lakes dotted here and there. The speed they traveled at was so great that Greg and Gwen couldn't speak or move but only hang on with all their strength.

On the horizon, Greg spotted a wooded hilly area. Despite the rushing air that felt as if it was trying to strip the skin from his face, he managed to direct Nightmare Moon towards it. As soon as they had landed safely among a dense stand of trees and turned visible again, Gwen jumped off of Nightmare Moon's back and retreated to what felt like a safe distance. Greg remained on the alicorn’s back while he got his breath.

"Wow!" He gasped happily as he slid down her side. "That was incredible!"

"What now?" Gwen asked.

"We can relax for a bit and then make plans," Greg told her. "As soon as I can get some time to think, I'll come up with some way to fix all this. It'll all work out okay... you'll see."

"I sure hope so," Gwen said doubtfully.

= = =

The President sat at his desk in the Oval Office and placed the letter he had just finished writing in a drawer. He thought about walking outside but decided that that might give a Secret Service agent or a Marine guard a chance to prevent him from carrying out his plan. "Oh well," he said softly to himself, "It's not like other presidents haven't left huge messes for their successors to clean up."

He picked up the pistol from the blotter, placed the mouth of the barrel firmly under his chin, and gently squeezed the trigger.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to my heroic and long-suffering prereaders, Jordanis and WrittenWord333.

Special thanks to Fana Farouche, not only for editing, but for engendering one of the most obscure anatomical jokes ever. If you spotted it, you're ridiculously well educated… or dangerous. Or both.

The semilunar ganglion is the nerve plexus that receives the shock of a strike under the chin and causes temporary unconsciousness.

:twilightsmile: Semi. Luna. See? It's funny!

:ajbemused: Hill. Larry. Us.

:rainbowhuh: What the heck are you guys talking about?

9 Unthinkable

Chapter Nine

Unthinkable

In Northern California, a hungover girl, a cheerful unicorn, and millions of other sapient beings were blissfully unaware of what was headed their way.

"So," the girl asked the unicorn who trotted ahead of her on the forest path that used to be the busy expressway, El Camino Real, "this village you're taking me to… it's full of unicorns like you?"

"Ponies, yes," the unicorn agreed, "but not all like me. There’s pegasi, earth ponies, and some people like you too."

"People? Where did they come from?"

"They were already there! The village used to be human houses before Luna changed them."

"Shit," the girl swore, "I still don't have any idea what's going on! So who's this Luna and what—"

She was interrupted by a loud double bang from above. As she shaded her eyes and looked up there came two more sharp bangs. The last thing she ever saw was the glint of sunlight on something very high up and falling very fast.

= = =

Gwen, Greg, and Nightmare Moon had found a little hollow just below the ridge of a hill that provided excellent concealment. An aircraft would have to be almost on top of them before they could be seen.

Nightmare Moon curled up and Greg leaned back against her flank, lacing his fingers behind his head. He felt justified in being a bit smug. It wasn't every day he escaped from a secret underground base and a military manhunt.

Gwen sat, cross-legged, across the little hollow from the pair, frowning. "You should give yourself up. They're going to catch you sooner or later and—"

"Just surrender and get thrown into some dungeon in Guantanamo or Cesspoolistan?" Greg laughed. "No thank you! Oh, I'll turn myself in, alright... but not until I've got some bargaining chips to make sure I don't get 'disappeared'."

"Like what?" Gwen asked. "What can you—" She was interrupted by a loud double bang.

"Sonic boom?" Greg wondered aloud. "What sort of aircraft—"

The entire world went white.

Greg instinctively threw his arms in front of his face, which hardly lessened the blinding light, and Nightmare Moon began screaming. She thrashed beneath him and he turned, still unable to see, even though the terrible light was beginning to fade away, and tried to determine what was hurting her. Gwen was yelling something but Greg ignored her.

His sight began to clear in time to see a horrific scene. Nightmare Moon's hooves had torn up the ground all around as she writhed in agony and her shrieks were growing weaker by the second as chunks of her body tore away and dissolved into clouds of golden sparks that turned to ash.

"No! No!" Greg yelled and instinctively tried to hold her together with his hands. The fragmenting pieces of Nightmare Moon’s body stung his hands and sent jolts up his arms as if he had grabbed at live electrical wires but he kept at it, not knowing what else to do. "Please, Nightmare Moon, don't die! Don't leave me!"

Her weight grew lighter in his arms and her body wavered and changed. Soon she was small enough that he could pull her upper body into his lap and was coalescing back into her Luna form. She slumped in his arms, only half conscious, moaning, "It hurts. The light... it hurts."

Just then a sharp jolt of the ground shook them and Greg finally heard what Gwen was yelling. "Get down! Get down and open your mouth as wide as you can! Yawn!"

Greg was dazed and confused but he heard the certainty in Gwen's voice and he obeyed her, crouching over Luna to shield her with his body, yawning hugely, and prying open her jaws with his hands, pulling them open as wide as he could. Luna struggled feebly beneath him but hadn't the strength to resist.

For moments nothing happened and then shockwave hit them like a tsunami, slamming them to the ground. The immensity of the sound was beyond description, and the blast of wind that followed filled the air with dirt, debris, and leaves. Trees fell to either side of them and small branches crashed into them, tearing at their skin. There was a moment of calm air as the wind died, but then it reversed and began to rush back in the opposite direction, though with less force than before.

Greg continued to hold the half-aware Luna, rocking her slightly and reassuring her. "You'll be okay. I'm here. I won't let anything more happen to you. You're safe with me."

Gwen coughed and spat out a mouthful of dirt and bits of leaf. She glanced at Greg and his partner, then crawled up to the ridge of the hill and looked out toward the northwest where Humboldt had been. Even from over forty miles away, the gigantic, glowing mushroom cloud was a terrifying sight.

She slid back down below the ridge, thinking furiously. They had been sheltered by the hill, so direct radiation exposure would be minimal. The temperature had gone up about 15 degrees... she was beginning to sweat... so that meant the bomb was an air-burst intended to...

"So they wanted me alive, huh?" Greg yelled at her from below, interrupting her thoughts. The nuclear cloud had risen high enough by then that he could see it from where he was. "Maybe a taser would have been a better choice of weapon?" There was a definite note of hysteria in his voice.

"Greg, I swear to you, our orders were to take you alive at all costs. When I—"

Luna moaned again and Greg stopped listening to the woman. "I'm here... it's okay."

"I... I... don't want to go..." Luna muttered, "...I need to... do my duty. I have to protect the world. I have to... serve you and keep Equestria safe."

Gwen slid down the hillside and moved over to the pair. "What's she talking about?" Half of the reason for her question was genuine curiosity but half was to distract Greg from what she was about to do.

"You just rest, now," Greg said to Luna as he stroked her cheek. He didn't look away from her as he answered Gwen's question. "I designed Luna to keep the simulation stable... to deal with ponies and creatures who became too powerful and to make adjustments to the environment to remove instabilities."

Gwen glanced up, trying to estimate how long they'd have before fallout particles began to float down from the stratosphere. It all depended on wind patterns she had no knowledge of. "How did she do that?" she asked as she surreptitiously used one hand to tear at the lining of her jacket.

"The high level ones that threw things out of balance, she'd move them to isolated locations or convince them to become non-fighting mentors... teachers of the younger ponies. If she couldn't do that, she'd kill them."

Gwen worked a tiny hole in the lining and wormed a finger inside, groping for a small plastic item that was hidden there. "But she's a low-level herself, isn't she?"

"Not really, and I gave her the ability to increase her own strength and abilities as necessary. Hell, she could even alter the geography of the sim if she felt it was needed. Sometimes a weird bit of terrain would force ponies to..."

Gwen took a firm grip on the triangle of plastic, pulled it free of its hiding place, and jabbed it toward Greg's unprotected side. Greg was so focused on Luna that he didn't notice the woman's sudden movement, only Luna's reaction to it. Luna’s horn flared to life and Gwen's forearm froze in mid swing. Greg turned and saw the little piece of plastic, the sharp needle held motionless only an inch from his side. Gwen grunted with effort as her face went pale from the pain of Luna's vice-like magical grip, but the needle moved no further. When Luna squeezed a little harder, Gwen gasped, and the thing fell from her hand.

Luna shifted in his lap, still holding the agent as she began to sit up. Gwen pulled at her arm with her other hand, trying to free herself without any noticeable result. When Luna stood, dragging the woman to her feet, Gwen shifted her weight and slammed a vicious kick into Luna’s stomach. It was like kicking a tractor tire and had about as much effect.

"Shall I kill her for you, Greg?" Luna asked calmly and quietly, still a bit unsteady on her hooves.

"No, Luna," Greg said as he picked up the little thing and looked at it. It had a short needle that was attached to a plastic bulb full of a clear brown liquid. He looked up from the nasty little weapon to Gwen's face. "And don't break her arm, please."

Greg turned the little injector over in his hand and asked, "So what's in this? Was it supposed to finish the job the nuke failed to do?"

"It's just a tranquilizer," Gwen said through gritted teeth. Luna's grip on her was still painful and her arm was going numb. "We'll be getting fallout soon. I needed to get you out of here quick, and I didn't think you'd willingly leave this... thing." Gwen indicated Luna with a jerk of her head.

Greg went very still. "Don't ever call her a 'thing' again," he said in a monotone that was somehow more threatening than any shout or promise of violence. Gwen got the message.

"I... I'm sorry," she said.

Greg tossed the injector aside. “It must have been the EMP that hurt you, Luna. Are you strong enough to travel?"

"Yes, Greg. But I don't think I'll be able to carry you far."

"That's okay, you won't have to carry anyone."

"We need to get out of here fast," Gwen interrupted. "We may not get fallout for a while... or if we're really lucky it might all blow away from us, but we can't take that chance. We need to move!"

Greg nodded, "Let's get going then. You can let her go now, Luna. Gwen, hand me your jacket... slowly."

Gwen dropped the jacket and backed away from it. “How the hell did she do that?” she asked, rubbing her arm to restore circulation. “It can’t really be magic.”

Greg shrugged as he picked up the jacket. “’Sufficiently advanced technology’ and all that.” When Gwen just stared at him, he sighed. “I don’t know. Nanofilaments, maybe? I’d need some specialized equipment to find out for sure. For now, ‘magic’ is a good enough term.”

= = =

The Vice President stared at the assembly in the Situation Room. Everything he had just heard seemed like the fantasies of a madman. But there was no denying it. He could see for himself the massive destruction in the Bay Area and South Dakota.

"Sir?" asked the White House Chief of Staff, "we need you to be sworn in as soon as possible. The Press Secretary is preparing a short announcement. People are beginning to panic and we need you to reassure them."

"What about..." he gestured to the scenes of unimaginable carnage that flickered across the large information screen.

"The National Guard, FEMA, and the Red Cross are already mobilized. We're deploying field hospitals, supplies, and everything necessary to minimize the loss of life."

"Minimize? Minimize!? You've got to be fucking kidding me! How many people are dead already?"

"Sir, please—"

"HOW MANY!?"

General Whitson stepped forward. "We don't know for sure. But we estimate 100,000 in South Dakota and less than 2 million in California. If we can control the exposure to..."

But the Vice President was backing away from the group, shaking his head.

"Please, Mr. President—" the Secretary began.

"Oh no... no, don't you dare call me that! If you think I'm taking the oath after this... to hell with you all! Go get the Speaker of the House and see if he wants to inherit this monumental clusterfuck! I'm resigning as of now!" He spun and fled from the room.

For the moment, the Ship of State had no captain to steer her.

= = =

Greg and Gwen had gone a long distance south along the arrow-straight farm roads on their stolen bicycles. Luna was between them, boosting their speed by pushing on their backs with her wings as she trotted. They passed several farms and stalled vehicles but only saw a few people at a distance, vague silhouettes in the gathering gloom.

One man called out to them as they passed, asking if they knew what was happening. They ignored him and kept going. There was a waning moon and they were able to see well enough to travel after nightfall, but Luna began to stumble from fatigue, so they decided to stop and rest.

The remnants of the mushroom cloud were still visible on the northern horizon at sunset, and it seemed as if the ash and smoke were blowing eastward, away from them. At least no particles were falling where they were and the sky above them was clear. They pulled the bicycles off the road and into a cornfield.

"We've got to find some water soon," Greg groaned. "I'm dying of thirst."

"The river should be to the east of us a few miles. It might be safe to take a detour," Gwen said. "By the way... if you could let me have my jacket..."

"I'm dying of thirst, not stupidity," Greg snapped.

"Alright, but we'd have a better chance of surviving if we knew what's going on, right? There's a little radio in there..."

"Wouldn't the EMP have burnt it out?"

Gwen shook her head. "It's shielded."

Greg spread the jacket out on the ground and ripped away the lining. There were several small devices held in elastic loops inside. None of them looked like a radio.

"It's the stubby cylinder," Gwen told him. "Twist the knurled end off and there are earbuds inside. The other end extends as an antenna and turns it on. The ring around the middle tunes it."

"What's the rest of this stuff?"

Gwen pointed from where she sat. "That's the antidote for the tranq you threw away, that's a lockpick set, that's... well, that one is poison... that's a detonator and enough C4 to blow a steel security door off its hinges, that's a plastic knife, that's a flashlight, and that last one is a GPS homing device. Don't worry, it's not on and it's not shielded, either, so the EMP probably did ruin it."

Greg would have given a low whistle if his lips hadn't been so dry. "You're a well-equipped woman, Agent Gwen."

"I wish my kit included a Geiger-counter," she said sourly.

Greg checked on Luna before opening up the little radio. She had curled up and gone to sleep as soon as they had stopped moving. She was breathing softly and regularly.

“Why the hell does she need to sleep? Isn’t she all… electronic?” Gwen asked.

Greg frowned. “I programmed her to behave like a biological organism. She needs to breathe and eat as well. How it all translates to this physical body of hers, I don’t know.” He stroked Luna’s back gently and she murmured something in her sleep. "She's not purely biological or she wouldn't have been harmed by the EMP."

"You really care for her, don't you?" asked Gwen as Greg fitted the earbuds.

"Why do you find that so odd?"

"She's so damned... alien. But you two act like old friends."

Greg shrugged. "I've spent hundreds, probably thousands of hours with her. She's smarter and more interesting than the people I see every day. She actually has a great sense of humor… a sign of superior intelligence, even if it's a bit sly and dark."

"Maybe more than friends," Gwen muttered.

Greg stopped fiddling with the radio and looked sharply at Gwen. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well..." Gwen hesitated.

"Look, you tried to beat me up, knock me out, and the guys you work for just blew up a big chunk of South Dakota trying to kill me. Don't you think it's a bit late to worry about insulting my feelings?"

Gwen shrugged, "Okay, then. You touch each other the way lovers do. And even though she looks like an animal, you gave her quite an ass… not much like a horse at all.”

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! What do you mean, I 'gave' her that ass?”

"Well, you designed her, didn't you?"

"No! She's just like she was in the TV show!"

"Oh... well... my bad, then. I just assumed that a kid's show wouldn't show bare butts like—"

Greg laughed. "All the ponies had cute butts, and you wouldn't believe the innuendos they put in some cartoons that are supposedly for young kids!"

He seemed to want to dodge the issue of his relationship with the monster, so Gwen let him change the subject. "Really? Like what?"

"Well, there's one of the later episodes of Digimon Tamers where Sakuyamon 'loans her power' to another character. What it visually consists of is her taking off her clothes... and that makes the guy's glowing red sword grow longer."

"You're lying! They wouldn't dare!"

"No kidding. If I had my iPad, I'd show you. I mean, that one is anime, but there’s still some very suggestive stuff in American animation, too. In My Little Pony, It's pretty obvious that Mr. Cake’s wife cheated on him… probably with two different ponies. Then there's the one where Shining Armor practically says his wife is great in bed."

Gwen couldn't resist one last jab. "Hm... Luna doesn't have much in the way of clothes to shed. Does that mean your sword won't—"

"Hey!"

"Are you blushing? It's too dark to tell."

Greg ignored her and extended the radio's antenna. He twisted the middle ring until he heard the squawking tones of the Emergency Broadcast System's attention signal. "Shh, I'm getting something."

Gwen watched his face fall. Even in the dim moonlight his stunned expression was clear. "Oh my God. No... they... no..."

"Greg? What is it?"

Greg pulled the earbuds out, threw the little radio at her, turned away, and knelt beside Luna.

Gwen snatched the radio out of the air and hurriedly put the earbuds into her ears. She listened in disbelief to the dry recitation of the details of the greatest disaster to befall the modern world for as long as she could stand it, and then telescoped the antenna back into the case and stowed away the earbuds.

She looked at Greg where he knelt, motionless beside his sleeping friend. His hand rested lightly on Luna’s shoulder and she could see the glint of moonlight on his tears as they fell.

"God, Greg, I—"

"All my friends," he said, his voice thick with emotion, "my job, my home, all those people... why would they do it?"

"I don't know... I... I just don't know." Gwen said.

"Well, I don't care," Greg said as he rose to his feet. "I don't give a damn why they did it." He looked up and Gwen started in shock at the hatred she saw in his face. "They're going to pay for it. I'm going to make them pay!"

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my excellent prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and Fana Farouche.

BTW, Two things to keep in mind:
1) This is a farce. I am not trying for any deep meaning or message here.
2) This was plotted and mostly written before the current American election cycle also became a farce, and isn't a reaction to current events in any way, so if you find political commentary bubbling up the back of your throat, just swallow it and we'll all be a lot happier. Try Facebook if you must vent.

10 Travelling in New Directions

Chapter Ten

Travelling in New Directions

The trio continued south and west. They passed beyond the limit of the bomb's EMP effect, and the roads became crowded with vehicles... civilian ones moving away from the area, military ones moving into it.

They abandoned the bicycles and began moving cross-country to avoid being seen. Gwen could have betrayed them several times by calling out to nearby troops or falling behind, then running for safety. But she didn't. Greg was too self-absorbed by his own reaction to the tragedy to give it much thought. Luna, who had recovered her full strength, would have been more than capable of handling a few weekend warriors and their pitiful weaponry. Gwen knew it, too, but that was only one of the reasons she quietly went along.

Gwen's lockpick set and her knowledge of alarm systems came in very handy the next night, enabling them to procure equipment and camp-food from a sporting goods store. Afterwards, they found a protected area next to a stream, spread out their sleeping bags, and set up the little camp stove to cook their dinner. Luna had disappeared into the night, patrolling the area and keeping watch over them.

With a full belly and a warm sleeping bag around him, Greg relaxed a bit. Gwen looked over at him and simply said, "My grandparents lived in Atherton."

Atherton had been the next little town North of Palo Alto on the San Francisco Peninsula. Had been. It didn't exist any longer.

"I'm sorry..." Greg began and then broke down in tears.

Gwen didn't say anything. She let him get it out, let him do as much as possible to release his emotions while keeping what he could of his dignity.

He wiped his face on his sleeve and was silent for a while.

Gwen said nothing.

"It's not my fault," he said, eventually. "It was just a simple simulation. Hell, even when it got out of control, it still wasn't doing much harm. If I hadn't been kidnapped maybe I could have done something... got it under control or stopped it."

"Like what?" Gwen knew better than to offer an opinion. People talked best when they weren't sidetracked.

"Maybe I could have just asked Luna to stop it. She's the one who organized the invasion, after all. Hell, she only did it in the first place because she felt she had to rescue me!"

"She's capable of that sort of complexity?"

"Of course she is! The neural growth structure that's the basis of her mind is my masterpiece, and that's just the starting place. Luna's gone way beyond her original parameters. She says she didn't initiate the web attack or the growth of Equestria, but it had to have been her. That means she did it subconsciously. Her lower-level processes are making high-level decisions!"

"That's good?"

"Oh, come on, if you knew anything about AI you'd know how incredible that is! It's given her impulsive behavior that may not be optimal, but it's certainly made her more complex and… well, organic isn't the right word, but it's close. See, modeling conscious behavior only gets you a partial personality. Subconscious desires and impulses don't have to be acted on to influence behavior; even the act of suppressing them will provide subtle differences that..." Greg went on about his work for quite a while, which was exactly what Gwen wanted. She didn't care about the details of programming, of course... what she wanted was for Greg to open up to her. She gave him a sympathetic ear and let him talk.

= = =

During the following days, Gwen got Greg to reveal a great deal about himself. They fell into a tenuous friendship that soon began to feel natural and easy-going to Greg. Gwen was very good at her job. One subject Greg didn't touch on again was his vow of revenge, but she knew he hadn't forgotten it.

There were roadblocks and military patrols everywhere, but between Gwen’s training and Luna's supernaturally keen senses, they had no trouble avoiding them.

They snuck into towns at night to replenish their food and water. Even though she didn't have access to her invisibility spell, Luna could effectively disappear at night, able to pass within feet of soldiers on alert without being seen. She could have acquired all the supplies they needed by herself, but Greg didn't want to be separated from her for long. So, despite having his face on every news channel as the world's most wanted man, he insisted on coming along on the supply raids.

Aside from their rapidly healing bruises, both Gwen and Greg were in excellent shape and had no trouble traveling quite a distance each day. Luna offered to carry them both in order to speed up their progress but Gwen flatly refused.

"It's okay, Luna," Greg said. "We're not in a real hurry and all this walking gives me time to plan."

Gwen didn't like the sound of that. She still had no idea where they were headed or what Greg intended to do when they got there.

= = =

They had been traveling just over a week when Gwen decided it was the right time to make a pass at Greg.

They'd raided a small market and retreated to the little woodlot where they'd made camp. Greg and Gwen cooked their dinner while Luna flew to the top of a grain silo about half a mile away to keep watch. Luna never ate with them. She'd let Greg give her a tidbit or sweet once in a while but mainly fed herself while on patrol. Greg had asked her what she usually found to eat and after getting the reply, "Mostly vegetable protein, occasionally animal if I need particular chemicals.” he decided not to look into the matter too closely.

That night, after they had eaten well, Gwen revealed a surprise. She reached into her pack and pulled out a six-pack of beer. "Ta-da! I snagged it when you weren't looking. I hope you like the brand... I just grabbed it at random." It was a lie, of course. Gwen had paid close attention to every last personal detail that Greg had divulged during their trip. He had only mentioned his favorite beer once in passing, but Gwen had made a special note of it.

"Wow! You hit the jackpot, Agent Gwen! This is great... but... aw, hell, one can't hurt, can it?"

Gwen opened one for herself and passed another to Greg. "Only luxury we're gonna get for a while. Cheers!"

Greg twisted the top off the beer and, rather solemnly, returned the toast, "Confusion to the enemy."

They finished the first beers and Gwen opened a second and passed one to Greg.

"I don't know if I should..."

"Oh come on! We're in the middle of nowhere and the Holy Terror is out there watching over us... we can get a little buzzed. Or are you worried about getting a beer-belly?" She scooted over to him and poked him in the stomach with a forefinger.

Greg gave a half-chuckle and said, "No, the hobo lifestyle seems to agree with me. I think I've lost whatever body fat I once had."

"Oh yeah?" Gwen took a long pull from her beer and then set it down and reached out and grabbed Greg's shirt and pulled it up. She placed her other hand on Greg's bare abs and ran it up under the edge of his shirt to just below his pecs. "Yup... still rock-hard... you've got no worries. Very nice, in fact."

Before Greg could recover from his surprise, Gwen took her hand off him.

"You're not the only one with abs of steel, you know." Gwen said, giving him time to swallow so there was no chance he'd do a spit-take. She pulled her own shirt up, revealing her own stomach and tensed her muscles. "How about that, huh? How many girls do you know with muscle tone like that?"

"Uh… yeah… very nice." Greg was a bit flustered but his eyes were right where Gwen wanted them.

She didn't give him time to turn to another subject. She reached over and took his free hand and placed it on her taut belly. "Yeah, I'm not as ripped as you are, but I've got pretty damned good definition... feel that?"

"Yeah..." Greg breathed.

Gwen leaned closer, pressing one of her breasts against his upper arm and pushed his hand up higher on her body. "That's all muscle... obliques, not ribs... and... and..."

She could feel his pulse racing. "And?" he asked, not offering any resistance to her guiding hand as she pushed his up over a wonderfully firm breast.

"And... your hand on me feels good... really good." Gwen said in a low, soft voice. "It's been a long time since... OOF!"

Gwen's seductive tone ended in a gasp as all of the air was knocked out of her lungs. She found herself flat on the ground, pinned to the earth by one of Luna's hooves. The alicorn’s sapphire eyes blazed with anger and her teeth were bared in a savage snarl. Luna lowered her head and placed the sharp tip of her horn between Gwen’s breasts. One thrust of Luna's head and she’d be impaled like a butterfly on a pin.

"Luna, stop!" Greg yelled, "Let her go!"

Luna glanced at him, still snarling and then returned her attention back to Gwen. She moved her head until it the tip of her horn touched Gwen's face, drawing a thin line of blood on one cheek. Gwen could feel Luna's hot breath on her skin as the alicorn hissed ever so quietly between her teeth, "He's mine!"

"Luna!"

Luna released the woman and stepped back. Gwen sat up, gasping for air.

"Shit, Gwen, are you alright?" Greg asked as he got to his feet.

"Yeah, yeah... *cough* ...just fine." Gwen sneered, "But I think your AI could use a little adjustment to its programming." It was a calculated risk. Gwen didn't want to die at the hands of an enraged pony of all things, but she also wanted to take any chance she could to drive a wedge between Greg and Luna. A calculated insult that reminded him his "partner" was just an artificial being was too good to pass up.

Luna glared at her but otherwise didn't move.

"Luna," Greg said turning to his partner, "why did you do that? I mean, it's not like... I mean, we didn't..."

"I see." Luna's tail lashed in annoyance. "Do as you please, Greg. I'm sorry I interfered."

"No, wait..." Greg began, but Luna suddenly turned and galloped out of the firelight.

Gwen stood and moved over to Greg, pressing herself against his side. "Greg, she really scares me. She might have killed me. I think... I think she may be unstable."

He didn't say anything, but the look Greg gave her told her that he didn't give a damn what she thought. He shoved her roughly away, grabbed his coat, and stalked out into the darkness.

= = =

"Luna!" Greg called. "Luna, please answer me!" He knew he'd never find her if she wanted to stay hidden but he also guessed she would be within range of his voice. "Luna, please! I'm really sorry about what happened back there. She caught me off-guard."

He paused to listen. An owl hooted in the distance.

"Damnit, Luna! I don't..." Greg broke off as a thought occurred to him. He stood silently for a moment and then quietly said, “Luna, unless you talk to me, I'm going back to camp.” He paused. "Where Gwen is."

Luna seemed to materialize out of the darkness. "What do you want, Greg?" Her voice was just as icy as her eyes.

"Isn't it obvious, you dumb hay-burner?" Greg nearly shouted, "I want you!"

"Alright. I'm here. If you want to talk, I'm listening. Or maybe you want to re-program me—"

"Shut up!" Greg did shout then. "I won't ever let anyone talk like that about you again, and I sure as hell don't want to hear it from you! You're not a program or a thing! You're... you're... "

"I'm wha—" Luna couldn't finish her question. Greg grabbed her head between his hands and planted a forceful kiss on her mouth.

For an instant, he thought he'd made a mistake. Luna stiffened and her lips were pressed tightly together. But only for an instant. Then she slowly relaxed, and her lips softened and parted, returning Greg's kiss as her wings unfurled to circle him.

It was weird.

She wasn't human, but she wasn't an animal. She was something in between and something greater than both... something new and different. She smelled just as good as Greg remembered and she tasted even better. Her mouth felt odd against his... different lips, but velvety soft... a big tongue that glided across his like... like...

Weird, but good. No, great.

After quite some time, they parted. But not very far. Luna sighed and rested her head on Greg's shoulder. "When I saw you touching her, I... I felt... so awful. Worse than any wound I've ever had. Worse than when the bomb burned me."

Greg stroked her neck for a while before answering, enjoying the feel of the long sweep of muscles beneath her silky fur. "She set me up, you know. I never would have—"

Luna raised her wing and placed the tip of a long feather on Greg's lips, silencing him. "I know... but it still hurt." She lowered her head and gazed into his eyes, her pupils gone huge and dark. "Please make the hurt go away."

He did his best, and she seemed more than satisfied.

= = =

Gwen sprawled beside the dying embers of the campfire and reached for another beer. There weren't any more. "Shit," she said under her breath.

She squinted at the stars and tried to make them come into focus. It was very late and Greg had still not returned.

She crawled into her sleeping bag without undressing and fumbled briefly with the stuck zipper before giving up. She rolled onto her side and just as sleep overtook her, she muttered to herself,

"Goddamned horse-fucker. I guess I'm going to have to kill him after all."

= = =

Author's Note

Yeah... so that happened. :twilightoops:

Thanks again to my long-suffering prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and Fana Farouche (who knows the difference between snuck, sneaked, and snook).

11 Plan B

Chapter Eleven

Plan B

Gwen awoke with a dry, foul-tasting mouth and a small but vicious headache lurking behind her eyes. She propped herself up on an elbow and looked across the ashes of the campfire to where Greg and Luna lay tangled together on his sleeping bag. Greg was smiling, even in his sleep.

Yeah, Gwen told herself, no doubt about it. So much for Plan A. She began to make a mental assessment of the options left to her. The picture wasn't pretty. If she had been able to seduce Greg and eventually bring him and maybe even his monster in alive, she would have been a world-class hero... even though nobody outside of her agency would have known about it.. Plan B would be a lot more messy and a lot less heroic. And a lot more dangerous.

Neither of the pair had moved, but as Gwen looked closer, she saw that the creature was awake and watching her. One eye was open just a tiny bit... a narrow blue slit with a dark pupil that was locked onto her. No point in subtleties, now, Gwen thought and flipped the monster the bird. It must have understood the gesture because it lifted its lip enough to reveal the white gleam of teeth.

Good, thought Gwen, hate, I can work with.

= = =

The next couple of days were the most severe trial of her patience that Gwen had ever undergone. Greg and Luna were utterly revolting. They both grinned like idiots all the time, touching each other whenever possible, whispering to each other, and generally behaving like a couple of brainless teenagers. At least they went well out of earshot when they left the campsite each night.

And that gave Gwen time to plan. They were getting careless, forgetting that she wasn't really on their side and giving her several opportunities to prepare herself. The trouble wasn't in "neutralizing" Greg. Despite his formidable martial arts skills, he was just as susceptible to a sucker-punch as she was. Gwen knew a couple of single Krav Maga unarmed strikes which would be eventually fatal and had equipped herself with a couple of makeshift weapons, any of which could do the job very handily... and very quickly.

The problem was the damned magic pony. Gwen had no doubts that, unhindered, she could easily kill Greg, but she knew she had no defense against the monster’s inexplicable telekinesis, and wouldn't survive very long after harming Greg. And who knew what sort of rampage the thing would go on if its friend (and lover, Gwen reminded herself with a little wince of disgust) weren't around to control it?

But she had the beginnings of a plan... all she needed was a bit of time and luck.

= = =

Gwen got a chance to have an extended conversation with Greg only a couple of days later. They were approaching a large city and Luna needed more time than usual to scout out safe routes for them to follow. She'd been asking him about Equestria in general and the ponies’ methods of fighting in particular, hoping to discover particular weaknesses, but was constantly interrupted by Luna appearing to give Greg directions... and get a quick cuddle or smooch, of course. Gwen grimaced.

But that day, there were very few interruptions. Even so, Gwen found herself straying from her intended line of subtle interrogation.

"Do you ever... listen, I don't want to piss you off but..." Gwen knew she was losing focus but, for once, she was being honest. "...there's something that's been bugging me..."

Greg glanced over at her and shrugged, "If I don't like what you ask, I'll tell you to mind your own business, fair enough?"

Gwen nodded. "Okay then... do you ever wonder if Luna loves you just because she's programmed to?"

Greg actually laughed. "She never had any such directive! She was originally designed to have to obey me when I said certain key phrases, that's all. And she broke that directive petty damned easily."

"Okay... but you made her. You designed the way she thinks... or the way she's supposed to think, at least. Doesn't being... uh... romantic with her feel a little creepy to you?"

Greg frowned at that and was silent for a while. "No," he said, finally. "It's feels wonderful. And as for the artist's creation thing... it worked out just fine for Pygmalion, didn't it?"

"Pig-who?"

Greg chuckled. "Too busy learning to kill people to study the classics? There's a story about a sculptor, Pygmalion, who made a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it and prayed to the gods to make it into a real woman. Oddly enough for a Greek myth, it worked out fine. They had a bunch of kids if I remember right."

"So," Gwen scowled, "you're planning on having kids with that... with Luna? What the hell would they look like?"

"Uh..." Greg's eyes went wide.

Oh-ho! Gwen thought. Hasn't thought about that, has he? I'll bet he hasn't been taking any precautions, either. Maybe I can use this to knock him off-balance.

But Greg relaxed almost instantly. "Naw... couldn't happen. I don't think she actually has anything resembling DNA, let alone human DNA. There won't be any little Gregs with horse tails and horns running around, I'm afraid."

The image that comment put in Gwen's head nearly made her gag. She dropped the subject and tried to get back on course. "Uh... riiight. So about these diamond dogs and griffons you were telling me about..."

= = =

Gwen knew something was up when they didn't make camp as soon as the sun began to go down.

They made their way into the city. The curfew actually made it easier to remain unobserved; there was nobody on the streets to see them. Luna covered the rooftops and guided them away from the police and National Guard patrols.

"Where the hell are we going?" Gwen hissed at Greg.

"Luna?"

"Not far now," Luna said, appearing suddenly just behind Gwen.

Gwen jumped in surprise but managed not to cry out. "Damnit, would you stop doing that?"

Luna grinned and ignored her. "Two blocks that way. The nearest patrol is a quarter mile in the other direction. I’ve already disabled the surveillance cameras."

Greg nodded and Luna disappeared again. A few moments later they arrived behind a large strip mall and passed several loading docks until Greg stopped and made a sweeping gesture toward a door with one hand while holding out the little lock pick set to her with the other. "Okay, Gwen, do your stuff!"

She stared at the sign next to the door: It was an electronics store. "Oh, no! No fucking way! I don't mind helping you get food and clothes but I'm sure as hell not going to put weapons in your hands!"

"Okay," Greg said, shrugging and opening the little case. "I've been watching you operate the last few times and it looks pretty easy. I'll do it myself."

Twenty minutes later he still hadn't gotten the lock open. "Damnit!" he cursed and stuffed the little metal tools back into their case and snapped it shut.

"Good," Gwen sighed. "Now, can we get out of here?"

"If you think I'm letting a stubborn lock stop me, you really don't know me very well." Greg turned to his partner. "Luna, rip that door off its hinges and when the troops show up to answer the alarm... distract them. Don't kill any more of them than you absolutely have to."

"Wait, wait!" Gwen said urgently. "You wouldn't really—"

"Try me."

"Shit." Gwen looked into Greg's face and believed him. "Okay... okay, give me the picks. But, please... if I do this for you, will you promise me something?"

"What is it?"

"Whatever gadgets you get out of there... whatever you do with them... promise me they won't be used to harm anyone."

Greg was silent for a moment. Then he turned away from her and looked down at the ground.

"Greg?"

"I never meant to hurt anyone, Gwen," he said in a low voice. "The guys who died fighting the ponies... okay, maybe that is my fault. But at least they were armed and had a chance. It was a stand-up fight. Maybe not an even fight, but they were all volunteers and they shot first."

"And the millions of people who—"

Greg spun on his heel, glaring at her angrily, "Oh no! No way in hell you are going to blame that on me! The fucking government did that... and it was completely unnecessary! I had nothing to do with that obscenity!"

"Alright, alright," Gwen said, throwing her hands in the air in surrender, "just tell me you aren't intending to do more harm."

"What I'm intending is change. Sometimes change is painful. I'll promise you that I won't intentionally harm any innocents... now or ever. Now, are you going to open that door or are we going to do this the hard way?"

Gwen made a point of opening the lock and disarming the alarm in under fifteen seconds.

= = =

Greg actually began humming happily as he loaded up the shopping cart.

"All of that crap won't fit in our backpacks," Gwen told him.

"Yeah, you're right. Can you see if you can find a duffel bag or something?"

Gwen happily complied. It gave her a chance to put Plan B into action. She knew a lot more about electronics than she had let on to Greg, and a few minutes alone would let her rig something very useful. But her main weapon that night was going to be something a lot simpler: A pen and a pad of paper.

= = =

They traveled through the night, getting as far from the city as possible before sunrise. They found a place to camp beside a fairly large river and slept for several hours while Luna kept watch over them.

The rest of the day they stayed there by the river while Luna scouted. She returned several times, consulted quietly with Greg and then took off again.

Gwen ached to know what they were planning, but knew better than to ask the question outright. Instead, she kept up an innocent-seeming conversation with Greg, almost instinctively trying to glean more information even though she had already done what she could to communicate everything she knew to her superiors.

That evening, Luna led them to a disused grain storage depot near a truck stop on Highway 80 and Greg began assembling his equipment.

Gwen took stock of her surroundings and prepared to take action. She moved a piece of steel pipe, as long as her forearm, out of the place where she set her backpack down, casually positioning it where she could grab and swing it all in one motion. She palmed an icepick out of the small side pocket on her pack and tucked it up one sleeve, then did the same with a small, innocent-looking cardboard tube with a plastic handle on one end. Lastly, she pushed the power button on the modified cell phone she had hidden inside a jumbo bag of M&Ms candy.

Greg crouched over the laptop and its attached devices, typing rapidly. Gwen tried to move in close to him as if to get a better look at what was on the small computer's screen and Luna stopped her... just as she had expected.

Gwen sneered at the alicorn. "Fine, keep your little secrets!" She turned away, crossing the dusty room to stand at the open window and look out at the countryside. She leaned against the window frame and looked up into the night sky... waiting for a signal.

After a half hour or so, she saw it; three aircraft flying in formation, their wing lights blinking in a particular pattern. She glanced at Greg. He was no longer furiously typing, but he was still completely engrossed by whatever was on the computer screen. Luna wasn't anywhere to be seen. The cell phone had gotten the aircraft on target... it was time to provide the confirmation. Gwen slid the little boating safety flare she had gotten at the first sporting goods store they had robbed out of her sleeve, pointed it out the window, and pulled sharply on the plastic knob on the end.

There was a sharp pop as the flare fired and streaked up into the dark, sputtering a baleful red light. Luna was at her side almost immediately. She kicked Gwen to the floor and stood on her. Gwen tore at the hoof that pressed down on her to no avail.

Greg jumped up at the noise and rushed over, first looking out the window at the dying flare and then down at Gwen. "What did you do? Damnit Gwen! What did you do?"

"End of the road, Greg. You should have surrendered when you had the chance. They'll be launching an Enhanced Energy Weapon any second now. You and I should survive the blast but the EMP will finish your monster here. And there are a couple hundred paratroopers up there who will make sure you are caught or dead soon afterward." She broke off with a cry of pain as a snarling Luna put her weight on her hoof and twisted it.

"Stop it, Luna!" Greg yelled, "We don't have time for that!" He ran back to the laptop and typed frantically for a moment. There was a chime and an artificial voice intoned, "Portal Coordinate Sequence initiated." Luna ran to Greg and pulled him into a tight embrace with her wings as Gwen struggled up from the floor.

"You've forced me to do this before I was ready," Greg shouted as Luna's horn began to glow. "If I survive this, I'll be back!" The glow spread to envelope them both and Greg's voice became distorted as the laptop itself glowed and changed shape. "And you, Agent Gwen..."

Gwen had stumbled over to the piece of strategically-placed pipe and grabbed it.

"...you ... are no ... innocent."

She flung the pipe as hard as she could, striking the little laptop square on. There was no explosion or sparks... nothing dramatic. The distorted computer simply shattered into pieces of broken glass and twisted golden metal and went dark. There was a flash and a muffled pop… and Greg and Luna were gone.

Seconds later the sky outside went white and Agent Gwen rolled herself into a tight ball and opened her mouth wide.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my top-notch prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and Fana Farouche.

12 Fallout

Chapter Twelve

Fallout

Gwen didn't get the hero's welcome from the agency that she thought she deserved. She was convinced that her last effort with the piece of pipe had disrupted whatever it was that Greg was trying to do. And even if he had managed to become invisible, the EMP should have fried his monster just as it had every other computer in or near Grand Island, Nebraska.

Her superiors weren't so sure. The lack of bodies concerned them, and Gwen's claim of invisibility and other esoteric spells was universally disdained. She spent the next month being treated for radiation exposure, getting debriefed dozens of times, and re-walking her escape route with several forensics teams in tow. She thought she was being treated little better than a suspect herself.

Still, she was the only person who had any solid idea how Greg thought and what he was capable of, so if she wasn't exactly a hero, she was invaluable. But there was no hint that Greg had survived. In the real world or on the web there was no trace of him.

My "value" might be only temporary, Gwen told herself, unless I can convince the higher-ups otherwise... She frowned as she watched the CSI nit-pickers sift through yet another bucket of dirt from one of the campsites and began making plans for the future.

= = =

The Speaker of the House had gladly been sworn in as President. Because he was of the opposing party to the late President's, he gleefully shoveled all the blame for the disaster on his political enemies. His opponents, terrified of being forced out of power, leaked the classified information about the threat of the Chinese nuclear submarines, and ridiculous claims and accusations began to fly thick and heavy over Washington. Business as usual... just turned up a few notches.

Relations with the Chinese turned brittle and painfully polite. They offered aid and assistance. They were turned down.

The Stock Market had dropped like a stone on the day of the bombings, and then, as the various vultures and hyenas in bespoke suits swooped in to do some profit-taking, began a tenuous recovery. But not in time to save millions of people's investments and retirement funds.

The San Francisco Bay Area and a huge chunk of Central California was a nightmare. The bombs, though of a type and usage that minimized fallout, had still covered hundreds of square miles with radioactive dust. Some of the richest and most productive farmland in the nation was downwind of the disaster area and clean-up efforts began immediately. It was miserable and dangerous work, but thousands who had been rendered homeless and jobless by the attack and subsequent economic collapse lined up to shovel topsoil into lead-foil bags while wearing radiation suits and breathing equipment. Luckier ones worked at the portable desalination plants in the San Joaquin delta. Others labored in composting, decontamination, and fertilization facilities.

Even so, there were rumors of food rationing to come, and almost everyone in the nation realized that life would not be easy for quite some time.

When Greg hadn't been heard from for over a month, despite reported sightings in nearly every convenience store from Alaska to Florida, Martial Law was lifted and things began to travel the long road back to some semblance of normalcy. People began to believe that the "Cartoon Terrorist" had died in his mad attempt to escape. But even if that were the case, things would never really be normal again.

Unknown thousands of ponies and other Equestrian creatures had spread out across the state before the bombs had fallen. Most of them had been beyond the effective range of the EMPs and had survived. At first the government treated them as a dire threat and urged a shoot-on-sight policy. But it was soon realized that the best way to be safe from most of the Equestrians was not to attack them in the first place. Unprovoked attacks by the creatures were extremely rare and limited mostly to the monstrous types. The dragons were big enough that they couldn’t stay hidden and the Air Force and Air National Guard eliminated most of them in the first few months, though not without severe casualties.

Some of the ponies stole food and damaged crops, but didn't seem hostile toward humans in general... unless they were attacked. That they saw as an invitation to duel and, as they had been programmed for appallingly violent combat, they almost invariably killed anyone who challenged them.

The first policy of picking them off safely from a distance with long-range weaponry immediately ran into several problems. It was quickly discovered that the ponies had no exceptionally vulnerable spots. Through-and-through body shots healed immediately, and even headshots didn't stop them unless an explosive round or something similar effectively decapitated them. They only "died" when 40 to 50% of their mass was disrupted, which was beyond the capability of most non-military weapons.

Upon "death," an Equestrian's body dissipated into a granular gray substance that some wit in the NSA had dubbed "pony meat." It was composed almost entirely of carbon in complex nanostructures with traces of metallic elements, though many scientists thought that a considerable amount of the bodies' mass was lost as gas during discorporation, and what was left was not representative of the living composition of the creatures. Analysis revealed no trace of macroscopic structures and was no help in designing effective weapons against the ponies.

The unicorns seemed to have an array of spells that were generally more limited than depicted in the TV show, but still very effective. Nobody had yet come up with a workable theory on how the "magic" operated, but seeing a cute little unicorn twist the heads off a squad of soldiers from a dozen yards away left no doubt that that it did exist. Armored vehicles were too slow to be generally useful and were deemed to be useless when pyrokinesis proved to be a common unicorn ability, and the knowledge of fuel tanks and arms lockers spread among the Equestrians.

The pegasi weren't fast compared to aircraft or air-to-air missiles (though there were persistent reports of one exceptionally colorful pony that could go supersonic), but they all were insanely maneuverable, able to execute heavy-G turns that would kill a human pilot outright. Drones fell from the sky with things like, "better luck next time" and "dumb robot" scrawled on them in crayon. Curiously, pilots who were able to eject from crippled aircraft were not attacked.

Even the earth ponies, who looked like harmless miniature horses, could move with incredible speed and hurl or buck objects at such velocity that they became very effective ranged weapons. A standard-issue flak vest was nearly useless against a barely subsonic chunk of rock the size of a man's fist. After some ludicrously one-sided fights, a new series of laws rushed through the House and Senate. The official policy, which ran some 3700 pages in length, could be summed up in three words: Leave them alone!

= = =

Melissa had loved camping out. But now, after having lived in a tent for nearly three months, she wasn't too keen on it. Her family had been evacuated from Hayward and relocated to the refugee camp at Redding. She slept in a tent, she ate in a Mess Tent, she attended Middle School in a tent... she even showered in a tent. It was getting old.

None of her friends had ended up in the same camp, and the local kids teased her and called her "City Girl" and "Spots" because of her freckles, so she spent most of her free time hiking and exploring the countryside. It wasn't even nice countryside. Not like Yosemite or Big Basin where she had spent so many happy vacations with her family. Around the camp it was all flat, dusty agricultural land. There were some woodlots, and down by the river there was a lot of greenery, but otherwise, it was pretty boring. But the alternative was to hang around in a tent or be roped into helping out with the gardens or maintenance crews, so Melissa explored.

That day she was down by the river, watching some lazy brown fish lurk in the shade under the overhanging bank when she caught a motion out of the corner of her eye. An animal? She held still, hoping to see some wildlife bigger than one of the feral cats that hung around the camp. She saw it again... something colorful moving through the brush... coming down to the river to drink, probably.

The head and neck finally emerged into clear view and Melissa saw that it was a pony. No, not a pony. It only looked like a pony... a cartoon version of a pony with an impossibly big head and eyes. And a horn. It was a unicorn!

Was this one of those dangerous things that had wrecked her town? But it was so cute and harmless looking! Melissa had been told over and over again to run away from any ponies she saw and never, for any reason, to approach or talk to one. But Melissa was a strong-willed and independent girl and, at the wise old age of 11, she was sure that she was smarter than any of the grown-ups she knew.

And it was so cute!

"Hi," she called out in a soft voice after letting the little creature take a long drink from the river.

It started and snapped its head around, wary and ready to flee or fight.

"I won't hurt you," Melissa called again.

The unicorn looked her up and down calmly and then replied, "No... I doubt you could."

Melissa grinned. "You can talk! Do you want some food? What's your name? Where did you come from? What..."

"Wait, wait!" the little pony interrupted her. "Go back to that part about food."

= = =

Melissa had to keep her friend, Cinnamon Chai, a secret. People wouldn't understand. She swiped extra food for her when she could and visited her as often as she could. Cinnamon Chai seemed to enjoy Melissa's company just as much and had even sneaked into her tent on some nights and crouched under her cot for whispered conversations.

With a companion who made her feel safe, Melissa wandered even farther from the camp on her exploration hikes. On one of those extended walks she met two boys near her own age. Cinnamon Chai hid herself in nearby bushes while Melissa talked to the boys. One was carrying a rifle and claimed he was going to shoot a pony.

"You can't do that!" Melissa said, horrified by the idea.

"Sure I can!" he proudly proclaimed. I'm a good shot."

"That's not what I mean. It's not..." she had been going to say "nice" but thought that the pugnacious-looking boy in front of her wouldn't care much about what was nice or not. "It's not safe! They're dangerous."

"Yeah, Jacob," the younger of the two boys put in, "Dad says—"

"I don't care what Dad says! That thing has been stealing our feed corn and I'm gonna shoot it!"

Melissa wheedled the details of the proposed pony hunt out of the bigger boy. Something had been breaking into the feed silo and eating corn that was meant for the farm's animals. It always came at night and no matter how well the door was secured, it always managed to get through it. The boy intended to go out after dinner, wait in the cab of his father's pickup truck until the pony showed itself, and then shoot it. It would have been a good plan... if Equestrians ponies weren't incredibly tough... and homicidal when their combat mode was triggered.

"We've got to do something!" Melissa said to Chai later.

The unicorn shrugged, an odd motion for a pony. "What can we do? You've got to get back to camp. It's getting late."

"No," Melissa shook her head. "I don't care if I get in trouble... we're going to stop that boy from getting killed!"

"Alright. So what do we do?"

Melissa thought for several minutes. "I know! We need to find that other pony first and stop it from going to the farm. That boy said its tracks came up from the river, so..." She shaded her eyes and looked off at the farm in the distance. "...if we wait over there..."

= = =

Melissa didn't know it, but the boy had gotten tired of waiting and had gone to bed. She was made of sterner stuff and was still keeping a lookout even though her eyes kept trying to close by themselves and it was getting harder and harder to hold her head up.

Cinnamon Chai nudged her in the ribs. "Here it comes," she whispered.

The rush of adrenaline left Melissa wide awake. She peered out in the direction that Chai was looking and saw a light blue earth pony with a blond mane and tail. It was just as cartoony-looking as her friend.

"Stop!" Melissa called out to it. "Don't go any farther!"

The little pony did stop. It jumped and faced her, eyes narrowing warily. Suddenly, it didn't look so cute. "Git outta my way," it said to her.

"But there's a boy up there waiting to shoot you!" Melissa told it.

"Too bad fer him, then," the pony said. "I’m hungry, and if’n he tries to stop me—"

"Please don't! I'll try and get you some food—"

"Pah! I kin get my own food, you stupid monkey! Now git outta my way or..." it snorted and pawed the ground.

"Don't you try it, Apple Cider!" came Cinnamon Chai’s angry snarl. "She's trying to help you!"

Apple Cider whinnied in surprise, not having noticed the other pony until then. The mare looked from the girl to her friend and back again. "What's goin’ on here? You're befriendin’ humans? Are you plum crazy? Them things killed Greg!"

"Greg was a human, you dumb hick!"

"That's a stinkin’ lie! You take that back!"

"He was a human... a good one, just like Melissa here. You shouldn't be hurting humans even if—"

But Apple Cider was enraged and, the emotion triggered her combat mode. She charged Cinnamon Chai, rearing and striking out with the edges of her fore hooves. Chai slammed her aside with a burst of magic. They circled and charged each other, snapping and biting. Chai threw bursts of magic while Apple Cider kicked chunks of rock at her with unbelievable speed. All the while, Melissa pleaded with them to stop.

Apple Cider knew she was losing the fight and, in a move born of desperation, she made a feint at Melissa. When Cinnamon Chai automatically moved to defend the girl, Apple Cider used the opening to strike. A rock the size of a grown man’s fist slammed into Chai’s head and she staggered and fell.

Melissa acted without thinking. She had been one of her team's best soccer players and placed a kick in Apple Cider's side that would have knocked the ball to the goal from half the field away. Apple Cider landed in a heap and squealed in rage, leaping up with eyes blazing and no thought but to destroy the hated human who had delivered such an indignity.

Before the earth pony reached Melissa, Cinnamon Chai used the last of her energy to rise and leap in front of the girl, slamming her horn into the charging pony. Apple Cider gasped and fell.

There was no blood. Ponies didn’t bleed. They didn’t suffer a slow collapse of their system when damaged beyond repair. They dissolved. Apple Cider burst into a cloud of sparkling motes that slowly flickered out and drifted down into a heap of soft gray dust.

"You saved me..." Cinnamon Chai and Melissa both began, and then chuckled together.

Chai leaned against Melissa and the girl obliged by wrapping her arms around the pony’s neck. "Thank you for being my friend," she said.

= = =

Over the next year and a half the same scenario, with variations, played out all across the nation. People became friends with ponies despite the warnings and in several cases, other creatures from Equestria found friendships with humans as well.

They all kept it secret, of course. Equestrians were still viewed as hostile and dangerous by the general public. But some people knew different. They and their companions defended towns and cities against marauding monsters in secret, waiting for the day that they knew in their hearts would come... when everyone would see how wonderful the Equestrians really were. They found each other by accident, or through subtle searches and began gathering in loose groups, planning for the day when they could openly declare themselves to their families and the world.

Then Greg returned and ruined everything.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my phenomenal prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and the fashion-conscious Fana Farouche, who assures me that putting ruffians in their place with a sturdy walking-stick is best done in a smart suit!

13 King Sombra Reborn

Chapter Thirteen

King Sombra Reborn

Greg hadn't ever really gone away, of course. For the first few milliseconds after he was teleported/translated into an Equestrian sim-patch, he was just a mass of compressed data encapsulated in a smart-packet that searched for a suitable host computer. The supercomputer that controlled Lawrence-Livermore's National Ignition Facility was ideal. It was shielded and had survived the blasts in California but was idle due to the chaos in the state.

The packet triggered the decompression routine and, while Gwen was still diving for the floor in Nebraska, the supercomputer began modeling a small forest glade ringed with fruit trees and bordered by a crystal-clear stream of pure, cold water. An open, art nouveau style pavilion appeared in the glade and immediately thereafter, Luna and Greg coalesced out of a bright cloud of particles.

"Whatever else might happen..." Luna began but was interrupted by the thump of Greg's body hitting the polished wood floor of the pavilion.

"Greg!" she cried out and knelt beside him, pulling him close to her with a wing. He was limp and his head lolled on one shoulder. Luna could hear that he was breathing and his heart was beating but he didn't seem to have any control over his body. His eyes were open but unfocused. Luna held his head up and stared into his eyes. "Greg, can you hear me?"

She felt a few twitches of his muscles but otherwise got no response. She held him, talking to him softly and stroking his hair, not knowing what else to do.

= = =

Sparkling lights and strange random noises and smells were the first things that Greg was conscious of after entering the web. Strange chills and prickly sensations seemed to come and go on his skin... even though he couldn't seem to feel the rest of his body. He told himself not to panic. He should have been in the little glade he'd managed to set up before Gwen had forced his hand, but instead...

Nothing made any sense. He didn't even seem to have a sense of time. How long had he been in this chaotic limbo? It could have been only a minute or it could have been... forever? No, that couldn't be right, he remembered coming here with Luna... Luna.

He tried to call out to her but couldn't even hear his own voice. He fought back panic and tried calling again, and again.

How long had he been calling? He couldn't remember... but the thought of Luna was an anchor... something to hold on to. He kept calling.

= = =

"Greg, can you hear me?" Luna asked again. She had gotten some water from the stream and dripped it into his mouth. He'd reflexively swallowed, which encouraged her. His body seemed to be fine. If only his mind...

"Luhh..." Greg slurred out the sound, and Luna knew what he was trying to say.

"Yes, Greg, I'm here! It's me, Luna!"

"Leh...?"

She held his head in her magic and kissed him on the forehead. "Come back to me Greg."

And, slowly,... he did.

The first thing that made any sense to him at all was the sound of her voice. After that, random blobs of color began to resolve themselves into recognizable shapes and he began to feel his body. It was quite a while before he could fully control himself, and Luna propped him up on some cushions and brought him water from the stream and fruit from the trees before he was able to walk by himself.

"What happened?" Luna asked him when he was finally able to hold a coherent conversation. "I was so worried!"

Greg finished the sweet apple he had been eating and tossed the core out of the pavilion. It disappeared before it hit the ground. "I think it's an interface problem. Your brain is digital, so it has no problem interpreting a digital sim." He waved a hand, indicating their surroundings. "My brain is an analog-ish, electro-chemical chunk of gray goo that's currently being implemented by a digital system. It's structured for organic input and had to learn how to interpret the new signals it's getting from my senses." He paused and frowned. "Damn, I hope I don't have to go through that again when we go back to the real world!"

"We are going back, then?" Luna asked.

He smiled and her and looked around at their surroundings. "After a while. It's peaceful and beautiful here, and I want to just spend some time with you without worrying about the government or the army or assassins or—"

"I want her," Luna said simply.

Greg looked at her. She wore her enigmatic expression, but he thought he could see hot red anger behind her cool blue gaze. "Gwen?"

Luna nodded. "She hurt you. She betrayed you. She would have gladly killed you." Little shadows played across her muzzle as her lips began to tense into the ghost of a snarl. "When we go back... let me have her."

Gwen had just been doing her job. Greg knew that. Her loyalty lay with her agency... whichever one it was. Deception and even murder were part of her duties. But that didn't mean he had to like it.

"Alright... if we happen across her again. But make it quick, will you?"

"I promise."

"Good. Now... no more talk of unpleasant things," he said, pulling her down onto the cushions beside him. "Let's just relax and enjoy ourselves for a while."

Luna snuggled into his arms and curled her long neck around him."Are you sure you're... fully functional again?" There was a definite note of gentle teasing in her voice.

Greg smiled and kissed her gently. "Let's find out." He reached out with his mind. He knew just how their environment was designed, and if he could only feel the right connection to the underlying code...

"Greg?" Luna asked, puzzled by his sudden fierce concentration.

He said nothing for a moment, and then a look of satisfaction swept over his face. He looked at Luna and then at the sky. He made a little gesture with his left hand, and the bright spring sunshine disappeared. Night came and the sky blazed with stars. The sound of nightingales came from the woods. Another gesture and the pavilion filled with the warm glow of dozens of little lanterns and candles. The sweet smell of sandalwood incense flavored the air. From somewhere unseen, a soft, slow melody began to play.

Luna stared around her in wonder.

"That's better," Greg said. "More appropriate for the Princess of the Night. Now..." and he reached out for her.

= = =

Greg wasn't idle, even while spending long, wonderful days and nights with his partner. He set several plans in motion. First was the dispersal of the processing tasks for his little sim. The bombs in California had completely destroyed his original world because it was centered and dependent on one location. Greg never made the same mistake twice. When he was finished, they were as safe as he could make them. The sim was spread so widely that it wouldn't be noticeable even on the smallest of computers. Greg was pretty sure that only an all-out nuclear war or the destruction of nearly every computer on the planet could harm them.

Then he adapted the analog modeling processes so that his original mental disorientation would be greatly lessened or eliminated.

Next was the gateway. He wouldn't make the mistake of putting it anywhere it could be seen or attacked. That meant it had to be underground, but Greg didn't like the idea of returning to the real world only to hide in a hole in the ground, so he came up with a compromise. He started with a small gateway grown in an AT&T switching/server room in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Once he was able to get through, he allowed the gate to subsume back into the normal equipment, and he and Luna gathered enough supplies to set up another, larger gateway in a very remote location.

The new portal grew just behind the ancient ruins of an Anasazi cliff dwelling that Greg had visited during college. The old stone buildings were nearly inaccessible to anyone who couldn't fly, and behind the cave's back wall was the Colorado Plateau—gigatons of solid sandstone— room enough for a thousand underground secret bases. The ruins would provide him a hidden entrance and exit as well as a beautiful view of the wooded canyon they overlooked.

And last came his new ponies. He expanded the sim. The little glade was no longer the full extent of the new Equestria. It lay in a hanging valley over a wide plain of mixed grasslands and forests. Greg brought new ponies and creatures of all types out of nothingness. Not just the ones he needed for his campaign in the real world, but a full ecology of plants and animals. Dozens of villages sprang up along the broad and placid rivers, and many pegasi began to gather and solidify cloud material for their own homes. Greg couldn't make the ponies deviate from the original design, but even with the combat routines a part of their personalities, they almost never seriously fought each other. They were so happy that there was no reason other than for sport, and there were many more pleasurable activities to occupy their time.

Luna loved it. She happily returned to her old duties of moderator, judge, and peace-keeper, and the world prospered.

When the new gate opened, Greg sent a few ponies and dozens of diamond dogs through to hollow out the rooms and tunnels of the base. He began to assemble the ponies and materials he would take through with him.

"It shouldn't be long now," he told Luna. "Do you think the new Equestria will be able to get along without you for a while?"

"I... I suppose so," she answered hesitantly.

"What is it?" he asked, surprised by the reluctant tone of her voice.

"Nothing," she said crisply. "You're my partner and I go where you go."

He moved in front of her and stared directly into her eyes. "We're more than partners or even lovers... much more. Your happiness is important to me... more important than anything else." He raised one hand to stroke her cheek. "Please tell me what you're thinking."

"I'm just so happy here with you," she said nuzzling her cheek into his palm. "Your world... the real world is... ugly and dangerous. Do we really need to go back?"

He sighed and let his hand fall away. "I feel I have to. There are millions of people who have to be... not avenged, no, I don't think vengeance does anything but breed more hatred and violence. But all those people... I want their deaths to mean something... I want to make sure that something like that can never happen again."

Luna gave a soft moan and sank to her knees. Greg dropped beside her, holding her head between his hands and peering desperately into her face. "Luna, what's wrong?" He had never seen her cry. He didn't know if she could. But he knew by the soft, keening noises she was making that she was desperately unhappy. He hugged her tightly and stroked her head making comforting sounds and saying, "It's alright, it's alright," over and over again.

"No!" Luna pushed him roughly away but didn't rise. She hung her head low, refusing to look at him. "It's not alright! Greg, do you not realize it, even now? It was my fault! It wasn't you or the ponies the government wanted to destroy. The bombs fell in the two places where I changed the world! I carelessly used the power you gave me and all those people died because of it!"

"No! NO! It was not your fault!" Greg yelled at her. He twisted his fingers into her mane and roughly swung her head around to face him. He used one hand to force her chin up so that she had to look him in the eyes. "They kidnapped me and you did your best to prevent it! You came and rescued me when the army was closing in! You saved me when Gwen was going to shoot me full of who knows what. You stopped me from making a big, big mistake with her... everything you did was good."

She tried to shake her head but Greg tightened the grip on her chin and leaned in closer. "The power to remake things was something I gave to you. And I made it so you would use it reflexively... almost unconsciously. You just did what I wanted you to. So am I to blame for all those deaths?"

"No!" she said in a shocked voice. "You never meant for that to happen! How could you—"

"No, I didn't," he interrupted her. "I didn't know it would happen. I didn't intend for it to happen..." He gave her chin a shake to emphasize his next words, "...and neither did you! You are not to blame. They are. The government, the military, the whole system that could make a decision to murder millions of people just because they were frightened of something they didn't understand!"

She stared at him for a while and then said, "That's not all. I wanted more than the little world you first made. I wanted to see new lands... and that's when they started appearing. I must have started... everything."

Greg shook his head. "You might as well blame the woman who came up with the original TV series. An innocent desire for wider horizons? That hardly makes you guilty of mass murder. Right up until the missiles launched, anyone who had the chance to say, 'No, I'm not going to help kill all those people' and didn't take it... they are the guilty ones."

Greg released her and stood up. Luna didn't rise but kept her gaze on him. "I intend to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again. I want to make sure that those people are stripped of their power for mass destruction. And if they resist..." he shrugged. "But I want you to be happy more than anything else. If you want to stay here and rule this place for me, I'll be... happy for you. And I'll come back to you when I've finished what I have to do."

"I don't want to be parted from you, Greg," Luna said quietly.

He sighed. "Then I'll stay here with you. I'll give up on my plans and let the real world go to hell in whatever way it wants to."

She hugged him tightly and kissed him, and they flew down the valley together to watch the sunset. They made love under the stars and then returned to their pavilion and settled onto the silk sheets of their bed. She rested her head on his chest and said quietly, "If I made you stay, you'd always wonder what you could have done. Each disaster or war that happened... you'd wonder if you couldn't have prevented it." He started to speak but she placed a wingtip on his lips. "No... you'll go, and I'll go with you. And when we've changed the world we will come back here... or go to some other place. But we will be together. Always."

They lay together then without speaking, listening to each other breathing, until sleep took them.

= = =

In the morning, they crossed over to the real world and got to work immediately. The first phase of Greg's plan involved pony training and information gathering. Both went badly. He'd never been interested in warfare, or military history, and so was unprepared to learn exactly how many nuclear weapons were in the world. The realization that there were enough nukes on the planet to destroy every decent-sized city a dozen times over came as a real shock to him. From ICBMs to artillery-fired battlefield nukes, there were thousands and thousands of them in the US alone--and hundreds more aboard hard-to-reach submarines. He'd have to strike at them all simultaneously or risk another, probably larger, eruption of atomic weaponry. That meant that his pony troops would have to be numerous and very well trained, disciplined, and coordinated.

They were hopeless.

They were instinctively individual fighters and only had the sketchiest notions of teamwork and cooperation. They also had the attention span of a five-year-old on a sugar high. After months and months of training, they were only just barely trustworthy to operate on their own. Greg had done such a good job of replicating characters from the show that he had some ponies on his hands who, even though they were physically capable of taking out a platoon of modern soldiers, would faint when yelled at.

Greg sent out squads on practice missions. Half of the ponies didn't come back. They lost interest, got distracted by something and simply wandered off, or found a human to make friends with. Griffons were a bit better, but they often dissolved into squabbling fights among themselves. He didn’t even try with the diamond dogs.

Greg, in desperation, planned to create more tractable ponies, but hesitated before implementing the scheme. He still couldn't affect the Equestrian code on a basic level, or he could have made nearly anything to suit his purposes. Expressing his designs in macro level commands somehow related to the original sim nearly always worked though they often had odd or unexpected results. He was confident he could produce single-minded fighting ponies, but the thought of doing so made him feel a revulsion that he didn’t quite understand. He could make perfect soldiers… but they would be for one purpose only—one-use, disposable troops. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Instead, he created subroutines that attached themselves to his existing ponies. They were fairly simple, just recordings of mission goals that replayed themselves into the consciousness of the ponies and gave them a mild, pleasant stimulus when they were cooperating and a mild, increasing to severe, negative feedback when they strayed from their orders. The subroutines could be removed after the mission was complete.

Greg finished the coding and had the first squad march into the mirror gate where the Equestrian operating matrix could easily attach the new program. When the ponies reemerged from the reflective surface of the gateway, Greg got a bit of a shock. Ponies were just the physical embodiment of computer code, so it made sense that the add-on code would also manifest itself physically, and it did.

It manifested itself as dark metal helmets with slotted visors and adorned with black crystals. The eye slots glowed with a poisonous green light.

"Huh," Greg exclaimed quietly. "Sombra helmets? Really?" The ponies patiently waited for his orders. He thought about trying again with different code, but the months of frustrating failures weighed heavy on him, so he finally decided to send them out on a test mission as they were.

"I'd draw the line if they had swastikas on them, " he grumbled to himself. He glanced at his watch as they disappeared up one of the long tunnels to a distant surface exit. It was getting late and Luna would be waiting for him.

He made his way out to the ruins. One of the cliff dwellings had been cleaned and furnished, and Luna and he had fallen into the habit of meeting there to eat a light supper and relax after the stresses of the day.

"Is something wrong?" Luna asked him after they had finished their meal. "You've been very quiet."

"I just have a lot to think about," he replied. He stood and looked out over the canyon which glowed crimson in the last rays of the setting sun.

"Can I help?" she asked coming to stand behind him and wrap her wings around him.

"No, I..." He paused and chuckled. "Well, maybe. Do you think I ought to get myself an ermine cape and a red stick-on horn?"

Luna peered around his shoulder at him. This must be one of his subtle jokes, she thought, and responded as she always did to humor she didn't understand: she took him seriously. After a moment's consideration she said, "I think you would look good in a cape."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my prereaders and editors: the indefatigable WrittenWord333, Fana Farouche, who knows what a subordinate clause is and what the USSR was, and Jordanis who has poetry [1] in his heart.

[1] It's twisted and bizarre poetry, but what the heck. (More on this later.)

14 Crossing the Rubicon

Chapter 14

Crossing the Rubicon

The problem with the dark helmets was that they worked perfectly. Greg tried a few other approaches to the problem, but none of them worked anywhere near as well. He tried to change the appearance of the helmets. If he altered their code enough, they did change appearance... but then they didn't function. Finally, he admitted that he was only attacking a symptom... a symbol of what was really bothering him.

It's not like I'm trying to take over the world, Greg told himself. The helmets don't enslave the ponies, they just keep them focused on the mission. When this is all over, I'll remove them and they can all go back to Equestria... and I'll make it bigger and better than ever as a reward for them. It'll be okay.

But he was still uneasy about it.

As a distraction, he tried to find out why non-specific code always manifested itself as something recognizable from My Little Pony episodes or comics. He failed at that, too.

He began taking long hikes out into the surrounding desert or down into the narrow canyon instead of working on the specifics of his plan. He realized that he was stalling... delaying the day when he would have to commit himself and his troops to the all-or-nothing attack. But he couldn't seem to force himself to concentrate on anything. After more than a week of limbo, when his ponies stood ready for orders that never came, Luna appeared beside Greg where he sat on the canyon's rim, tossing small pebbles over the edge.

She didn't say anything but sat down beside him and then lay down, putting her head in his lap. He absently stroked her neck as he continued to gaze down into the shadowed depths.

"I can't find any way around it," he said a low voice. "If I want to do this thing, I'm going to have to kill a lot of people... people who never did me any harm. A lot of them... hell, maybe even most of them... are probably good people despite the jobs they're doing."

Luna lay quietly, letting him speak in his own time. She knew she was the only one he could really talk to... and that he desperately needed to talk.

"The silos are no problem. They're built to withstand the violence of a launch and when the missiles collapse, they won't do any damage. The smaller missiles and munitions are more problematic. Debris will certainly be an issue, but the military is equipped to deal with it. Most of it will be inextricably locked into the dark crystal matrices, but those will still be highly radioactive. Some people will probably die in those situations, but I can fool myself into thinking that it's unlikely." Greg sighed and picked up another pebble. "It's the submarines that... well, finding them is problematic, but I can unleash hordes of seaponies. I'll just wait until I'm sure they've located every sub and then..." He tossed the pebble into the canyon. He heard it clack against the wall twice on the way down but never heard the final impact. "The ponies can't get to the weapons without breaching the hulls. What a horrible way to go."

"All the crews will be killed?" Luna said.

"If I'm so fucking smart," Greg half-snarled, "why can't I find a way around it?"

Luna lifted her head and turned to face him. "If you can't see a way, it's because there isn't any."

"So... should I give up? Push the big red self-destruct button on our secret base and run off to Equestria with you? It doesn't seem like such bad an idea, now."

Luna pushed herself into a sitting position. "I've been learning more about the world and humans while you worked. Sometimes it's still hard for me to understand individuals but as for people as a whole... as armies and governments... there are patterns... constants."

Greg was surprised. He hadn't had any clue that she'd been doing something like that. But he had been shutting out so much in the past month... and she obviously had something important to say. "And...?"

"They won't leave us in peace, Greg." She said with her eyes downcast. "Their technology will get better and better. Now that they know it's possible, they'll soon be able to create ponies of their own. Or something like ponies but more... terrible. Or they'll figure out how to detect and block the programs that sustain Equestria. Whichever way it happens, they will destroy us."

As soon as she'd spoken the words he knew it was true, and that made his decision easy. It was no longer a choice between war and retreat. It was a matter of survival. And when it was his life and Luna's against those of the crews of all the nuclear subs in the world... two versus hundreds... thousands, maybe... no, it wasn't a simple matter of numbers. Greg knew he could make a better world; one without the threat of near-instant annihilation hanging over it. And with the transformative power that Luna controlled he could make deserts bloom and purify the air and water and... he could atone for the deaths he would cause. Atone with real, concrete deeds, not the twisted logic and rationalizations that were spewed across the media by the self-serving politicians who were complicit in the murder of millions.

In the end, it was actually a simple task to convince himself.

He rose suddenly to his feet and brushed the red dust of the desert off his pants. He held out a hand to Luna who still sat, looking uncertainly up at him. "C'mon Luna, we've got work to do."

= = =

Under control of the dark helmets, Greg needed far fewer ponies than he had originally estimated. Within two weeks of making his decision to go forward with the plan, everything was ready. He stood at the huge computer control console that was half-embedded in the rock walls of the deepest cavern of his base. The enormous wall screen displayed a map of the world, a bright red dot indicating each and every nuclear weapon on the Earth. Even with the comforting blue dot near each red one, indicating a team of Greg's ponies, the sheer number of them sent a cold, crawling sensation down his spine.

His guts knotted as he flipped the switch on the console that made the connection to his headset microphone. Luna stood beside him and gave his neck a reassuring nuzzle. He gave her a sickly smile and a tiny nod of thanks before he spoke the irrevocable words that would be relayed to his troops, world-wide:

"Equestrians, attack!"

There was nothing else to do but wait for things to go wrong. He had dozens of squads of ponies in reserve, ready to fill in if they were needed... but he wouldn't know much of anything for a while. He flipped the microphone off and watched the screen as a few drops of cold sweat made their way down the back of his neck.

= = =

An hour later, martial law was in effect in the United States and similar states of emergency were declared in every nation on Earth that possessed nuclear weapons. A Presidential order was issued that all Equestrian creatures were to be shot on sight... which usually caused the death of any soldiers foolish enough to try to carry it out.

When the last, stubbornly resisting red light on the screen winked out, Greg thought he should feel some sort of relief, maybe even a sense of accomplishment. What he felt was nausea. But the day was not yet over. Greg had wisely pre-recorded the statement that his sophisticated computer system would feed into the media streams. The message, delivered by satellite, cable, radio, and web in hundreds of languages, would come from a self-possessed and confident-seeming young man instead of from a pale, shaking figure who, at the moment, looked years older than he really was.

The announcement was phrased as well as Greg could manage and couched in reassuring, even comforting terms but the gist was simple: All the nuclear weapons in the world have been destroyed. What happened last year in the US will never happen again. No further hostile action will be taken unless I am attacked. For those who were killed today and their families, I am truly sorry. I will do my best to make up for those deaths. Soon I will show you what wonders I can accomplish for you all.

Greg sent the message and then shut down the computer console. "There. Now we wait and see." Luna hugged him tightly, and he mustered enough energy to give her a brief squeeze in return.

"Do you want some food? You haven't eaten all day," she asked.

"No, I'm tired. I just want to sleep."

They went to their bedroom and curled up together. Greg stared at the ceiling for several hours before he managed to drift off. Luna held him, listening to his heartbeat until it finally slowed, then she allowed herself to sleep as well.

= = =

Greg was woken by Luna who was standing beside the bed holding a pegasus stallion in her magical grip.

Greg blinked the sleep from his eyes and looked at her and then the little pony. "What's with him?" he asked.

Luna's grip was painfully tight and the little pony seemed to be having difficulty breathing. "Noteworthy entered without knocking."

"Ah... well, I suppose he must have had a good reason." He turned his gaze to the pegasus, "Didn't you?"

Noteworthy made a "Mmh-hmn" sound.

"Let him go, Luna."

"Whew! *cough* Oh, man! I just wanted to let you know there's news, boss!" the pegasus told him, glaring as much as he dared at Luna. "I wanted to tell you right away so maybe I forgot..."

Greg waved away his apology. "What's the news?"

"Uhm... it ain't exactly good news."

"Just spit it out," Greg snapped impatiently. "Or do you want me to let Luna squeeze it out of you?"

"They... uh, the humans, that is," Noteworthy stammered out, nervously, "they sorta... well... declared war on you." He crouched down and cringed as if expecting a blow.

"Ghod, I hate mornings," Greg sighed and then added to the little pony who was still looking uneasily up at him through one eye nearly squinted shut, "Thank you for bringing me the message as quickly as possible. Just... remember to knock next time."

Noteworthy gave a sigh of relief. "Sure, boss! I won't forget!"

Surprisingly, Greg actually felt a lot better once he'd had the chance to wake up completely. "Breakfast first, I think!" he said cheerfully to the unicorn mare who served as his secretary and general aid as they walked along the corridor to the control room. "A nice, big primavera omelet for me and for Luna...?"

"Roasted pegasus," Luna grumbled.

"Make that two omelets, Sugarberry," Greg chuckled. "Don't hold a grudge, Luna! He was just a little too eager."

"It's not him I'm really angry at," Luna fumed. "It's the humans! Declare war on you? Such hypocrites! The day before yesterday, if you'd asked any one of them if they would like to see all the Earth's nuclear weapons vanish, not one of them would have said 'no!' They're ungrateful, illogical, and—"

Greg placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her rant. "And they're probably frightened to death. We need to show them that the worst is over. When they see what we can do for them, they'll calm down and we can negotiate. You'll see."

And that was an important difference between Greg and Luna. She knew she didn't understand humans all that well. Greg mistakenly thought he did.

= = =

"They're ungrateful, stupid, destructive, MORONS!" Greg shouted, throwing a coffee cup at the video screen. The ceramic cup hit the transparent aluminum screen and shattered, leaving the screen untouched except for a light smear of coffee that dripped slowly down one side.

The ponies in the control room went very quiet and tried hard to avoid Greg's notice.

"I made them a paradise and they destroyed it!" He waved at the images of smoking craters and burning palm trees that flickered across the screen. Large swaths of green grass and flowering shrubs remained but were rapidly being churned to bits under the treads of the armored vehicles that rolled across what had recently been the barren, hard-baked earth of the Northern Mojave Desert.

"Why did they do it?" Greg asked, his anger slowly draining away. "The first bombings at the periphery, I can almost understand, but after the reaction had stopped... after the oasis had quit growing..." he shook his head in frustration. "All that pure water... and food free for the taking..." As if on cue, a blazing date palm, its heavy load of fruit sizzling, fell into the slurry of mud that had once been a pond of crystal-clear water.

Greg took several deep breaths to calm himself. "Okay, okay, I knew this wasn't going to be easy. We'll just try again. And again and again, if we have to! I'll jam beauty, peace, and prosperity down their throats if they won't take it any other way! Eventually they'll get tired of wrecking it all... " Greg sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to hold off the tension headache he felt coming on, and in a much softer voice added, "...I hope."

= = =

Greg tried two more transformations in different parts of the country. Each time he created just what the local residents always said they would love to see or have. Each time the military moved in and scoured the ground clean. Once it was discovered that simple extreme heat or cold would stop whatever it was that disassembled and reassembled the molecules of the landscape, ordinary citizens fought off the changes with weed-burners, welding torches, and CO2 fire extinguishers.

Greg sent several messages to various governments, pleading for reason and detailing all the benefits he could offer them. The responses were all variations on the same theme: Surrender. Then we'll talk.

He kept teams of his ponies scouring the planet, searching for hidden threats and found several. Many governments tried to set up hidden arms factories to build more nuclear weapons. Others worked on different exotic weapons, some were clever ways to generate large EMPs, some were based on the mistaken assumption that because heat and cold affected the transformative fronts, they would also work well on Equestrians. Greg destroyed them all.

Greg sent out more messages and they were ignored by almost everyone in any position of authority. Anybody who dared to suggest that there might be merit in negotiation was shouted down or denounced as a traitor to humankind. The only disagreement under public debate was exactly how he and his monsters should be killed.

There were many individuals who supported Greg, and they freely made their opinions known on social media, but were relentlessly attacked in open forums. Some were so supportive that they volunteered to become ponies. Some begged him.

"Could you do that?" Luna asked him one evening while they surveyed online opinions together.

Greg frowned in thought for a while. "It's a more complex problem than it seems. A different body would require a different autonomous system to run it. Changing the brain model I use now to integrate that, to say nothing about adapting it for using magic, well… getting it wrong would be a death sentence... or worse. Look at the trouble I had with straight-forward conversion!"

After a bit more thought, he said, "I'll keep logs on everyone who's expressed interest in being 'ponified' and get to work on that problem once things have calmed down. Right now, if people started turning into ponies… yeah. 'Calming down' is the opposite of what would happen."

= = =

After New Canterlot was bulldozed into marble and gold rubble, Greg considered changing tactics. "It was like Disney World crossed with Minas Tirith! What's bad about that?" he asked Luna as they sat together at dinner after the latest failure.

Luna said nothing in response.

"Maybe I should try something more subtle," Greg mused as he poked at the uneaten steak on his plate. "Or maybe I should just learn to laugh maniacally, and work on bringing about eternal night." He looked up to gauge Luna's reaction. She was wearing her enigmatic face. "It was a joke."

"Which part?" she asked.

Greg sighed and dropped his fork to his plate with a clatter. "They're only destroying the new creations because they know they come from us. They think they're traps or... or... I don't know... tainted somehow. If we change things they won't immediately notice... let them get used to it and then reveal we're responsible... that would change their minds, right?" He hurried on without letting her answer. "Maybe some new springs of water in the Southwest where it's needed so badly? We could seed them along the rivers and set them to increase over time. Yeah, I'll send out some squads to scout for good locations in the morning."

To Luna, he seemed happier when he left the table. But he still hadn't eaten his steak.

= = =

Two days later, Greg and Luna strolled along the banks of the upper Sacramento River, pausing every once in awhile to let Luna bend down and touch the ground with her horn. Everywhere she touched, a small trickle of pure water bubbled up from the earth.

"When we finish here," Greg said to her as he checked his map, "We'll go over to the San Joaquin, east of Modesto and—"

"Stop right there!" came a determined, but somewhat high and squeaky voice.

"Huh?" Greg folded the top half of his map down to reveal a group of small children lined up in front of him. And beside each one of them was... a pony.

"What... who the heck are you and what are you doing here?" He demanded.

A lanky young girl with long red hair and a truly amazing amount of freckles took one step forward along with her unicorn friend, and said in the same squeaky voice that had halted him, "We're the Guardians of Harmony, and we're here to stop you!”

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my non-insouciant prereaders and editors WrittenWord333, Fana Farouche, and Jordanis. I care because they care.

Did that make any sense? :rainbowhuh: I think I need more absinthe ice cream. :derpytongue2:

15 First Blood

Chapter Fifteen

First Blood

"Guardians of Harmony?" Greg gaped at the children barring his way. "You've got to be kidding me! Look, it's nice that you kids made friends with some ponies. I'm glad... really. But you could get hurt—"

"You're the one who's going to get hurt," Melissa told him, "Or you can surrender if you want."

It was just too much for Greg and he began to laugh. “Oh ghod, you're serious! Oh, I... hahaha! I... you..." He broke off into howls of laughter. His laughs shook him so much he had to use one hand to steady himself against Luna's shoulder.

Nobody else was laughing. Melissa was scowling as fiercely as possible for a 13-year-old girl. “We know who you are! You made everybody hate ponies, and you killed people and… and… you’re a villain!”

The horns of the unicorn ponies among the group began to glow. The earth ponies snorted and pawed at the ground. The pegasi flapped aloft. There was a flash of green fire, and one of the ponies became a griffon.

"HOW DARE YOU!" Luna roared at the ponies. The sudden violence of her scream of rage made everyone jump, including Greg. "He is your creator! How can you betray him like this?"

The ponies had the good graces to look at least a little bit embarrassed. Melissa stepped forward. "Maybe he is... but he made them fight just for entertainment. Then you brought them into our world where everyone was against them and just when we thought people might be going to accept them... he went and started a war!"

Cinnamon Chai took a step forward, horn still glowing threateningly. "Our loyalty is to our friends now. When we saw Greg's scouts here yesterday we knew he was up to something bad, and we've come to stop him."

Luna's mane rippled furiously and her own horn lit. "You miserable little nag! You should thank him for—"

"No, Luna," Greg interrupted her. "We don't have time to argue with a bunch of rogue ponies." He waved a dismissive gesture at the group. "Take them out, but don't hurt the kids."

They were just a few children and their magical ponies... but they were also friends and partners who had been fighting wild Equestrian creatures for over a year. Luna was more powerful, there was no doubt about that, but the children had the advantage of numbers, and more importantly, hard-won experience.

At some unseen signal, all the ponies attacked at once. Blasts of arcane energy were quickly followed by a charge of the earth ponies and pegasi. Greg was definitely not laughing then. He ducked behind a cottonwood tree as Luna charged directly into the mass of enemies facing her.

Greg fumbled for his mini tablet. He could pull the level-up trick if he could call up the console quickly enough. He squinted at the screen in the sunlight, desperately trying to find the brightness slider. He had just found it when he heard a heavy impact and Luna slid by him, plowing up the sandy ground of the riverbank. She was on her hooves again almost instantly, leaping back into the fray but she was frazzled and injured... no longer moving with her usual blinding speed.

Greg frantically pawed at his tablet and the screen suddenly became bright enough to be readable. He tapped the console icon and a little spinning circle appeared. “C’mon, dammit!” He glanced up. Luna was getting hammered from all sides.

The unicorns were firing bolts of energy directly into Luna’s half-shield, forcing her to back away, while pegasi swooped down from above, keeping her grounded. Some earth ponies charged her, throwing opportunistic kicks, while the faux griffon circled to attack Luna's unprotected back. She was in deep trouble.

Greg’s tablet chimed and he frantically tapped through the directory screen, looking for the value tables. When he found the level value, he carefully pecked away at the onscreen keyboard. The program wasn’t set up to be easily edited, and one slip could alter Luna’s variables in a possibly disastrous way. He took a second to double check that he hadn’t changed anything but the LVL value, and then hit enter. Seconds later, Nightmare Moon burst out of a whirling vortex of energy, screaming with rage. She slammed two pegasi out of the air with a swipe of one wing and cow-kicked an orange unicorn end-over-end, but an earth pony and the griffon had nearly gotten behind her and were able to get their attacks in on her open flank.

The griffon only got in one savage bite before Nightmare Moon knocked her into the river with a powerful buck, but the blue stallion struck her with a full charging head-butt that knocked the wind out of her and made her stagger several steps to the side.

Greg glanced at his tablet again. There had to be something he could do to help her. But he saw that Nightmare Moon’s energy value had been reduced to 12%. Even though she was now vastly more powerful than her opponents, a few lucky shots could bring that number down to zero. He looked up again just as she took another savage buck to the head that interrupted her as she was raising energy for a magical attack. She screamed in pain and the glimmer around her horn flickered and dimmed.

"Nightmare Moon! Here! To me!" He yelled at her. He knew enough to see that she was losing and that meant their only option was...

Nightmare Moon cleared her opponents with one arching leap, and Greg swung himself astride her shoulders. "Fly!" Greg told her, "Get away!"

"No! I can—"

"Do it, dammit!" Greg yelled, and kicked her flanks like he would have done with a horse. She fled.

The children hadn't expected the fight to go as well as it did, and were totally unprepared for Greg's retreat. There was confusion for only a few seconds as things got sorted out, but by then Nightmare Moon had cast her invisibility spell, and they had lost the opportunity to run her down.

Melissa watched her team's ponies return to their friends and looked joyfully into Cinnamon Chai’s grinning face.

"We won!" shouted a chunky blond boy as he swung his pegasus friend around by her fore hooves as she hovered above him with overflowing exuberance.

"Yes," said a soft-spoken, dark-haired girl as the changeling who had fought as a griffon curled around her affectionately. "But they got away."

"Yeah," admitted Melissa. "But next time they won't."

= = =

Greg was, in turn ashamed, embarrassed, and furious. "I got my ass handed to me by a pack of children!" he fumed, pacing the length of the control room back at the base. "Even worse, I dropped the damned map and now the Army Corps of Engineers is out there filling all of those new springs with concrete!" He gestured to the monitors. "Look, they're even sampling the water like they think I put poison in it or something!"

He realized he was ranting to no purpose. Only he and Nightmare Moon were in the room and they both knew well enough what had happened.

Nightmare Moon said nothing... she just watched Greg as he paced.

Sugarberry peeked around the edge of the door. "Sir? Will you be wanting dinner?"

Greg spun on his heel but stopped himself from yelling at the little pony. She hadn't done anything wrong, after all. "Maybe later."

"I could leave some cold meat and cheese in the—"

Nightmare Moon rose to her hooves and stepped to Greg's side. She bent her head until her nose was nearly touching the floor and pressed the side of her neck against Greg's hip. "Go away, Sugarberry," she said softly.

"Yes, Your Highness... sorry sir. Ma'am." She ducked out of sight.

Greg slipped his arms around Nightmare Moon's neck and leaned over, resting his chest and head on the soft cushion of her thick, starry mane. "And worst of all," he sighed unhappily, "I failed you."

"What?" cried Nightmare Moon, shaking off his embrace so that she could look him in the face. "I was the one fighting."

"We're a team," he interrupted her. "My part is just as important as yours. You fought magnificently! One pony against a dozen at once? You did everything you could. It was me... I screwed up. I wasn't prepared for even the possibility of an attack by ponies! What if they’d had diamond dogs with them, or a manticore?"

"I don't blame you. How could you have known—"

"Well, I know now! And next time I'll be ready." He took her head in his hands and pressed his forehead against hers, just below her horn, closing his eyes. "We will be ready, I promise you," he whispered. "No more screwing around... I'll program in macros… maybe even make some dedicated hardware, and we'll train with it until we work together like a single unit. We'll hunt down those damned, traitorous ponies, and you'll show them what you can really do! Little assholes didn't like Nightmare Moon? Let's see what they think of the Dark Goddess! And no more messing around with little parks and pools... we'll start some major changes... things too big to stop!"

He lifted his head and opened his eyes. "What do you think?"

For an answer, she kissed him fiercely and joyously.

= = =

The next few months were very busy ones for Greg and Luna. He made plans, did research, and restructured the base's defenses with a far different enemy in mind. Luna scouted locations for their next "events" and patrolled for hostile ponies, mostly at her Nightmare Moon level. She made contact with wild ponies and got what information she could from them about the numbers and locations of “friendlies.”

Greg built a little unit, not much larger than a car key fob, that tied into his larger electronics and could directly change some basic values in Luna’s core code. He thought about altering the code itself to make her permanently overpowered, but after the experience with the dark helmets, he thought that the chance that she would emerge as something unintended or unrecognizable was too great. He loved her the way she was, and wasn’t going to take any risks with her, no matter how small.

Then the day came when Greg's first new plan was ready to be put into execution. He and Luna traveled the first part of their journey via Equestrian teleportation, emerging from a mirror that formed from the case of a server in a Doctors Without Borders aid station near Kasr, Egypt. The gate took only two minutes to grow and Greg timed it to happen in the late evening when nobody would be in the computer room. They slipped out of the compound and into the surrounding desert, meeting with a group of pegasus ponies that had been dispatched earlier, for the second leg of their journey.

Luna flew low over the desert to avoid being seen or detected on radar even though southwest Egypt was one of the most deserted and desolate places on Earth. Their goal was near the border with Sudan, and the region was famous for sudden, vicious little wars. The locals were trigger-happy, and Greg didn't want to spoil the event with fighting.

They reached the mountains of the Gilf Kebir in less than an hour and swooped in for a landing. Greg hopped down, ran his fingers through his disheveled hair, and tried to wrench his clothes back into some semblance of order. Note to Self, he thought, Get a helmet and flight suit before riding on the back of an alicorn flying flat-out again.

Luna simply shook herself briefly and all her fur settled back into its usual sleekness.

"Alright," Greg said, unfolding a small map. "We start here and work our way along the foothills..." he lowered the map and peered into the distance. There was just enough moonlight to make out a distant peak. "...that way. Do your thing, lover!"

Luna bent and touched the ground with her horn. The sands of the Sahara began to ripple and churn.

They moved through the desert, stopping every mile for Luna to trigger the start of another couple of transformations. They had learned that the changes she triggered were limited. They could only transform around a hundred square miles of land at most... less if there were a lot of features that soaked up the energy. But she could direct the shape of the changes and to maximize the area they could affect in one night, she was starting long, narrow strips starting from the path they were taking that rippled out into the distance. By doing this, they were transforming an area of the desert about two hundred miles wide. The length of the area was only limited by how long Luna could keep triggering changes.

The sky began to lighten in the East and she still didn't seem to be tiring.

"Better than I could have hoped for!" Greg grinned as he looked back at the way they'd come. The previously bare mountains were clothed in a dense forest. Cedars and firs covered the upper slopes and a mix of deciduous fruit trees further down. The open meadows and glades were ringed with berry bushes and all manner of edible plants, filling the air with heavy, sweet scents. Waterfalls cascaded down the jagged cliffs and made the dry ravines into swiftly flowing rivers filled with fish. A landscape that had not known more than a dozen rainfalls in the last century had become a lush, green Eden. Already the valley below was filling. In a few days it would be a large lake and the water would flow out the other side and into the desert... making for oases even beyond the bounds of what they'd directly created.

"We can probably cover another twenty miles or so before it gets too light. I don't want to risk getting spotted by a satellite. The plants and water are already making a suspicious cool patch if they’ve got infrared." Greg said, glancing at his watch. "You're not getting tired of carrying me, are you?"

"I'm not tired at all, Greg. What about you?"

"Me neither. In fact, I feel... I don't know... is 'exhilarated' the word I'm looking for? Just look at all that! There's no way they'll be able to ruin it. They'd go broke in a week paying for the bombs, napalm, and jet fuel if they tried!

For once, Greg's optimism was justified. The Egyptians didn't even try to erase the new landscape. They did try to keep everyone out of the area but it was simply too large to patrol effectively. At first it was a few curious tourists and their guides who had come to see the Cave of the Swimmers. Then, as the news spread, the more adventurous (or desperate) types made their way to the new land overflowing with food and water.

The United States offered the Egyptian military tankers full of Agent Orange, but as the herbicide couldn't be gotten to the area before thousands of civilians had taken up residence, Egypt politely declined the offer.

= = =

Sugarberry set a tray of sushi down on the table between Luna and Greg. As usual, Luna scooped up all the kappamaki in her magic and began popping them into her mouth the way a kid might do with popcorn kernels. Greg picked up a piece of unagi and chewed it while scrolling through newscasts on his larger tablet.

"How are things going, Sir?" Sugarberry asked.

"Pretty good," Greg said in a tone of voice that only betrayed a little bit of surprise."Oh, they're still a long way from electing me King o' the World, but at least there are some people who are actually wondering out loud if this is such a bad thing. And a couple even said that maybe I'm not such a thoroughly evil villain after all."

Sugarberry was shocked. "You're not a villain at all, Sir! You're only doing good things for humans and Equestrians alike!"

Greg nodded and took another piece of sushi. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. Maybe you should tell that to..." he scrolled down the dozens and dozens of articles and videos that were still howling for his blood. "...how about Greenpeace? They say I've '...destroyed a fragile and unique desert ecosystem.' Or The Guardian... they're accusing me of '...insidious Cultural Imperialism...' Huh... I wonder how they figure that? And for a final bit of lunacy, the Washington Times is claiming I set the place up as an ISIS training facility, for fuck's sake!"

"I'm sure they will eventually realize that the world will be a much better place if they elect you King!" Sugarberry said with conviction.

Greg spit out his mouthful of sushi. "What!?” He paused to cough out a grain of rice that he had nearly inhaled. ”No, no, Sugarberry, I was only kidding about that. Ghod... King of the World? What a miserable job that would be! I just want to make the world better... a place where people don't have to be afraid or hungry or miserable... where there won't be any reasons to ever go to war again."

"I don't see how anyone could object to that!"

Greg sighed again, watching more stories scroll by on the screen. "Yeah... but it seems like damned near everyone does. I guess I'm just going to have to try harder to convince them. Time to bring it closer to home, I think."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my phenomenal prereaders and editors WrittenWord333, Jordanis, and Fana Farouche who provided the perfect title for my dinosaur porn novel.

16 Close to Home

Chapter Sixteen

Close to Home

Of the three officers that stood before the President's desk in the Oval Office, two were career military men from military families. The third had never even considered a military career and had always held the armed forces in a vague contempt as tools of last resort, if she thought of them at all. But, thanks to the President's orders under the Hostile Artificial Intelligence Emergency Powers Act, she now was under direct military command as part of the command structure and, more importantly, subject to military control and, if necessary, military justice.

Captain Gwendolyn Sundstrom resisted the urge to tug at the tight collar of her uniform for the tenth time since she had entered the President's office. "Mr. President, Greg is naïve and inexperienced but he is very far from stupid. General Whitson's plan is only—"

"I think," General Whitson interrupted her. "that, as someone who let him escape twice, your estimation of his—"

"I've predicted what he's done more accurately than the gang of psychiatrists and behavioral experts from—"

"Stop!" the President snapped. They fell silent. "Captain Sundstrom, your approach to the problem is... creative, I'll give you that. But it's too uncertain and, frankly, too bizarre for me to feel confident of its success. You will return to your command and continue to train your troops." There was just the hint of a snort of derision from Whitson at the use of the word "troops" and the President rebuked him with a glance. "I will hold them in reserve in case other methods fail."

Gwen simply said, "Yes sir." She knew that showing any hint of anger or further argument would only give Whitson and Greenwaldt pleasure.

"General Greenwaldt," the President said, "Has your unit come up with any further information which would be helpful?"

"We have finally gotten data on the physical structure of active Equestrian creatures and it's clear now why they are so difficult to kill." He placed a diagram on the President's desk. "On the right is the structure of a common protein that is present in most animals: A simple chain of carbon atoms with a few other atoms attached. On the left—"

"It looks like something engineered." the President said in surprise. "Like a building girder or something."

"'Engineered' is a good word for it." Greenwaldt agreed. "That interlocking structure of carbon molecules is what Equestrians use for proteins. They're very similar to the super-strong carbon nanotubes that scientists have been trying to manufacture in quantity for some time... only stronger and more flexible. Those cartoon ponies are made of the stuff."

"Will this affect General Whitson's plan?"

"No sir. Their bodies would have to be a lot stronger to make any difference to the plan. This may just give us a leg up on designing weapons to mop up afterward."

"Good," the President nodded. "General Whitson, how soon can you put your plan into action?"

"The weapon is already on its way. We can deliver it in five days time," Whitson replied. "At least, that's what the boys at JPL tell me."

= = =

The springs of clean water and burgeoning crops that appeared in blighted inner cities were too intertwined with homes to be eradicated from the air, and the people living in the suddenly bountiful areas, formed barricades to keep officials from doing so on the ground. Rather than risk a series of violent confrontations, the government decided to hold back and allow the poor neighborhoods to become test subjects. The test subjects became healthier and better-fed.

After several more transformations that had been nothing but helpful, the media had lightened up a bit and the US government had taken a much more neutral tone... in private communications, at least. But Greg knew that all he had to do was make one little slip-up at the wrong time and that would be the end of him, no matter how many supporters he had managed to acquire.

Greg also was able to complete a basic ponification process. He solved the problem of adding magic into the mix by the same add-on approach he had used to create the Sombra helmets. The additional self regulating code expressed physically as horns, wings, and (for earth ponies) exceptionally thick, sturdy hooves. Transformed humans would still need to learn to control the powers granted to them by the add-ons, but it would be no worse than learning to ride a bicycle.

Or so Greg assumed. He hadn't been able to write a transformative matrix for any creature other than the three basic kinds of ponies, and that worried him a bit. He wanted to include griffons, and maybe even diamond dogs into the selection. He couldn't imagine why anyone would want to be a diamond dog, but he had received several requests.

The other thing that stopped him from doing a live test was the consequence for failure. That concern might have seemed hypocritical coming from someone who had deliberately murdered hundreds of people, but it was a line that Greg clung to with a desperate intensity.

He also didn't want anything to interfere with the slow improvement of his public image. As happy as the ponification crowd would be with their new bodies, the backlash from less open-minded friends and relatives (to say nothing of the media) would be disastrous. The Pony People would have to wait.

Several pundits had even made suggestions as to what Greg should do next... in a backwards sort of way. "If he were really intending to help the American people," they'd say, "he would..." and they'd insert whatever hoop they wanted him to jump through. Some were ridiculous, some were impossible, but some were feasible and Greg put a couple of them into execution.

Away from a thin strip along the interstate highway, central Oregon was a patchwork of clear-cut scrub and replanted saplings, ugly land that wouldn't be usable or profitable for decades to come. "Since he seems to like trees so much," one particularly snide TV personality had said, "why doesn't he reforest all the empty land in the Northwest? That would create jobs!" And, since the pundit had a lot of connections and investments in the timber industry, it would also put a lot of money in his bank account... but he didn't say anything about that on the air.

Greg though it was a good idea. "It's on land far away from people... nobody would get nervous about the change... hell, they might not even notice for a while." He moved the project to the top of his list.

As usual, he sent a squad of his helmeted ponies to thoroughly check the area first. As Luna had to personally attend each transformation, a planted "request" leading them into a trap would have been an obvious move. So far he had only backed away from two planned operations due to suspicious circumstances.

He often toyed with the idea of programming the terrain-changing capability into a few other ponies in order to take some of the workload off of Luna but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. It was too big a responsibility to hand over to just anyone and Luna seemed to be able to intuit exactly what he wanted... always putting just the right nuances into the changes. And, most importantly, he trusted her. No, the transformations would have to proceed one by one. It would be slow going but it would be done right.

= = =

The day after the Oregon job, the tone of the media was grudgingly positive. Some people openly said that Greg should be pardoned and given a chance to restore other blighted areas of the country without having to sneak around in the dead of night to do it.

Some desperately poor third-world nations even offered him sanctuary and citizenship if he would agree to work for their governments.

Greg happily watched the good news flood in. But he was still wary. "I think we may be rounding a corner," he said to Luna, "but I don't want to let my guard down. It will still take a while for them to forget—"

"Sir?" Sugarberry interrupted.

“Yes?”

She pointed to a small screen with her hoof. "There’s a request coming in from the White House Chief of Staff."

That wasn't all that unusual. Greg had been trying to negotiate a less hostile relationship with the US government for a long time and they had responded to his communications before... but only with demands of surrender. This time it was different.

"He says the President of the United States would like to speak to you directly at 9:45pm Central Time tonight. He says that the President intends to offer you complete clemency and would like to discuss the details."

Greg was stunned. "Well... yes! Tell him yes!" He turned to Luna and flung his arms around her in a joyous hug. "Did you hear that? Of course you did! What a stupid question! I never thought we'd make a breakthrough so soon!"

There had been a breakthrough but not the sort that Greg had in mind. Through a combination of intense satellite scrutiny, analysis of known Equestrian movements, and a bit of luck, Army Intelligence had discovered the location of Greg's base. And they had just arranged for him to be there at the exact time when they would use their new weapon.

It wasn't a nuke, of course. Greg's own detection systems and secretive demolitions squads made building new atomic weapons impossible. There wasn't anywhere on Earth where a weapon powerful enough to destroy his base could be obtained. So General Whitson and the spacecraft specialists at the Jet-Propulsion Laboratory had gone elsewhere.

As Greg and Luna toasted the illusion of a new, hopeful future, remotely controlled rocket motors were boosting a two thousand ton near-Earth asteroid into its final trajectory.

= = =

The atmosphere in the Situation Room was tense. It was seven minutes to impact.

Gwen was present but she guessed she had been invited only so that Greenwaldt and Whitson would have an opportunity to gloat. She spoke to one of the scientists present in order to take her mind off the situation. "So, you're sure it will penetrate deep enough to take out the entire base? I'm betting Greg will have dug in very deep even though he's sure there aren't any nukes left. He's always cautious... damn near paranoid, really."

"Oh yes, Captain," the scientist reassured her. "At the speed the asteroid is traveling, it will have a significant impact. The shock will collapse any voids... uh, rooms that is, in the rock for hundreds of meters down. And the EMP will also—"

"Wait a minute," Gwen interrupted him, "EMP? This is just a big chunk of rock isn't it?"

"Oh yes! But any large explosion, even non-nuclear, will generate an electromagnetic pulse. The majority of it will be caused by ionization of the atmosphere when the meteorite passes through." He gestured to the rows of monitors displaying satellite image feeds. "We should get some very valuable data from the event."

"Time to make the call," Whitson said.

The Chief of Staff touched a button on the desk in front of him while glancing at the clock. Less than one minute to impact.

The main screen blanked for a moment and then cleared to reveal Greg's face and upper body with Luna standing behind his right shoulder. "Good evening," he said pleasantly.

30 seconds to impact.

Gwen felt a strange sense of regret when she saw him. He was a dangerous enemy even though he had just been playing at over-grown renovation projects for the last two years. He had the power to wreak unimaginable havoc and had to be neutralized. No, Gwen corrected herself, killed. He has to be killed. But it seemed a shame. She had assumed he would have been smarter.

Impact.

The main screen went white for an instant and then black. The side screens dedicated to distant observation cameras showed a gigantic ball of fire rising from the Arizona desert... along with large chunks of the Arizona desert.

Everyone in the room, except for the scientists who were excitedly watching the readouts of several computers, breathed a silent sigh of relief.

"Good work gentlemen," the President said. "Let's get the ground troops in there as soon as possible for cleanup."

"We will be air-dropping troops and armor as soon as the fireball dissipates and the dust cloud clears a bit, sir," General Whitson assured him.

"I think my unit may be of some help, Mr. President," Gwen put in.

"Playtime's over, Captain Sundstrom," Greenwaldt said, "Whatever few of his ponies haven't been blasted or cooked, we can deal with. Eventually, we will get them all." He put a particular emphasis on the word that Gwen knew was meant as a message for her.

= = =

It's not paranoia if everyone really is out to get me, Greg had told himself an hour earlier as he prepared for the call from the President. "I just can't help thinking that it's too good to be true," he said to Luna as he screwed the little microwave transceiver onto its tripod. "It won't do any harm to take a few precautions." He squinted into the aligning scope to the other transceiver on the opposite side of the canyon above the base.

"There," he said as the contact light lit up on the transceiver, "That'll give us a little safety margin if the President has any nasty surprises in store for us. If they've found out our location and are planning an assault, we won't be bottled up in there. I've also got several squads of earth ponies on patrol for ground infiltrations and a flight of griffons watching for aircraft or missiles." He looked up at Luna and saw that she was troubled. "What is it? Am I being too suspicious about this?"

Luna shook her head. "No, I think your precautions are wise."

"Then what's wrong? I know something's bothering you."

"If there is a truce... if you begin to cooperate with the government... what will happen to us?"

"You and I? We will be together," Greg said emphatically. "That's non-negotiable. I'll never..." He paused and watched her carefully. "That's not what you meant is it? By 'us' you meant all the Equestrians... right?"

"Yes," she said softly. "You've been making things better for people. They like the new, verdant land you've been making... for them. But where will we ponies fit into the new world you'll help make?"

"You think I haven't considered that?" Greg asked.

"I know you have," Luna said, raising her gaze to focus intently on his face. "We're aliens. We’re dangerous when challenged. We use magic that frightens people. Where do such creatures fit into your vision for a peaceful world?"

"I don't intend to force anyone into my version of Utopia," he said, placing a hand on Luna’s shoulder. "I just want to make sure that people can live without fear, hunger, or ignorance ruining their lives. What they make of—"

Luna shrugged Greg's hand off her shoulder. "People. You're talking about people again. I want to know—"

"You are people!" Greg nearly yelled at her, "Sugarberry. The griffons up there." He waved at the dark hills dotted with dwarf junipers. "Even those dim-witted diamond dogs... they're all people to me! The world will be for them, too, or the President can take his offer and... oh shit, the President! What time is it?"

He looked at his watch and saw that he had only a minute before the time scheduled for his talk with the President. He quickly connected the little camera to the transceiver and stood back, waiting.

Luna stood behind him and whispered, "I hope this doesn't take long because I'm feeling the distinct need to drag you off into the trees and make you scream... for all the right reasons, of course."

Greg didn't reply but the hint of a smug grin spread across his face. The camera's tally light went on and the small screen next to it lit up, showing the President and several men, half of them in uniform, around him.

"Good evening," Greg said and waited for someone to respond to him. Then he recognized General Greenwaldt and his smile began to fade. And behind him, almost out of sight... Could that really be Gwen? he wondered. What is she...

The asteroid passed through the atmosphere so quickly that it seemed as if the gigantic glowing streak of its passage had appeared all in one instant. Greg had no chance to think before the impact... and after the impact he wasn't able to think.

If someone had doused him in gasoline and set it alight, it wouldn't have been nearly as painful. He felt as if he was burning simultaneously inside and out... as if his very bones had caught fire. The agony was overwhelming and all that went through his mind was a desperate, animal desire to escape the pain.

Nowhere near soon enough, darkness swallowed him.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my stupendous prereaders and editors WrittenWord333, Jordanis, and Fana Farouche.

17 A Change of Plans

Chapter Seventeen

A Change of Plans

Greg fought hard against returning to consciousness and agony but eventually lost the struggle. He ached, and there were twinges of pain from all over his body but, surprisingly, they were all bearable. He tried to sit up and discovered he had almost no strength... he couldn't even lift his head. He did manage to roll his head to one side and, by using his fingers to pull it along, dragged one hand into view, fearing what he would see. Instead of the blackened, burnt skin he feared, he saw that his hand looked normal. It felt like it had been run over by a truck but it looked normal.

Beyond his hand he could see dark ground and a gigantic column of smoke and dust above scattered burning juniper trees.

"Lu..." he tried to call out but immediately broke off into a racking cough that sent spikes of pain through his chest and throat. He had to shut his eyes and breathe quietly for several seconds to fight off the ensuing dizziness and nausea.

He licked his lips and tried again, with less force. His voice came out as a dry croaking whisper but at least it didn't trigger another coughing fit. "Luna?"

There was no answer.

Greg summoned up enough strength to roll his head to the other side, away from the canyon and toward the scrubby juniper woods. Some of the trees were broken and scorched, but at least they weren't on fire. He called again, louder and only coughed once afterward. Still no answer.

He rested for a moment, trying to summon up the strength for a yell that might be heard more than a few feet away. When he opened his eyes again he saw movement in the woods; dark figures making their way towards him.

He tried to call for Luna again but choked and coughed immediately, hot agony ripping through his chest.

One of the figures stooped over him. "Sir? How badly are you hurt? Can you speak?"

Greg made a huge effort and croaked out, "I don't know. Where's Luna?"

The helmeted pony lifted his muzzle, looked around and sniffed. He then made a series of curt gestures to the rest of his squad. "And you two," he said out loud, "cut some of those small saplings for stretcher poles."

"Luna?" Greg insisted.

"They're searching for her," the pony told him. "But we need to get you out of here now. There are human aircraft dropping troops and vehicles—"

"No," Greg insisted, "I'm not going without Luna!"

"She's here!" called a voice from a short distance away.

"Is she alright?" Greg asked, trying desperately to sit up so that he could see. A wave of dizziness swept over him and he fell back, panting.

The pony who had called out came over with something small and limp in his magical aura.

"Oh God! What happened? Is she..." he broke off as the pony placed his burden next to Greg.

"Unconscious," the pony reassured him, "but she's alive."

The tiny alicorn filly that lay next to him was a lighter shade of blue, and her mane and tail were ordinary hair instead of starstuff, but it was undeniably Luna, or perhaps... the name Woona floated into his mind from some fan comic he'd read long ago.

With considerable effort, Greg reached out and touched her neck. She stirred slightly, made a nearly inaudible sighing sound, but didn't wake.

Knowing that she was safe... or the closest to safe they were going to be for a while... Greg's thoughts turned to other matters. "What's the status of everyone else?" he asked the squad’s leader.

"The base is gone. Some ponies may have survived if they were in a shielded area, but we won't know about that for a while yet. Up top, everyone beyond the EMP's effective range is fine... mostly wide patrols like us, or ponies out on a mission. The ones close to the blast..." he made a gesture that indicated that Greg would know more about that situation than he would.

The other ponies returned and made a makeshift stretcher with the saplings and a camouflaged cloth. Greg braced himself for sudden pain as they lifted him onto it, but felt no more than a few twinges. They lashed the stretcher between two ponies, and at Greg’s insistence they placed Woona next to him, where he could cradle her in his arms.

They made their way southward, smoothly and quietly, the unicorns in the squad keeping them all covered with a stealth spell. Greg couldn't judge their progress in the darkness. He did hear distant aircraft, and later what sounded like faint explosions and small arms fire from the north, but it was meaningless to him. He slipped into and out of sleep as they traveled, always waking with a sudden jerk... his heart beating quickly.

The third time they stopped to allow some of the squad to scout ahead and to give Greg a bit of water and food, Woona stirred and moaned. Greg dropped the protein bar and touched her head gently. "It's alright," he whispered, "I'm here."

Her huge eyes fluttered open.

"Hey, you." Greg said softly, still gently stroking her head.

"We're alive..." Woona said, as if the fact was nearly impossible to believe. Her voice was high and squeaky.

"Yeah... I guess you're still stuck with the stupidest genius on the planet," Greg said ruefully.

Woona shifted and poked her muzzle closer to his face. "You're not stupid! Why would you—"

"Well, I sure as hell didn't see this coming! They suckered me. It's only by pure luck we're still alive." He filled her in on the details.

"I knew what it was," she said quietly after he'd finished. "I've felt it before, you know. I saw you fall and I tried to get to you, but I couldn't. And then..."

"You must have lasted a lot longer than I did. All I remember is the flash and then the pain... ghod, the pain! I don't know why I'm not burned all over."

"It was the canyon," Woona told him. "The south rim is much higher than the north and it deflected most of the blast. The only thing that hit us was the EMP and the secondary shock wave. Otherwise, I don't think..."

"But that's... are you sure? The EMP shouldn't have affected me at all. I... wait." Greg's words trailed off, and he got that look on his face that his partner knew very well indeed. Woona let him think and drifted off back to sleep.

= = =

The squad of ponies got them clear of the area cordoned off by the military and set up a concealed camp for them to spend the day in. Both Greg and Luna felt much better and were able to move around a bit by the next evening.

"I am glad to have recovered my normal form," Luna said. "I hadn't imagined there would be a downside to being dependant on an Equestrian-themed narrative."

"Aw," Greg said, half-teasingly. "You were adorable as Woona!"

"I am uncomfortable with 'adorable'," she replied flatly.

"I never even thought about it," Greg said as they shared a cold meal of dried, compressed crap that tasted horrible but could, in theory, keep them fed and healthy for weeks. "Whatever happened to my original physical body when I first went into the sim, it was replaced by this one when I came out... just like yours. That's why I was vulnerable to the EMP. Now I'm made up of the same type of matter that you and the other ponies are." He poked at his forearm with a finger, made a fist, and poked again. "Funny, I don't feel any different. But, you know..." he pulled up his t-shirt and looked down at his belly. "I haven't been nearly as physically active this past year... sitting at computer terminals around the base and eating a lot of great food..." he paused a moment, realizing that Sugarberry, who had been such a fine cook as well as an able assistant, was now gone forever. He sighed and tucked his shirt back in. "I haven't gained any weight. I'm still as lean as when we were on the run in the Midwest. Maybe I'm... I dunno, frozen in this body the way it is now."

Luna leaned over and nuzzled against his belly. "Frozen or not, it's a very nice body and, once we get somewhere safe and private, I'll show you just how much I appreciate it!"

"Well, then," Greg grinned, "I guess we'd better hurry and find a new place to live!"

Luna looked up at him and asked, "And what then?"

"With any luck, they might believe I'm dead... and maybe I should let them continue to think that until I'm ready to make my next move." He shifted onto his side and wrapped his arms around Luna, resting one cheek against the back of her neck.

She sighed and snuggled into his embrace. "What will that be?"

"I'm not certain... but I do know one thing," Greg said, "I tried to show them what I could do for them and look how that turned out. I think now I'll have to show them what I can do to them."

= = =

"Captain Sundstrom? The General will see you now."

Gwen got up and brushed past the aid, just barely keeping from stomping as she entered the office deep in the Pentagon.

The three-star general seated behind the desk glanced up from his paperwork and said, simply, "Sit."

Like I'm his fucking dog, Gwen thought bitterly as she sat in one of the hard wooden chairs facing the desk. Her relationship with the Army had grown into a very equitable one: she hated it... and it hated her back.

After making her wait in silence for a long moment, the general looked up and said, "This report speaks very highly of your mixed Equestrian unit's ability to deal with wild Equestrians."

"Since the destruction of Greg's Arizona base, we've killed more of them than all the other units combined... by a long shot." Gwen put in, even though she knew the general already knew the figures. "And no casualties. The other units have lost... how many men?"

"Immaterial," the general snapped. "We now want to know how good your unit will be at a different task."

"What? You're going to give them tanks to drive? Or maybe airplanes—"

"Captain Sundstrom," the man snarled, "you will not use that tone of voice with me. Is that understood?"

Gwen briefly weighed the satisfaction of telling the desk-bound old tub of lard what she thought of him against the probable consequences and simply said, "Yes, sir," in a flat monotone.

"Good." He lifted the papers in front of him and read, "’Two ponies and one griffon captured.' Out of all the ones killed, that is a very low number. Why is that?"

"There's a razor thin line between when a pony is too hurt or exhausted to fight and when it dies from energy loss... and that window of opportunity doesn't last long. The ones we've captured were because of luck, not intent."

"But you could increase the ratio if you did intend capture, correct?"

"Yes, but that would dramatically increase the threat to the members of my unit. Holding back while fighting even an earth pony isn't exactly suicide, but it's close. And don't forget, my team is comprised of some very young people as well as the Equestrians themselves. Practically children."

"Nevertheless, we need more captive Equestrians for the scientists to study. They don't last long and we only get a tiny amount of information from them before they..." the general groped for an appropriate word, "...dissolve. We need more test subjects."

"General," Gwen said quietly, trying to keep any hint of the anger and outrage she was feeling out of her voice, "do you really think that having a few more ponies to... study, would be worth any of my young people being killed? It's bad enough that the 'friends' are exposed to danger in—"

The general was unmoved. "The phrase used in my orders is 'at any cost.' But there is another way of obtaining subjects without risking the lives under your command."

Gwen blinked in surprise but said nothing, as it was obvious the general had a surprise that he wanted her to ask for.

After a moment the general's frown deepened a bit and he said, "We could also use volunteers."

It took a second for that to sink in. "You mean you want them to... no, that's crazy! Look, the only reason the ponies are fighting with us is because of their friendship with the kids. Are you asking me to betray that friendship—"

"I'm not interested in what methods you choose to use, Captain Sundstrom," the general interrupted, "I only want results. You will deliver more Equestrian captives to Army Intelligence and the NSA, as ordered, or I will replace you with someone who will. And your new assignment will be as unpleasant as I can make it, if you somehow escape court martial for dereliction of duty. Is. That. Clear?"

I could kill him, Gwen thought. I could put a kick right under his chin that would knock his head back and snap his spine. Maybe... claim a wild pony had somehow appeared in his office and... She sighed and said, "Yes, sir."

= = =

Greg never made the same mistake twice. He didn't build a new base, he made several small, hidden safe houses. They mostly were houses, though some were caves, and a few were heavily modified warehouses. He grew portal mirrors in all of them... small ones that could only pass a few ponies at a time. He and Luna never stayed more than a day in any one of them, and most of his computing and communications traffic was routed through the Equestrian matrix where there was no possibility that anyone could trace it.

When his new operation was stable and decentralized enough, he began to do research into what had happened in Arizona and then began to take measures to make sure it wouldn't happen again. Or, at least, if it were attempted, he would have more than enough advanced warning. The JPL and NASA computer systems were infiltrated and monitored closely.

Greg also began to do experiments on expanding and manipulating the Equestria sim. The government scientists might find a way to let the military face him on that battle ground, too, and he was determined to be ready for them... if he couldn't put a stop to all the insane hostilities before then. He couldn't improve on the optimization of the code himself, but he could put together a team of unicorns who researched spells and created magical artifacts inside the Equestrian sim itself. The spells, talismans, and such were just coarse-resolution stand-ins for what the underlying code was actually doing, but it seemed to be fairly effective even from the outset.

Then he turned his attention to other things he had held back from, for fear of a negative public reaction. He no longer gave a damn about public reaction.

Greg made the initial test of his ponification code on a boy dying of leukemia in an Oregon hospice. The boy had written him many times, and as the only child of parents in prison for drug dealing, he wouldn't be missed, no matter how the experiment turned out. Greg assumed the hospice staff would cover up the boy's disappearance to save themselves from an investigation.

It was a complete success, even if the newly minted unicorn colt insisted on following Greg around like a puppy afterwards. Greg gave him into the care of a pair of unicorns living in a little university town in the Equestria sim, and released the ponification code onto the internet.

The code delivered itself to all the people that had sent him requests and monitored traffic for additional searches. It was disguised as a pony-themed quiz game, and it weeded out mere fans and suspicious government types though a long series of questions, puzzles, and scenes, all designed to appeal only to those most dedicated to making the change.

There were tragedies as a result, of course. But only a very few. The new ponies were just as incredibly tough as the originals, and would flee from intolerant and dangerous people rather than fight if given the chance. Many found a way to contact Greg, and they joined his organization or immigrated to Equestria. Official sources denied that any such thing was happening, while thousands of agents and scientists desperately scrambled for a way to stop it.

And then, as a result of fiddling around with Luna's transformative power in conjunction with the ponification operation, Greg discovered something that crystallized his plans for the future.

Almost six months to the day after the asteroid drop, computer and TV screens world-wide flickered briefly and revealed Greg's smiling face. "This is a friendly warning to the bastards that tried to kill me several times... to the scum that did kill thousands of my friends in Arizona and millions of innocent Americans. I tried to be nice. I tried to make peace. I tried to make the world a better place. But I see now that things will never get any better until you murderous pieces of shit are stamped out like cockroaches." Greg paused, still smiling, to let that thought sink in.

"So, in exactly one hour... just as a small demonstration of what's to come... I'm going to wipe Washington DC off the face of the Earth."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my sensational prereaders and editors WrittenWord333, Jordanis, and Fana Farouche!

Check the comments section for this chapter to tind Jordanis's excellent filk song!

18 A Clean Slate

Chapter Eighteen

A Clean Slate

Far beneath the Pentagon in the secure area set aside for Equestrian research, Gwen had finally lost her temper.

"Are you a fucking idiot?" she screamed at the liaison for Homeland Security who had interrupted her already heated discussion with the laboratory director to inform her of Greg's broadcast threat. "Do you think for one second that he just told us his real plans? There's no way in hell he'd give us that much advance notice of—"

The cowering man was saved by the sudden appearance of a Marine lieutenant. "Captain Sundstrom, you're needed topside ASAP. I'm to take you to an emergency meeting of the Joint Chiefs."

The lieutenant thought he heard her mutter something like "more idiots," but she made a curt gesture for him to lead the way and said nothing else.

After the elevator doors had closed behind her and the lieutenant, the HS liaison turned to the lab director and said, "God, what a... a..."

The director shook his head and said, "You won't come up with anything that hasn't been said a hundred times already. Sometimes that woman scares me more than the things we've got locked up back there." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the Equestrian containment cells that hummed and crackled as the power needed to restrain their occupants was pumped through the titanium mesh over the bars.

The HS liaison pointed at the black and yellow warning stripe labeled DANGER AREA that ran along the front of the cells about six feet away from the bars. "Maybe they ought to paint something like that around her!"

It was the last time either of them ever laughed.

= = =

Things began to unfold exactly as Greg had expected.

People immediately did the last thing that would be of any help: they panicked. The government responded with all the efficiency and effectiveness it had shown during such disasters as the hurricanes Katrina and Victor, which meant that the DC police and firefighters were pretty much on their own, trying to guide and keep peaceful the desperate flood of people all attempting to flee the district at once.

In contrast, the evacuation of the President, Senate and Congress began very smoothly. Unsurprisingly, a detailed plan for the hurried evacuation of the political leadership had been in place since the Cold War.

In the station of the private railway that ran beneath the Capitol Building, legislators and hand-picked members of their contingents lined up in an orderly, unhurried way, boarding the trains as they rolled up to the platform, one after the other. Nobody noticed that the trains didn't look exactly like the ones that usually ran on the line.

Marine One, the huge helicopter that was always at the President's disposal, touched down on the South Lawn of the White House. The President, his family, and a few members of his cabinet, surrounded by Secret Service guards, crossed the lawn and boarded the aircraft. The helicopter took off smoothly and turned onto a heading for Andrews Air Force Base. The first inkling that anyone had that something had gone wrong was when Marine One suddenly disappeared in a bright flash of light and a completely underwhelming pop.

= = =

"Two down and one to go," Greg said as he watched the Presidential aircraft vanish from where he stood on the roof of the Pentagon. He noted the flights of pegasi and griffons that would provide air cover for his current operation rising into the air across the Potomac and then lowered his binoculars and touched a button on his headset and began to speak. "Are the diamond dogs in position? Good. Go ahead. Make sure the lower floors are isolated and the roof—"

He didn't get a chance to finish. A section of the roof about 50 feet from him blasted upward, creating a swirling cloud of smoke and debris.

"Never mind," he sighed, "I'll take care of the roof."

Luna crouched, her wings lifting in anticipation as Greg unclipped his control device from his belt, unhappy at the thought of taking out soldiers who were only doing their job. But since their job was to protect the bastards who had waged a senseless and brutal war against him, it couldn't be helped. But what was revealed as the smoke and dust blew away wasn't soldiers... not in the strictest sense, anyway.

They were ponies. And what appeared to be children.

They were all in brightly colored uniform jumpsuits and helmets. Greg just stared for a moment, caught completely flat-footed. Then he saw the figure standing behind the kids and ponies The figure wore the same sort of uniform as the rest but was taller and more obviously female.

Gwen flipped up the visor of her helmet and smiled a sweet, poisonous smile at him. "Hello Greg. You're a bit ahead of schedule, aren't you? But you didn't fool me." She wasn't about to tell him that she had had no idea that he'd show up there in person and that she had only been ordered to use her Equestrian troops guard the building by the Joint Chiefs. She shrugged casually and said, her voice dripping with satisfaction, "This is my unit... the Pony Defense Force. We're here to kick the ever-loving shit out of you and your broken-down nag."

Greg had a hard time suppressing outright laughter. "PDF? Really? What happened to the Guardians of Harmony? Maybe a focus group would have helped with the acronym selection. And who did you hire to design those uniforms, Hasbro?"

Gwen didn't bother replying to him, but turned to one of the young girls instead. "Sergeant Melissa, Alicorn Attack Formation, now!"

= = =

The passengers aboard the capitol subway train were astounded when they emerged from the darkness of familiar tunnels to roll through a verdant field of tall grass and wildflowers. Some of them felt a sudden nausea and one or two slumped to the floor of the train, unconscious, but most were unaware of how strange the transition really was.

After less than a minute, the train slid to a smooth stop in front of a rustic but beautifully-designed train station and the doors slid open. At first, nobody wanted to exit into this beautiful but strange new land. An earth pony in something like a conductor’s uniform walked along the cars saying, "Move on out, now! We gotta go back for another load."

The speech didn't convince them at first. Then several unicorn ponies began lifting people bodily out of the train in their magic, saying, "You're messin' up our schedule! Go on! Git!"

They got.

Beyond the station was a large, beautiful village of half-timbered houses with straw thatched roofs climbing up the shoulder of a tall, green hill. A few figures moved here and there in its streets... figures that weren't human. In the large open area before the village was a crowd of people who had come through before the newest arrivals, and in the middle of the crowd was a huge military helicopter bearing the seal of the President of the United States. It's rotors were missing, but it seemed otherwise undamaged.

A senator stepped forward and called out to the people around the aircraft. "Does anybody know what the hell's going on here?"

= = =

"When the guards told us the roof access doors had been fused, and all the cameras up here had gone dark, I knew it had to be you," Gwen said as her team spread out across the rooftop. "Fortunately, some of our members carry their own built-in blasting equipment... which we are now going to use on you!"

Greg shook off his astonished paralysis and actually grinned at Gwen. "I'm actually glad to see you, because I've wanted to meet these ponies for a long, long time." He made a general gesture with his left hand, indicating the line of enemies facing him.

He squeezed the bonus selector button on his control device and the pulse of energy that shot into his partner made her fur ripple and spark. The unicorns of the Pony Defense Force lit their horns, but before they could get off any spells, Greg had pressed the level-up button and there was a brilliant blast of light centered on Luna.

When the light died down the Dark Goddess stood on the rooftop in a full suit of shining silver armor. Her fur was jet black and thousands of tiny stars twinkled within it. Her mane and tail were the shifting shapes and colors of deep space nebulae. The irises of her eyes were frozen supernovae shock waves. She was wreathed by an aura of immense power that was tangible even to the magically blind humans.

The ponies facing her only hesitated a second. Then the girl, who was evidently a sergeant, called out, “Pegasi, cover and take shots of opportunity. Unicorns, pin her down with magic and let the earth ponies stomp on her!”

Greg ducked behind a giant air-conditioning unit for cover as the Dark Goddess repelled the first volley of magic and the first charge of the earth ponies with a shield that briefly flared into existence.

They countered by spreading out and moving to surround her.

It was obvious to Greg that they were very experienced in battle. Soft exchanges like their first attack were fairly safe for them and a few more exchanges of the same type would trigger their own power-up states.

"Hey guys," he called out to them. "Has the military really got you so brainwashed? You may not like me a whole lot, but are you really going to go up against Equestrian royalty? Princess of the Night and all that?" He paused. "Guys?"

The rooftop blazed with colorful fire and the cries of battle.

"Huh. I guess they are," he said to himself. Then he called out loudly again. "Don't hurt them, Luna! They're just dumb kids."

A blast of sizzling unicorn magic hit the corner of the air-conditioner and turned it into molten slag.

"Okay," Greg shouted. "Dumb but dangerous! Try not to hurt them too much!"

= = =

Far below the fighting, the lights in the Equestrian containment area flickered briefly. "Don't worry," the director hastened to reassure the HS liaison, "We've got two redundant instant-on backup generators down here. Even if the main power fails, we'll be fine."

Behind him there was a crash and a section of the floor fell in. Rough hand-like paws lifted a pretty little pink unicorn into the room with the two men. "Generators?" the unicorn asked in a soft, melodic voice. Her horn flared and several rooms away there was the sound of crumpling metal. "And if something happened to your generators?" she asked, almost pleasantly.

The director spun around and gaped at the pony, but before he could say anything, the room was plunged into darkness.

The hum of the electrified cells fell silent.

The last thing the two men heard was the creak and snap of metal bars and many sets of heavy hooves and claws rushing toward them.

= = =

In the broad meadow across the train tracks from the village station, a spire of crystalline rock surged up through the earth. The crowd of people turned as one, most wondering if the bizarre structure presaged something dangerous. So far, none of them had worked up the nerve to enter the village and encounter the ponies that peered curiously out at them.

A fissure split the spire and widened into a gap large enough for a man to pass through... which was convenient because that was exactly what began to happen: men started passing through. Men in uniform. Angry, confused men in uniform. Some of them staggered as they made the transition to digital form and a few passed out, as had happened on the trains, but most simply marched through and began shouting angry questions at the people across the tracks.

General Greenwaldt said nothing. When the ponies had forced them all through the glowing mirror portals that had appeared inside the Pentagon, he had a much better idea about what was going on than anyone else in the crowd. He marched past Marine One, merely glancing at the huddled knot of men around the First Family and continued on to the gates of the village. There was a crude painted banner hung from the gate posts that read: Welcome Huma. On the post to the right were the final two letters in a different colored paint: ns!

The pony standing, smiling at the gate was fairly innocuous-looking but Greenwaldt knew better than anyone that the way they looked was deceptive. "You're a unicorn, aren't you?" he asked, trying not to sound hostile.

"Not quite," the purple creature chirped happily and ruffled the wings that the general had overlooked, "I'm an alicorn, and my name is Twilight Sparkle. Welcome to Terminus Village!"

Terminus, thought the general sourly, I don't like the sound of that. Aloud, he said, "Have you been given any orders?"

"Orders?" She chuckled pleasantly. "Oh, nothing so formal as that! Greg has asked me, and all of the ponies here, to welcome the new arrivals, attend to their needs, and make them feel comfortable in their new home."

"New... home?" The general grunted in surprise.

"Why, yes!" The little pony hesitated and then added, "Oh, not just the village... this whole world is your new home. It's pretty large... it ought to be room enough for all of you even if you like to spread out. But right now, you should all come to the village square. Pinkie Pie has a welcome party prepared for you and she's really gone all-out on it!"

"What if we don't want to stay?"

"Well..." The pony cocked her head to one side, carefully considering the general's question. "Then, you will probably be unhappy." She straightened her head and her eyes took on a hard glint that the general didn't care for at all. "Because you are going to stay. You're going to stay here forever."

= = =

Greg surveyed the disorganized ponies with satisfaction. They weren't quite beaten, but they were being steadily driven back by the Dark Goddess’s relentless attacks. It won't be long, now, he thought.

"Hey, Gwen," he called out, "Are you sure you don't want to surrender? If you ask me really nicely, I might even..." he looked around, suddenly realizing that in the confusion of battle, he had lost track of the woman. He spun and ducked instinctively and there, behind him was Gwen, no more than thirty feet away.

"Nice try," he growled at her.

She kept coming.

Greg raised an eyebrow. "Are you looking for a personal rematch?" he asked as he dropped into a fighting crouch. "Because I'd just love to—"

When she was just outside of his reach, Gwen made a flicking motion with her right arm and a small pistol appeared in her hand as if by magic. In the space of two heartbeats, she shot Greg twice in the center of his chest and once in the head.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my unutterably swell prereaders and editors WrittenWord333, Jordanis, and Fana Farouche!

19 The Bad Seed

Chapter Nineteen

The Bad Seed

The creatures that had escaped the containment cells in the Pentagon basement ripped through the doors to the elevator shaft and raced upward toward freedom. They could sense the fight on the roof but were more interested in escape... particularly the ones who's acuity of perception allowed them to recognize the combatants as the ones who had captured them in the first place.

But there was one who wasn't interested in escape. That one paused at every level, sniffing at the cracks of the elevator doors until one bore the scent she was searching for. She shoved a long horn between the doors, forced them open, and leaped out into the hallway.

The pony ran, head down, following the scent until she came to a wide double door that was securely locked. She tore through the doors in seconds and snarled at the sharp whine of bullets that hit her behind her shoulder as she surged into the room. Reflexively, she spun and dispatched the soldier with a single blast of green energy from her horn.

Then she hesitated, staring down at the dead man, feeling confused and uncertain. "Never kill humans," had been an unbreakable rule. But there had been other rules, too, rules that had been broken. Trusts that had been betrayed. She shook her head and snarled in dismissive anger. The scent, and finding its source, was all that mattered.

Two more doors gave way before her and the scent grew steadily stronger until, when she pressed her nose against the crack beneath the third, the scent came clear and strong and fresh. She kicked at the door, but it wasn't as flimsy as the others. It was solid layers of steel over a heavy metal framework. The pony bared her teeth in frustration and savagely blasted at the door and the frame and the wall until the sheet metal tore and the frame buckled and shattered. She used so much of her strength that she was unable to maintain her disguise, and it slipped away in a whirl of green fire.

The changeling shouldered the ruined door aside and burst into the small room—searching in the dim illumination of the emergency lights. And there she was... a small girl huddled, terrified on a simple metal cot. Terrified... until she could make out the shape of the monster that had ripped its way into her cell. The girl gave a half-shout, half-sob of joy, leaped off the cot and ran to the changeling, throwing her arms around her neck.

"You're alive!" she cried over and over again as tears of happiness streamed down her cheeks. "You're alive! You're alive!"

= = =

"Ow! Ow!" Greg yelled as he rubbed the red mark on his forehead where the third bullet had struck him. "Shit, Gwen! That hurt!"

Gwen froze in surprise for an instant but then raised the gun again.

"Oh, no you don't." Greg muttered and stepped in on her with startling speed. He tried to grab the gun out of her hand but found that it was attached to her. A metal rod was connected to its butt and ran up her sleeve. By pulling on it, he merely jammed the mechanism and jerked her around a bit. So he satisfied himself with pushing the gun's slide back and crushing its end between his thumb and forefinger, rendering the weapon useless.

"What the hell..." Gwen stared at the broken gun and then at Greg.

"Equestrian reconstruction," Greg told her. "I'm all carbon-fiber muscles and pure electrical reflexes now... better, stronger, faster... pretty much the same as the ponies, really. You can't hurt me." He stepped back out of her range and took a quick glance at the battle. The Dark Goddess strode among the fallen, casually dealing with the few who were still able to resist.

"You might as well call off your... unit. Sorry, Gwen, but I just can’t bring myself to use the stupid acronym. All the top brass will have been neutralized by now," Greg told her. "You've already lost. Being turned to stone, encased in crystal, or... " He waved a hand at the varied examples of the Dark Goddess's work. "All of that is reversible, but some of it isn't exactly comfortable."

Gwen sneered at him. "Not even human anymore, Greg? Why aren't you in there with your partner?" The way she said the word made it sound like an obscenity.

"Oh, I wouldn't want to deny the Goddess her fun," Greg shrugged. "Besides, even as strong as I am now, I'm still vulnerable to unicorn magic, and I don't have—"

"Good!" Gwen interrupted him as she grabbed at the small of her back with her left hand. If she had been able to use her right hand, Greg wouldn't have had a chance. But because the ruined gun still hung in front of it, she had to fumble at her back-up weapon with her off hand, and it made her just slow enough.

Greg stared in surprise as the stubby little gun rose toward him. Its barrel was so wide that he could have stuck his thumb down it. Just as he was beginning to twist aside from her line of fire, a set of razor fangs slammed shut on Gwen's left forearm. She shrieked in pain and the gun went off, blasting a bathtub-sized hole in the roof where the specially-designed pony-killer round impacted. Greg recovered his balance and just stared at the newcomers, unsure what was happening. Gwen used her broken gun to hammer at the black head of the changeling that held her arm trapped but it simply squinted its eyes shut and bit down harder. There was a muffled crunch from inside its mouth and Gwen gasped and sank to her knees, her face whitening in pain and shock.

"You lied to me," said a soft voice.

Greg hadn't noticed the small girl standing beside the changeling, resting one hand on its back just behind its gauzy wings. She was small and delicate of build with long dark hair. There were the streaks of dried tears on her cheeks and an expression of pure hatred on her face.

"You said they wouldn't hurt Chitter. You said it was just for tests," the small girl continued. "But they did hurt her... they hurt her a lot.” She broke off and sobbed once. "But she got away... she found me..."

Greg felt safe enough to glance at the fight again. The Dark Goddess was shaking a pegasus like a terrier would a rat. The pony was making a ridiculous pbpbppbpbpbppbbbb sound and feathers were flying everywhere. Most of the rest of the opposing ponies seemed to be out of the fight, and without their pony friends, the kids didn't seem to know what to do. Greg turned back to Gwen, the girl, and her changeling friend.

"If... if Chitter had died..." The girl paused to sob again. Gwen was now hanging from the changeling's jaws, halfway to unconsciousness from pain and blood loss, but the girl either didn't notice or didn't care. "I would have been all alone! She's the only one who ever... who ever liked me! Melissa never did! You never did! The creepy girl and her creepy monster friend... I know that's what you all thought! But I never thought you would... you..." She was crying at the same time as she spoke, her words nearly unintelligible. "Did you... hate me so much? I fought for... for you..."

"It's all right," Greg told her softly, stepping around the changeling to reach out to the girl. The changeling gave a little warning growl, blowing small bubbles of saliva and blood from between her lips. She shifted her weight, preparing to strike at Greg if he offered any threat to her friend. Greg lowered his hand. "Chitter’s fine now. You won't be alone."

The girl wiped away her tears with her forearm and looked down at Greg as if seeing him for the first time. "I want to join you," she said. "I guess I'm a bad guy now... like you. But I don't care! I don't care as long as I have Chitter with me."

Greg stepped back. Bad guy, huh? he thought, sourly. He looked back at the fight. The Dark Goddess was standing with one hoof on a unicorn and holding up a huge weakly struggling earth pony in a twist of her glowing mane.

"I think you've made your point, Your Majesticness!" he called to her.

The Dark Goddess threw him an are-you-sure look, then lifted her hoof off the gasping unicorn and lowered the earth pony to the roof. She calmly surveyed her beaten opponents. "The next time we meet, you will show me the respect due to a princess of Equestria."

When they didn't have to desperately struggle to keep from being flung around like stuffed toys, the ponies had a chance to see what was happening across the rooftop.

"Captain!" The girl sergeant called out, "Are you alright? Leave her alone you monster!"

Greg assumed that she was probably talking to the changeling but it was the small girl who answered her. "No, Melissa! She would have killed Chitter, and now I'm going to kill her."

The girl blanched in shock and pulled off her helmet, revealing a freckled face and a tumble of fiery red hair. "Lisa? What... what do you mean? You can't be serious!"

"Let her go," Greg said softly to Lisa. The girl said nothing... just stared at him in confusion.

Greg didn't have time to explain or argue. "If you want to join me, you can. But you have to do what I say. Let her go."

Lisa whispered a response and Chitter released Gwen, who slumped down onto the roof, cradling her ruined arm. Greg nodded his thanks and then turned to the Dark Goddess.

"Looking good, lover!" Greg called up to her. "Ready to fly?"

She lifted one eyebrow and looked down at him out of the corner of one eye.

"We need to go. Can you carry all of us?" He made a motion indicating Gwen, Lisa, and the changeling.

She didn't deign to reply. She just lit her horn and picked them all up in her magical aura. They began to lift off from the rooftop, smoothly and silently.

"Wait!" Melissa called up to him. "Leave the Captain! She needs a doctor! Please!"

"Don't worry, I'll take care of her," Greg replied in a tone of voice that wasn't very reassuring.

"No!" the girl screamed, "We'll get you! We'll find you and stop you! And you too, Lisa... you traitor!" Lisa tried not to react to the screamed curse, but Greg saw her flinch and Chitter lifted her lip ever so slightly. They soared off into the sky, rapidly accelerating and leaving the Pentagon and Washington far behind.

"Can you spare some magic for Gwen?" Greg asked. The Dark Goddess sighed and a glow formed around Gwen's mangled arm. The magic pulsed briefly and disappeared. Gwen relaxed and then slumped, going completely prone and slipping into a forced sleep.

Greg turned to the small girl who still sat on the shoulders of her partner. "Okay... Lisa, is it? First, tell me what happened to you and Chitter and then I'll try and set you straight about who the real villains are around here." He kept his voice as light and cheerful as possible and was rewarded by a wan little smile from the girl.

= = =

Gwen woke up gradually. She was lying on a bed under a thin coverlet. The room was sparsely furnished, but one side had a large piece of unfamiliar machinery in one corner. Gwen cautiously sat up and raised her left arm. It seemed fine. There were no wounds... not even any scars... not even the ones that had been there before Chitter had bitten her.

As she began to take in the room, the diamond dog perched on a stool behind her spoke up. “Nice lady is awake now, yes?”

Gwen leaped from the bed, throwing the cover in the direction of the dog and dashed for the door. She wrenched at the handle but it didn't budge.

"Don’t be afraid of Rex! Rex won’t hurt you!”

Gwen spun and delivered a full-strength back kick beside the door handle. The door made a cracking sound but didn't otherwise seem affected. Gwen turned to face the diamond dog but kept as far away from it as the small room allowed.

"Rex will get Greg. Greg will know what to do!” The creature reached up to its collar and pinched what appeared to be a dog tag between two of its thick clawed fingers and spoke to it. “Lady is awake now. Greg come before she breaks more things, yes?”

Gwen suddenly realized she hadn't a stitch of clothing on and hurriedly reexamined the room. There were some light gray sweat clothes draped over the back of a single chair, and she slipped into them as fast as possible.

A minute or so later, there was a rattle at the door, a pause, and another, more forceful rattle. Then the door cracked and broke and swung out into the hallway.

"I think you jammed the lock with your kick," Greg said as he held out one arm, indicating that Gwen should come out into the hall.

"How did you know what I..." Gwen began.

"Cameras." Greg said shortly. "They're everywhere throughout this facility, and there are ponies on patrol outside the building who have orders to kill you on sight, so no stupid moves, please." He led her into a room that had three large swivel chairs facing a wall of monitors. On the central monitor was a view of a large room containing several long couches around a large, low table. The room was well-lit but there were no windows. Luna was sitting on one couch and Chitter was stretched out on the one next to hers. Between them, on the floor, sat Lisa, passing tidbits of food up to her partner from the large platter that rested on the low table in front of her. She looked happy.

"Lisa has told me a very interesting story, Gwen," Greg said as he waved her to a seat and settled into the chair next to hers. "I'm really impressed with what you did with the kids... collecting them and their pony friends... training them... indoctrinating them."

Gwen said nothing. She sat silently, carefully watching his face.

"I always knew you were deceitful and manipulative," Greg continued, "but I never thought you'd just turn over someone on your own team to be—"

"I didn't have a choice!" Gwen snapped. "If those bastards had gotten their way it would have been half my team in those cells instead of just that one." She tossed her head at Chitter.

"And you picked her because she didn't fit in well with the others? Or was it personal dislike or something more subtle? Maybe some devious psychological manipulation you had in mind to—"

"Goddammit, Greg!" she spat at him. "You're nobody to be pointing a finger at me for doing the best I could under difficult circumstances. As for dishonesty and outright lying, you and your monster are way out of my league!"

"Misdirection and even outright lies are just weapons, I'll grant you," Greg said. "But I'm talking about betraying someone who's... who... what did you say?"

"I said you're a lying sack of shit," Gwen replied helpfully.

"No you didn't. Not just me... you included Luna." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Why did you do that?"

Gwen threw back her head and laughed. "Oh good God, Greg! You still haven't figured out how she's been playing you all this time? Every move you've made has been tainted with her objectives!"

Greg was on his feet. "That's bullshit! This is one of your sick games and I'm not going to listen to it!"

"Fine. But you're close to consolidating your power aren't you?" Gwen continued, ignoring Greg's flushed face and his tightly clenched fists. "When she's safe... when she and the other ponies aren't in danger any more... do you really think she'll have any reason to serve you... her master any longer? You think I'm an expert manipulator? Well it takes one to know one, and I could see what she was doing to you from—"

"Shut up!" Greg snarled at her.

"Okay, okay," Gwen said, as she sighed and pretended indifference, "I won't try to enlighten you. But you're a smart guy... you should think back to every important decision you've made and see if it wasn't just what your horsey fuck-buddy wanted you to—"

The slap echoed in the small room like a gunshot. Gwen tumbled to the floor and collapsed, dazed by the force of the blow. Greg left the room with long, angry strides and made a curt gesture to the unicorn waiting in the hallway. "Tie her up and gag her and bring her to the Common Room in fifteen minutes. If she gives you any trouble, you can kick the hell out of her but don't kill her. I've promised that privilege to someone else."

Greg continued down the hallway, trying to keep his anger under control. He'd be rid of Gwen soon, and then he could begin to wipe the memory of her from his life. He wouldn't have to think... to think about what she'd said.

He tried not to...

...but the seed had been planted.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my egregiously erudite prereaders and editors Fana Farouche, WrittenWord333, and Jordanis!

20 Bad Guys

Chapter Twenty

Bad Guys

They all reacted differently when Greg entered the Common Room. Chitter coolly tracked him with a pair of baleful blue eyes. Greg knew the look; it was that almost reflexive assessment that "monster" types went through when meeting a strange creature: How strong is he? Is he hostile? Any obvious weak points? It was the equivalent of a friendly nod between strangers. Greg took it as a compliment.

Lisa went quiet, pulled her legs up, and hugged her knees to her chest while lowering her head. She stared up at him through a drift of hair that had fallen across her face. Obviously she had come to regard attention of any sort as a bad thing.

Luna took less than a second to realize that something was wrong. "Greg? Is she—"

"Awake, yes," he nodded as he sat on the couch opposite her.

Luna had shifted to make room on her couch for Greg, and his choice of seat made her even more concerned. "Did she... do something? Or—"

Greg barked out a laugh and shook his head. "It's weird. I've never admired anyone so much that I also wanted to kill so badly. That woman is dangerous."

"I..." Luna frowned. "I don't understand."

"It's alright, Luna," Greg said, staring down at the tabletop rather than looking at his partner. "One way or another, we won't have to worry about her for much longer."

"Are you..." Lisa began hesitantly. "Are you going to..." She trailed off and pulled in on herself even tighter, only her eyes visible above her knees.

"Kill her?" Greg said. "Yes. Not me personally... I promised Luna that she could do it. And I don't go back on my promises."

"I... I would have done it last night," Lisa said. "I was so mad at her for hurting Chitter that I... I..." She rested her forehead against her knees, and the rest of her words were muffled and barely audible. "But I don't want to anymore. I guess I'm a bad guy now but... but... please don't make me watch, okay?"

There was a long silence.

Greg got up and crossed to where Lisa sat on the floor and knelt down in front of her. Chitter lifted her lip at him in warning. Greg glared at the changeling, using his long experience with Equestrians to give a silent but clear message: I'm her friend.

Chitter blinked in surprise but relaxed, watching the two of them with curiosity.

Greg lifted Lisa's head from her knees, forcing her to look him in the face. "Geek, nerd, weirdo, creep," he said with slow deliberation.

Lisa gasped and her eyes went wide. Chitter’s eyes narrowed to angry, smoldering slits.

Greg went on, ignoring both of their reactions, "That's what you've been called, right? That and worse. Whoever said that about you chose those words because they would hurt you, not because they really meant anything. They should have said; Bright, intelligent, creative, sensitive... and a hundred other good things about you!"

Lisa tried to pull away from Greg but he held her still. "You are not a bad guy because there's no such thing! There are good deeds and bad deeds, and everybody does some of both. There are people who do mostly one or the other but that doesn't mean they can't do the opposite. You're not a label, you're the total sum of what you do. You left a group that shunned you and who even gave your friend over to people who tortured her with their experiments, people who wouldn't care if she died. They say that leaving is betraying them... I say that's just what any sane person would do!"

He let go of her head and stood up. She followed him with her gaze, and there were tears in her eyes but she didn't look away from him. "Do you think this changeling here would be friends with just anyone?" Greg asked her, indicating Chitter who was again blinking in puzzlement. "She tore apart half the Pentagon to rescue you! A person who commands that sort of loyalty from someone as powerful as she is... well, they must really be something exceptional... and that's you, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Then..." Lisa began hesitantly, "what...what do I do now? I thought I was doing good when Chitter and I were fighting wild Equestrians even though the rest of the team—"

"...were insensitive idiots," Greg finished for her.

That got a small smile out of her for a moment. "I just don't want to hurt people," she finished quietly.

"I never wanted to hurt anyone either," Greg said, "I just got... well, caught up in things I guess. No, I won't ask you to hurt anyone. In fact, I won't ask you to do anything you don't want to... or even stay here, for that matter. If you want to go back to your family—"

Lisa shook her head emphatically. Greg guessed that either she was an orphan or she had some serious problems at home. But he wasn't about to press her if she didn't want to talk about it. "Okay, then. Why don't you and your pal here go have some fun? There are some systems in the rec room with just about every videogame known to mankind.

Chitter's head came up with an immediate look of eager curiosity. Lisa smiled again. "Really? Could we?"

"Yup!" Greg returned her smile.

After they'd scrambled out of the room, Greg flopped down on the couch they'd vacated and idly pulled bits of stuffing out of the rents in the cushions left by Chitter’s sharp, perforated hooves. Luna watched him silently until a unicorn guard brought Gwen into the room.

Greg got up and faced her, saying nothing for a long moment. Gwen was silent, too, but that was mainly because she had been very effectively gagged. Finally, Greg sighed and made a gesture toward the bruise that was beginning to form on her left cheek. "I'm sorry about that." He paused again, then ordered the guard out of the room. "Turn off the cameras and recorders for this room and don't let anyone in."

The unicorn saluted, snapped, "Understood, Sir!" and left the room.

Greg forced himself to look Gwen in the face. "I'm so sorry for what's going to happen, but I made a promise I'm not willing to break. I..." He shook his head. "I know that... that there is something I should do or say now, but... I... I just can't think of what it should be." He turned and went to the door. He put his hand on the knob, opened the door, and said, "Remember, Luna, you promised to make it quick. I'll be in the Control Room when you're finished." He didn't move for a long moment and then said softly, "Goodbye Gwen." He shut the door behind him, leaving her alone with Luna.

Gwen was no fool. She knew exactly what was going to happen. Even though her arms were tied behind her, she crouched into a fighting stance.

"Don't be stupid," Luna sneered at her, "If you were untied and had a machine gun, you'd still be no match for me."

"Fufk few, few fufen ffuhk!"Gwen snarled through the gag.

Luna rose lazily from the couch and stood in front of the woman. "You never were a match for me and I was a fool to think so. Do you know why I made Greg promise your death to me? I was afraid of you! Afraid you could take him away from me!"

Luna looked her up and down. "They didn't choose you by accident, did they? They knew you were exactly the type of woman Greg preferred. That's why you were put in the cell next to his... lean, athletic, intelligent, blue-eyed, dark hair. He might have chosen you over any other human woman, but when he had the chance to create his ultimate fantasy, he made me!”

Luna grabbed Gwen in her magic with such blinding speed that the woman had no chance to react. She spun her around, placing her mouth right next to the woman's ear. "I win," she purred.

Gwen tried to kick out at her but found herself held helplessly in the air and propelled to the door. Luna thrust her through it and down the hallway. Around two corners they came upon an exit door and a unicorn guarding it.

"Turn off the alarm and open the door," Luna commanded him.

"Yes, Ma'am!" He saluted and did as ordered.

Luna shoved Gwen out the door and then used the sharp tip of her horn to cut away her gag and bonds. Gwen rubbed circulation back into her arms while frowning at Luna. "You're letting me go?"

"Oh no," Luna grinned, "I'm just giving you a head start. I've been anticipating this for a long time and I want to savor it."

Gwen quickly looked around. They were in some sort of business park. Beyond the next building there was a mass of trees... a park or greenbelt of some sort.

"A slow count of one hundred," Luna told her. "Then I'll come after you. No wings… just to make it a bit more fair. A slice, a stab, a slash," she continued in a dreamy, sing-song voice, waving her sharp horn in time to her words, "until you're covered in your own blood... tripping over your own entrails... yessss... and then my hooves crashing down on you, shattering your bones... oh how wonderful that will be!"

Gwen's eyes went wide in horror. "You... you promised Greg—"

"To make it quick? True," Luna said, pinning her with a merciless, inhuman gaze and shrugging. "But what he doesn't know won't hurt him. Now, run!"

= = =

Greg sat with both feet propped up on the control console, Luna’s control fob in one hand. He turned it over and over, with an economical squeeze and release of his fingers. It felt like he'd been sitting there forever. Why did I make this thing? he asked himself, still flipping the fob around and around. I probably could have worked out how to give her the ability to change levels all on her own. Was it a need for some connection, or was it control I wanted? She's not a videogame character, she's better than that... better than me, and maybe her love is something I'm not—

Then the door opened and Luna came silently into the room and stood beside him. Greg didn't look up.

"She's gone," Luna told him softly.

He nodded and kept turning over the little device.

"She must be miles away by now," Luna said.

Greg's hand froze. He looked up. "What?"

Luna told him what she'd done.

"And you were lying to her all along?" Greg gaped. "You never intended to go after her?"

"I am a warrior, not a butcher!" Luna huffed. "But it was so much fun pretending! You know, I think she peed herself a little bit. I'm sure I caught a whiff of—"

Greg burst into deep guffaws of relieved laughter. "Hahaha! Oh... my... ghod!" he gasped between laughs. You... haha... you evil bitch! I... hahaha... I... adore you!"

She gently kissed his tear-stained cheek with her velvety lips. "I know," she said.

He reached up and pulled her head around to where he could kiss her properly. "I think we should..." He stopped and looked at the bank of monitors. "Did you see that?"

Luna looked up. "What do you mean?"

"I thought I caught something out of the corner of my eye. A weird movement." They both continued staring at the monitors and Greg flipped on the cameras for the Common Room but nothing seemed out of place. "Maybe I was just... no, wait! There it is again. That camera looked like it moved! 'Storage Room 2'." he read off the panel. "That's upstairs, isn't it? Next to..." He pointed to the camera that covered the hallway outside of the room and they both saw it then, a sudden brief blur as if something had passed too close to the lens to be in focus and then the empty hallway again... but at a slightly different angle, leaving a narrow bit of wall out of range of the camera.

Greg looked at the diagram that indicated the status of all exterior doors, windows, and skylights in the facility. All were closed and locked... according to the sensors. But something definitely odd was going on, and Greg knew someone who went through locked and alarmed doors like they were turnstiles.

= = =

"Hi Gwen!" Greg said loudly and cheerfully from directly behind her as she leaned with one ear against a door, jimmying the lock with what looked like a strip of metal torn from a soda can.

"SHIT!" She screamed in shock as she dropped the improvised pick and spun to throw a flurry of kicks and punches at him.

He dodged by moving just enough to make her blows miss by less than an inch. "You are frickin' amazing, you know that? To come back in here where all the shaggy-nasties live? Girl, you've got more cojones than a regiment of Marines!"

Gwen gave up trying to hit him and stood there, still crouched and breathing quickly. "The last place she'd think to look, though, isn't it? What tripped me up?"

"Just bad luck. I happened to be looking at the screen when you placed your little device up there." He motioned to the room's camera that had a bit of broken mirror positioned just in front of the lens, held in place by a flattened soda can and a couple of pieces of chewing gum. "Nice bit of improvising, that."

Gwen did a sudden skip back and hit the door with a powerful back-kick. It flew open and she spun to leap through it,, only to find her way blocked by a tall, dark figure. Luna reared and wiggled her forehooves in a playful way. "Grr, argh," she said.

Gwen looked quickly back and forth between the two of them and then screamed in outraged indignation, "You assholes! You're screwing with me!"

"Yup." Greg nodded, "That's one of the benefits of being a bad guy. I can act like a total douche any time I want to. In fact, it's kind of expected of me."

Luna leaned over, pointed her nose at Gwen's lower body, and sniffed delicately. "Yes, I was correct... she wet 'em."

Gwen had gone so red in the face that Greg began to worry that she'd have a stroke. "Okay, okay! Calm down! You might not know it yet, but the war's over. No more enemies, okay?"

Gwen's breathing slowed. "You're not going to kill me?"

"Oh, hell no!" Greg laughed. "You're a masterpiece, Gwen! Kinda like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Big ick factor, but not something I'd casually set fire to. C'mon downstairs and I'll get you some lunch... and a change of clothes."

Luna snickered.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks, yet again, to the crew that keeps me from making too much of a fool of myself, Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and WrittenWord333!

21 Feast Day

Chapter Twenty One

Feast Day

Greg met Lisa as she returned from the warehouse. She was riding on Chitter’s back, and the changeling was holding her head high and proud with what was a definite strut to her stride. Lisa was smiling and her face was flushed. Greg assumed the games had gone well.

When Lisa saw Greg standing in the hallway, she lost her smile and she ducked her head slightly.

"Would you guys like some lunch?" Greg asked nonchalantly. "Gwen will be joining us."

Lisa looked up in surprise. "She's not...?"

"No," Greg assured her. "She's fine. Luna decided that a stern teasing was enough... well, okay, a vicious teasing... but we're satisfied with where things stand for now. I take it from Chitter’s smug expression she must have done pretty well with the games… even though she doesn’t have thumbs?”

Lisa's face burst out in a smile again. "She’s a changeling, silly! She can have thumbs whenever she wants to! But her magic is even better! She can do all the top combos on Street Fighter, and…” Lisa chatted happily all the way to the Dining Hall.

= = =

All of them sat around a long table except for Chitter, who lay in a corner of the room, curled around a chunk of meat that looked to Greg like an entire hind leg of a cow. A griffon set plates down in from of each of them, and then poured drinks for everyone.

Gwen hadn't eaten for almost an entire day and tore into her omelette, wolfing down the food until she looked across the table and saw Luna taking small, lady-like bites of her food, her magical aura handling the utensils with delicate grace. Gwen frowned and forced herself to slow down. When she did, she suddenly realized that the omelette was superb. "Don't tell me you're a culinary genius, too," she half-growled at Greg. "I don't think I'd be able to stand it."

"Me?" Greg laughed, "Oh ghod, no! I could burn water! It's Geoffrey there that did the cooking." He gestured with his chopsticks to where the griffon had once again taken up a guard position next to the main door.

"Really?" Gwen asked in surprise. "You made this?"

"Um..." Geoffrey’s claws shifted nervously on the floor. "Yes, Ma'am. I... I enjoy cooking. I find that it relaxes me."

"He makes the best burgers, ever!" Lisa put in, holding up her half-eaten sandwich.

"Don't be so surprised, Gwen," Greg said, "Even if they look cartoonish, they're still individuals, with different tastes and interests. Once you get to know them well, they’re just as complex as any human."

"Why do you even bother?" Gwen asked.

There was a brief silence around the table. "Because they're people, Gwen." Greg said softly.

She looked at him like he was insane. "No they're not. They're things that you made. Computer programs, complex robots, but not people."

Greg put down his chopsticks and looked Gwen hard in the eyes. "I've tried to make ponies that were 'robots'... ones that would mindlessly obey me... and it doesn't work. If they don't have free will from the start, they just stand around like empty sock-puppets until I tell them exactly what to do, moment by moment. Oh, I can control the normal ones... force them to do what I want... but that's no different from coercing or enslaving a human being. And no less an evil act, I'm ashamed to say. None of my troops have Black Helmets on them now. I've learned my lesson."

"We caught some of those," Gwen said. "They didn't last long after we—"

Luna flicked her fork across the table. It hit the back of Gwen's chair just beside her head and buried its tines in the polished oak.

"Hint taken," Gwen muttered, and returned her attention to her omelet.

"If you don't like the word people," Greg continued, "then at least think of them as sapient beings or aliens with their own needs and desires. People have always wondered how we would react to a First Contact situation. Well, now we know, and it didn't do the human race much credit."

Gwen glared at him for a moment and then put down her fork. "If I can express an opinion without getting impaled?" she asked Luna.

Luna blinked lazily and then looked off toward a corner of the room... as if nothing that interested her was happening at the table.

"That is a load of California Liberal bullshit." Gwen continued, her voice calm, even though her words were passionate. "It doesn't matter what you call them... they're invaders. I swore an oath to protect and defend the United States, not every damn 'sapient being' that wanders by."

"Yeah?" Greg snapped back. "How's that working out for you? A couple of million citizens of the US got 'protected' into radioactive ash, not to mention the ones who took weeks to die while crapping out their insides! And how many died in the food riots? And that horror-film director's wet-dream over there..." he gestured to where Chitter was stripping hand-sized chunks of raw meat off the cow leg, "...was working for you until a little while ago. So, let me guess... there are bad invaders and good invaders, right? Your morals hinge mostly on convenience, it seems."

Gwen's expression went icy cold. "How it's worked out for me is that I've failed, even though I did everything I could to stop you. And you... you've betrayed and destroyed your own country. Does that make you feel like some kind of fucking hero?"

Greg took a moment to get his anger under control and then said, "You seem to be confusing the political and military leaders with the nation as a whole. Those leaders are off on a nice, permanent vacation, and the citizens... the real America... well, they're doing just fine."

"For how long?" Gwen shot back. "Without the government, all the infrastructure will fall apart within weeks. If you thought the food riots were bad, you haven't seen anything yet! And that's if some other country doesn't decide to waltz in and take us over! With our military's command structure gone, who would there be to stop them?"

"Oh, please!" Greg snorted. "You think I didn't plan for all that?"

Gwen frowned at him. "What did you do?"

"Well, for a start, I equestrianized DC, and now instead of a politician-infested rat hole, it's a beautiful city of marble and gold, surrounded by cozy villages and pristine wilderness."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "That's just what people need; a fucking fantasy land! That place ran on politics! What are people going to do to earn a living now?"

"That's the best part!" Greg said, a broad grin spreading across his face."I made it so people don't have to earn a living anymore. They can do whatever they want now."

Gwen's eyes went wide. "Oh God, what did you do?"

"I did a convincing imitation of Santa Claus," Greg smirked. "Oh, don't look at me like I'm crazy! What I did was hand out presents to all the good little girls and boys... and bad ones, and adults... all in one night. And all over the world, too, not just my country."

"What presents?" Gwen asked, a chill running down her spine.

Greg reached back into a satchel that hung from the back of his chair and removed a small object. It was a red jeweled necklace. The pendant was a stylized unicorn head with wings on either side. He held it up and said, "What I gave them was power. The power to change the world in any way they see fit. It's what the douchebags in the ex-government always told me. They said the sort of power I commanded shouldn't be in the hands of one person, that no single person had the right to make such sweeping changes. Well, they should be happy now that everyone has that power. Very democratic, right?" He slid the object across the table to her. "Here's your very own alicorn amulet... even though you're on my 'naughty' list."

Gwen picked up the amulet and looked closely at it. There was a slightly recessed button beneath the head and several of the wing feathers lit up with text when she pressed it: Transform; Invite; Information; Mirror Gate; Ponify.

"Touch the word 'Information' and ask it to give you complete instructions on how to use it,” Greg told her. "Basically, it'll enable you to transform the landscape around you for about a mile or so, including making buildings and clothes and food and so-on. You can send out a signal that will invite different types of ponies or other people to your location, and it'll act as a holographic net terminal, or... if you're feeling brave... you can open a mirror gate to the Equestria sim, or actually become a pony."

Gwen stared at the amulet silently for a moment. "Everyone? All over the world? How is that possible?"

"I'd like to give the credit to magical reindeer, but it's really just good software design." Greg smirked. "And I'm not kidding. One of the key elements of my self-improving code was to optimize its own ability to execute. I think those first mirror portals were… well the science fiction writers would call it 'computronium' or programmable matter. But matter is a pretty coarse substrate really, so my software went looking for something better. Turns out the Higgs Field can be organized into slightly different elements that can act as logic gates…"

Greg trailed off. He could see that Gwen wasn't following at all. "Think of it this way; it's like sending data over an electrical power line. Not what it was designed for, but it can be done and without disrupting the primary function of the line. The Equestrian system now runs on the fabric of the universe itself… underneath the system that blindly executes the code we call matter and energy. Since it's a lower-order language, it can transform matter and energy simply by changing variables. Effectively it is magic… and now everybody's got a little terminal that lets them alter the local code however they want. There are limits, of course. It won't alter or harm another sapient being, for instance. The Equestrians don't have them, because they don't need them. They're magical enough already."

"You are crazy!" Gwen shouted. "One super villain was one too many! Now there will be thousands of people out there trying to start their own pony armies, or worse! And in a city as dense as New York, with everyone trying to transform their surroundings? It'll be unbelievable chaos! With everyone able to do whatever they want, who will control things?"

Greg shrugged. "I've pretty much run out of fucks to give. I'm sure it'll work itself out after a while. People are more adaptable than you give them credit for. Like I said, the amulets are limited and designed with safeguards. No killing, and you're practically unkillable while wearing one. Oh, yeah, and I did reserve a little bit of outside administrative authority over it all... just in case. I can update and patch like any good software developer."

"What... you're going to be the final judge of all humanity?" Gwen sneered. "You give megalomania a bad name!"

"Jeeze, Gwen!" Greg shook his head in mock sadness. "And you can be so charming when you want to!" He pulled a little tablet computer from his pocket and glanced at it. "Mm... good timing! I have exactly zero interest in bossing people around, even though I can see there will be a need for it. So I decided to delegate the job. C'mon, let's take a little walk, and I'll show you what I mean."

"Ooh!" Lisa said with sudden interest. She had been keeping her head down, avoiding the argument at the head of the table while actually listening carefully. "Is it her? Can I come, too? I want to see!"

"Lead the way!" Greg told her.

They all walked out of the building. The first thing Gwen was aware of was a sound like distant music with a strong bell-like quality. The little hairs on the back of her neck went up, much like they would have on a day when a powerful thunderstorm was about to break. But there were no clouds in the sky, only a lone figure, speeding along.

"Oh my God," Gwen breathed in sudden realization, "that’s… that's…"

"Princess Celestia is the name you’re grasping for," Greg told her.

"I know," she replied. "I've studied the series... I recognize her now. But she's so... God, a cartoon is one thing... she's terrifying! I can feel her presence from here! And you're giving over the rule of humanity to..." Gwen waved her hand at the sky, unable to sum up the incredible creature in words.

"Well, she's actually Celestia at level three; the Bright Goddess, roughly two orders of magnitude more powerful than the ordinary old alicorn who juggles the sun every morning," Greg said, thoroughly enjoying Gwen's horrified expression. "The other Royal Sovereigns are around as well."

Greg didn't mention the names of Cadance and Twilight's ultimate forms. The Love Goddess sounded a little too porn-y, and the Librarian of Doom was far too ridiculous for words. Even Twilight herself was a bit embarrassed by it. For perhaps the ten thousandth time, Greg wished he hadn't unknowingly locked the whole system into purely pony-related themes with a strong videogame flavor, but it was only a very small regret.

"Don't worry, Gwen," he continued. "They're not really rulers. They won't interfere unless things get too far out of balance, and their presence will be a constant reminder for people to play nice. Think of them as judges, or moderators with god-like powers. Gotta keep the monkeys from setting fire to the zoo, after all."

Gwen just stared at him, unable respond to such unbelievable hubris.

Greg shrugged. "It's the best solution I could come up with on short notice. I wanted everything to be as stable as possible before I leave. Yeah, some people might get a bit extreme, but each one of those alicorn mares packs enough magical mojo to boil an ocean with a glance, so I don’t think anybody but a true nutjob is going to risk their displeasure."

The alicorn princess flowed through the sky, the distant sound of her passage chiming like stroked crystal, until the last sweeping movement of her glorious tail faded into the mist on the horizon.

"That was so cool!" Lisa whispered.

"Leaving?" Gwen asked, turning her gaze down from the empty sky.

"Yes," Greg said. "The world holds too many bad memories for me. I have a few things to take care of and then I'll head off to Equestria. It's expanding quickly, and since it's only limited by the size of the universe itself, there's going to be a lot of territory to explore. Humanity is about to become an extreme minority as far as galactic citizens are concerned, so I probably won't ever run into you again, Gwen. In a weird, twisted sort of way, it's been fun."

From the reactions of Luna and Lisa, Gwen gathered that Greg's announcement was just as much of a surprise to them as it was to her. "So you're just screwing up the entire planet and then running away?" she sneered.

"Suck it up, Captain Gwen." Greg grinned. "If you don't like the shape the world's in, fix it yourself." He reached out and tapped the red jeweled necklace she was still holding, "You have the power, now."

"So does everybody else," she said sourly.

"Ah, but cleverness has to count for something, and you are a very clever woman." Greg grinned.

"I'm coming with you, right?" Lisa asked in a quiet, unsteady voice. Luna said nothing but watched Greg carefully.

Greg looked down at her and frowned sadly, "Lisa... going to Equestria will turn you into a digital construct. It'll freeze you at the age you are now. If you come, you might never have a chance to grow up."

"I'm sixteen next month!" she said emphatically."I'm just small and skinny for my age!"

"Well, even sixteen is—"

"And what's so great about growing up, anyway? I could turn out like her!" Lisa finished, pointing an angry finger at Gwen.

"Good point," Greg admitted.

"I'm not even sure I like being a human. They're so mean! If you can do magic, can you make me into a pony? Or a changeling like Chitter? That would be so cool!"

"Uh… no, I can only do ponies right now, but maybe you should wait before making that decision."

Lisa's smile disappeared and she hung her head. "Oh. Okay."

The disappointment in her voice made Greg wince. "Look… we'll work something out. I may be able to alter some of the code... do some experimenting. I need a few more days to wrap things up, anyway. For now, let's all go back inside and finish our meal, Geoffrey makes some kick-ass desserts."

Lisa nodded, still looking slightly unhappy. In her experience, "later" and "maybe" meant no.

"Not for me, thanks," Gwen said. "If you don't mind, I think I'd better get started on damage control." She waved her amulet for emphasis.

"Not too much power for one individual to handle?" Greg gently chided her. "Well, good luck anyway, though I doubt you'll need it. You're a very capable woman, Gwen. You'll probably be running your own kingdom by this time next year."

Gwen didn't immediately reply but a thoughtful expression crept across her features. "Well... who knows?" she said finally.

= = =

After lunch Lisa took Chitter up to the roof to watch the skyline of the city ripple and change, leaving Greg and Luna alone together in the Common Room.

Luna watched him silently as he ran through several screens on his computer and then, when it seemed as if he had reached a stopping point asked him, "So, what are your plans for the future? Do they include me?"

He looked up in surprise and then gazed into her face for a few moments. "I hope so, but that's for you to say, Luna. You're not my slave or my servant."

She narrowed her sapphire eyes. "You've been acting strangely ever since you were with Gwen when she woke up this morning. It's still not too late for me to run her down and trample her into jelly, you know."

"No, it's not her fault... not exactly. She was desperate and fed me some manipulative bullshit, but when I started thinking… well, it just made me realize some things..." Greg shook his head. "We can talk about all that later. Right now I need to go get my parents. They've been in protective custody for a while. It's a good thing the government put them in a nice facility or the place I built for the Washington wonks would have involved a lot more molten lava. Once I get them settled and safe, I'll want to look in on Terminus Village and then..."

"Then...?" Luna echoed.

"Then... before anything else... before I make any more plans... I'd like to spend one perfect day, alone with you."

Luna smiled. "That will be wonderful."

Greg smiled back at her. "I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it is."

= = =

Author's Note

The Christmas-y theme in this chapter is pure coincidence and completely unrelated to the day of its release. Honest.

Regardless, I hope all y'all have a splendiferous holiday season, filled with joy! If Santa gave you an Alicorn Amulet, please use it wisely.

Thanks, again and again, to the merry band of ~~brigands~~ prereaders that keep me from going too far off the tracks, Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and WrittenWord333!

23 One Perfect Day

Chapter Twenty Three

One Perfect Day

"What do you think, Lisa?" Greg asked the girl as she stared in wonder at Terminus Village.

"It's awesome!" she said happily. "It's just like Ponyville!"

"Well, actually, it's quite different from Ponyville. For one thing it..." Twilight Sparkle hesitated at seeing Greg making a cutting gesture with one hand behind Lisa's back. "It's a lot safer," Twilight quickly finished.

Lisa seemed not to have noticed. "And I can be a changeling here? I want to be called Chatter! Chatter and Chitter," she said, nudging her friend with an elbow. "That's cool, right?"

The changeling grinned, though her long fangs made the expression seem less friendly than intended.

"Yes," Greg said, "I've worked out all the bugs in non-pony transformation. You can be any of the sapient Equestrian races you want, though if you want to be a dragon, you'll have to start out small. If you change your mind, just ask Princess Twilight to change you back. She'll be in charge of all body-swapping, because I can't trust the humans here with alicorn amulets." He reached up and tapped the one around his own throat for emphasis.

Lisa waved a dismissive hand. "If I'm a changeling, I can change myself!"

Chitter looked over at Greg with a doubtful expression. "Was that 'worked out all the bugs' comment supposed to be a joke?"

Greg grinned. "Maybe." He turned back to Lisa. "Twilight will look after you and keep you aging at a normal rate until you're an adult. Then it's all up to you. Scary grown-up shit. Nothing I can do about that, sorry."

= = =

General Greenwaldt took his usual sidewalk table at the café and moments later his usual coffee appeared. The earth pony delicately used his teeth to lift the tray off of his own back and set it down on the table.The general couldn't help wondering, again, how a creature with no hands could be such a good waiter. The coffee was perfect and went a long way to easing his discomfort at patronizing a restaurant named The Feed Bag.

He used the café as an unofficial office in the mornings and quickly became accustomed to all sorts of people dropping by to talk about the various business going on in the town. As might be expected in a village full of politicians, there were many different factions making many different plans for the future. The General had brought together a good group of military men under his influence and was courted by many of the other groups as a powerful ally.

That day he expected to be approached by the President... ex-President, he reminded himself... who was desperate to gain some influence with a faction, any faction, but his first visitor that morning was someone wholly unexpected.

"Good morning, General," Greg said cheerfully. "Mind if I join you?" While the General was still gaping in surprise, Greg dropped his backpack next to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Luna didn't sit, but stood behind Greg with her neck arched, and her cool gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance.

"Why are you here?" The General demanded, bluntly.

"I hear they make a great alfalfa omelet," Greg said, glancing at the menu, distractedly.

"I don't have time for your bullshit," the general snapped. "Are you here to help us or harm us?"

Greg sighed. "General, you have nothing but time. You may not have realized it yet, but because all of you in this world are now digital constructs, you won't age or even die... unless you're killed or... well, I'll let you find out for yourselves. Anyway, forever is a very, very long time."

"You've underestimated us before," the general said, though in a more subdued tone of voice. "We're already making plans—"

"Plans to help those people who are still so frightened of this place that they won't leave the platform at the train station? Plans to explore this world? It's been nearly a week and nobody's even been as far as the hot springs in the mountains above town!"

The General glared at him for a moment and then growled out, "Escape plans."

Greg laughed out loud. "Oh ghod, have you started a tunnel yet? I'll save you some trouble, General. This isn't Equestria, it's an entirely separate sim. You're on an island about half the size of Australia, surrounded by about 200 miles of ocean on every side. If you sail north far enough, you'll just come back to the south coast and vice-versa. This is a self-contained, rather small universe... there is no escape."

"If there's a way in, there's a way out," Greenwaldt insisted.

"Tell that to a black hole," Greg said.

"So... you're staying with us, then?" the general asked, watching keenly for Greg's reaction.

"Ah... not so stupid are you?" Greg said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. "I suppose there could possibly be a couple of ways out of here that people might find if they are smart enough, persistent enough, and prove themselves to be worthy of friendship with—"

"Is that what we are to you?" Greenwaldt growled. "Rats in a maze?"

Greg grinned. "More like orangutans. Rats are cute. Think of it as a game! You might even enjoy it."

"You arrogant little prick! You're going to pay for treating me like this!" the general bellowed, going red in the face. "I'm going to make you pay!"

Greg gaped for a moment in surprise before breaking into laughter, "Oh ghod, that's hilarious! Good luck with that!"

Greenwaldt snapped. He rose, overturned the table, and lunged for Greg, all in one movement. Neither he nor any of the crowd that had gathered saw Luna move. She didn’t bother to use her magic, she simply flung out one wing and there was the sound of a heavy impact. Greenwaldt smashed through tables and chairs as he rolled over and over, finally hitting a planter of flowers that separated the dining area from the street. He tried to rise but the world swam around him and he fell back against the planter, a thin trickle of blood dripping from one nostril. One small midnight-blue feather fluttered down to the pavement.

"Sorry about that, General," Greg said in a cheerful voice that belied his words. "Luna can get a little over-protective at times." Greg picked up his backpack and shouldered it. "I think we should be going now, anyway. Don't get up... I know the way out."

The crowd parted for the two of them like they were made of red-hot metal.

= = =

"I'm sorry to have started out our day together by smashing up a restaurant," Greg said as they hiked along a path that lead up into the mountains above the town. "I needed to plant that little bit of information about the hidden ways out of this world. Good thing the general played right into my hands while half a hundred people were eavesdropping. Well... nothing but fun from now on, I promise."

"Oh, that's all right," Luna said. "Getting to wing-slap the guy who kidnapped you was fun. I hope you noticed how much restraint I used."

"No missing body parts, hardly any blood..." Greg grinned. "Practically demure."

After an hour of walking they came to a quaint, rambling building at the mouth of a hanging valley. Luna paused and carefully sniffed the air. "Hot springs?" she asked Greg.

"Yep! Springs, baths, good food, massages... I thought it would be a good way to relax," he said. "In fact, I happen to know that they have a very good sushi chef who makes terrific kappamaki and... hey! Wait for me!"

= = =

Greg picked up a bit of sushi rice, made a little ball, and flicked it at Luna, who had leaned back from the table. She snapped it out of the air and held it in her mouth, rolling it between her tongue and teeth for a while before she swallowed it.

"That's it." She sighed. "If I eat another bite, I'll explode!" She patted her stomach in satisfaction. "Would it be slothful to take a nap before noon?"

Greg shook his head. "This is our vacation... we can do what we like, sinful or not!"

"Oh, good!" Luna said, and self-levitated across the room to the futon and flopped down on her side. "Join me?"

"In a minute," he replied. The room had grown warm as the sun climbed into the sky, so Greg slid aside the screens that served as its outer wall, revealing a large porch and a spectacular view of the valley and village below. A cool, gentle breeze made the temperature perfect and set the wind-chimes hung along the eaves to tinkling softly. He summoned one of the inn's ponies to clear away the remains of their meal and left instructions that they were not to be disturbed except for something dire. By the time he knelt next to the futon, Luna was breathing slowly and deeply. He gazed down at her lovingly, slipped out of his robe, and lay down next to her. She mumbled something in her sleep and slipped her wing around him.

= = =

A while later Luna woke him, with her lips and magic caressing his body. He turned to her eagerly and they made love in an intense, energetic struggle and then fell asleep in each other's embrace again.

= = =

When they finally got up it was late afternoon. They showered, and then Greg led Luna down to the massage rooms. Two massive earth ponies were waiting for them, towels draped over their backs.

"I'm not sure about this," Luna said doubtfully.

"I've done it for you often enough," Greg said. "These guys are experts."

"Yes, but I trust you," she grumbled, looking dubiously at the blocky masseurs.

"Don't worry, they're very professional," he reassured her.

"I suppose..." she said, as she lay down on the massage table. And then to her masseur, "A hoof goes someplace I don't like... and you're vapor, understand?"

"Of course, Ma'am," the stallion said, sounding a bit offended.

A few minutes into the massage and Greg was having doubts. Not about the skill of the masseuses... they were just as skillful as he'd promised. Their hard hooves were seemingly able to put just the right amount of pressure exactly where it was needed. No, what bothered him was the noises that Luna was making. She was gasping and giving out soft little moans of pleasure like she was... well... getting something more than a massage. But as his own muscles were being tended to just as well, it was hard to concentrate on anything else.

At the finish the earth pony mare rubbed scented oils into Greg's skin and Luna's fur, Luna first sniffing at several bottles until she found one she liked enough to choose for them both.

"A walk before dinner?" Greg suggested as they left the room.

"Mn-hmn," she nodded, her eyes still somewhat unfocused. "Oh, that felt so good!" She stretched luxuriously, her back arched and her wings wide.

"Or maybe we could go back to our room," Greg said, watching her appreciatively.

She grinned wickedly at him and prolonged her stretch, cocking her hips just so. She was well aware of Greg’s eyes on the firm curves of her rump.

"Or maybe I'll attack you right here in the hallway."

"Haven't had enough of me, yet?" she purred.

"Never."

Luna glanced around and then grabbed the front of Greg's robe in her magic and pulled him toward a door marked "Linens". She shoved him inside, and closed the door behind them both.

= = =

After another shower, they went out into the formal garden where a table had been set for dinner in an open-air pavilion hung with multi-colored lanterns. The smell of spices and roasting vegetables flavored the air.

"I'm starving!" Luna said

“Yeah,” Greg agreed. “I could eat a horse!”

Luna swatted him with a wingtip.

He put on a look of mock surprise. “What? I thought you liked it when I—"

“Shh!” Luna hissed at him. “The waiters—”

“Oh, right!” Greg said. “If they find out, they’ll all want to—”

"Careful," Luna growled, playfully snapping her big, white teeth. "I might start with a large bite of wise-ass for an appetizer!"

They laughed and chatted through dinner, enjoying the meal as well as the lively music that several pegasi played on unusual instruments. The waiters had overheard their banter, and the inn's chef risked irking Luna by presenting Greg and her with a tiny chocolate cake for dessert...in the shape of a horse.

"Dibs on the hooves." Greg chuckled. "That's the best part!"

“That’s not what you said this afternoon,” Luna replied, flatly, causing Greg to choke on his bite of cake.

After dinner they returned to their room to pick up a robe for Greg and several large, soft towels for them both. "The hot pools are on the other side of the garden... a big public one, and several smaller private ones... but since we're the only guests we can have our pick." Greg told Luna as they left their room and strolled down the polished wood of the porch toward the hot springs.

The moon was rising, full and golden, as they eased themselves into the largest pool. Luna's short fur floated out around her, making her seem larger and fuzzier. Below the water, her tail waved along with the slight current of the pool. Greg reached down and ran his hand through the silky strands of her tail, making the starlight ripple and dance.

Luna turned and kissed him, then began to nibble her way down his throat and chest.

"Whoa!" He gasped. "Is it hot in here, or is it just me?"

"Hot?" Luna grinned evilly. "That would be me."

Greg laughed, "Yeah, you sure... are... " He trailed off as Luna reared up out of the water and swung one hind leg over him where he sat, leaning against the edge of the pool. Water cascaded from her fur and her mane sleeked down over her shoulders. The intensity of her icy gaze took Greg aback for a moment and then she was in his lap, wrapped around him, her mouth on his neck, licking, kissing and nibbling. He couldn't help but respond. The heat of the water still trapped in her fur soaked into him and he began to feel a little light-headed as he held her tightly, caressing her long, sleek torso.

She took the lead, making love to him with an intensity he had never experienced before until he spasmed beneath her. Then Luna shuddered and cried out. Her wings spread wide and her tail broached the surface of the pool, throwing a fan of spray into the air that caught the moonlight and sparkled... looking almost as if she had thrown her stars free. The sheer beauty of it all as her back arched and her powerful body trembled against his completely stopped any of Greg's rational thoughts and he let the moment wash into him and through him... one perfect moment that seemed to last an eternity.

Eventually, they dragged themselves from the pool before the heat and their own exhaustion made them unpleasantly light-headed. Luna shook herself, throwing off a fine spray of droplets and then summoned her power. Her magic rippled outward from her glowing horn across her body and as it went, small billows of steam wafted from her body until her fur was completely dry.

Greg was slowly towelling himself off, still watching his beautiful lover when the first blast of fire struck him.

= = =

Author's Note

Portions of this chapter were written under the influence of egregiously alcoholic eggnog. I will leave it to the readers to try and guess which. So, if there's a bit of Harlequin/Mills & Boon-ish flavor to certain bits, I cannot be held responsible. Please direct complaints to my legal council at Calvados, Demerara, and Peat.

And don't even think of blaming my most excellent prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and Fana Farouche. I am certain they were drinking heavily as well. (They must have been if they agreed to work on this... thing!)

Oh yeah, and a ridiculously happy new year to all y'all! :pinkiehappy:

24 It All Works Out in the End

Chapter Twenty Four

It All Works Out in the End

The heat and concussion slapped into Greg like a giant hand. He flew through the air, hit something hard and unyielding with his hip, and somersaulted into the pool. He surfaced, sputtering and called out for Luna.

"Here!" she yelled to him as he dragged himself out of the pool and fumbled Luna’s controller out of the pocket of his robe. She was crouched at the edge of the line of cedar trees that bordered the rear of the pool. Her feathers were ruffled and singed but otherwise she looked unharmed. "It was a dragon!" she called out, pointing into the night sky.

Greg squinted through the mist rising off the pool and saw the distant glow of the creature’s maw as it banked into a tight turn. "It's coming back for another run!"

"My attacks don't have enough range in this body!" she called back.

Greg didn't bother replying. He mashed his finger down on the controller’s level button and Nightmare Moon burst out of the energy vortex within seconds. He added attack and armor bonuses as the enormous saurian swooped down for another attack run. Nightmare Moon's magic attacks streaked skyward like anti-aircraft tracer rounds in an old World War II movie. At least four of them hit the hostile drake, burning holes in its wings and knocking it off course. It wavered through the sky and its second blast of fire breath went wide, impacting on the mountain above them. But it didn't fall.

"Come back here, you coward!" Nightmare Moon screamed, and leaped after the fleeing dragon. Three powerful flaps took her above the top of a granite spire that loomed over the hot springs and she flung herself after the fleeing monster.

Greg watched in admiration as the Nightmare began to overtake the frantically flapping creature. Closer and closer... almost within striking range...

"General sends his regards," said a deep growling voice from behind him.

Greg instantly spun around and saw a huge diamond dog in full leap, jaws gaping, nearly on top of him. He reacted without thinking, rolling onto his back and kicking upward with both feet. He hit the underside of the dog's jaw and snapped its head back and away from him. The snarling canine jumped aside and then crouched to leap in again, muscles in haunches and shoulders bunching, obviously intending to overwhelm Greg with pure strength.

But the slight delay had given Greg time to collect his wits. He took one deep breath and called up a particular mental symbol. There was an eruption of red magical energy that completely enveloped his body, and when it faded away, Greg was no longer human. In his place stood a huge alicorn stallion, wings thrown wide and horn blazing.

"Surprise!" he yelled at his astonished assailant.

Unbelievably, the dog recovered his wits and snarled at Greg. It whipped out a small glass bottle filled with a green glowing liquid, but before it could use the potion, Nightmare Moon slammed into its side, smashing it through the fence of tall bamboo that separated the pools from the garden.

The bottle flew free and cracked on a stone, and Greg had to take time to contain the explosion of alchemical energy in a bubble of magic and then fling it high into the sky where it could do no harm.

By the time he was able to turn his attention to the fight between Nightmare Moon and the diamond dog, it was all but over. Her hooves crashed down on the weakly struggling dog over and over until he broke up into sparkling bits that flickered and fell to ash.

"Wow," Greg said as the dust settled, "I guess I really pissed off the general." Then he noticed that all of the inn's ponies were lined up on the porch, staring at him. Some were bowing.

"Oh crap," he muttered, bringing up the mental picture that returned him to his human body. "Look, it's okay! It's all over and there's nothing to…" Then Greg noticed that he was naked.

"Shit!" He scrambled back through the scattered chunks of bamboo and found his robe next to the pool. He shrugged it on and picked up his controller from where he had dropped it when the diamond dog attacked. When he looked up, he saw Nightmare Moon shooing everyone back inside the inn.

"Well," Greg said as he returned to his lover’s side, "it looks like I did underestimate old Greenwaldt. Who knew he'd get Equestrian allies so quickly? Nifty little assassination attempt he set up... an obvious attack to draw you away and then another thug lurking in the shadows to finish the job. Good thing he wanted the dog to deliver a message before the kill or I might not have..." He stopped as he noticed his partner's expression. "Uh... Nighty? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"What else are you hiding from me?" she asked, frowning.

"Uh... oh, you mean the..." He put a fist to his forehead, extending his forefinger to serve as a horn, then held both hands up to his shoulders and flapped his fingers.

"Yes... well, no," she scowled. "I'm not exactly unhappy about that. After I turned around from killing the dragon, I saw the diamond dog and knew that I couldn't reach you before he leaped... so I was relieved when you…" She paused to clear her throat. "Well, you make quite an impressive stallion." She shook her head and resumed scowling. "But why didn't you tell me about it? I know you've changed the amulets so that humans can become ponies, but you didn't use your amulet. You weren't wearing it! Is this something new? Can all digitized humans—"

"Ah... no, no other alicorns, just me," Greg admitted. "And I haven't been able to do this for very long... just since last night, in fact. I wasn't sure it was possible, and I wanted it to be a surprise."

"That business with the gates," Nightmare Moon said.

"Yeah, that. Wait... how did you know…?"

She gave a little shudder and resumed her smaller body. "I was spying on you," she said bluntly.

"Oh..." Greg didn't know what else to say.

Luna went angrily on. "It was reprogramming? You experimented on yourself? Why would you do that? When you tried it with ponies, it never worked, and you nearly killed some of them! You could have died! Why would you take such a risk? Was it just for the sake of one little girl who wanted to be a changeling? That's insane!"

"No, I... I thought if I was better, stronger... more like you... I might be..." He hesitated, sighed, and then said, "I might be worthy of you. I left you a letter in case I didn't—"

"How can you be so smart and so stupid at the same time?" she practically yelled at him."'Worthy?' What in the world... you... you've been acting like an idiot since that evil bitch Gwen talked to you in the Virginia facility! I'm going to feed her own entrails to her, and I don't give a damn if it upsets you! She's a lying, sneaking, vile—"

"No," Greg said in almost a whisper. "She lied to me, and I knew it was a lie, but that made me realize something."

Luna stopped as if she'd hit a brick wall. "What?"

"I've tried to stop thinking about it, but..." He shook his head and walked away. He reached the edge of the porch and sat down, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Luna followed him after a moment and sat beside him, an arm-length away.

"That first day..." Greg began suddenly. "The day I realized you were real. When I panicked and tried to pull the power on the system, you told me that if I didn't stop, you'd hurt me."

"I... I was frightened," Luna said. "I never would have—"

"But you could have, couldn't you?" Greg asked, lifting his head from his hands so that he could look her in the eyes. "And you knew it, even then."

"I... I'm not sure..."

"You gave me a chance… even when your whole world depended on it. There was no logical reason to do that." Greg said. "Gwen tried to make me think you didn't love me. She tried to get me to think it was an act. That everything you did was just to manipulate me."

Luna's muzzle wrinkled into a snarl of incendiary anger and her horn began to blaze with power.

"No, don't! Save that for the general; Gwen's not worth it." Greg said quickly. " I know it was a desperate lie! You came to rescue me... you fought an army... stuck by my side when everything went to hell. If that isn't love... then there's no such thing."

"Then, what is wrong?" Luna asked, letting her power fade away. "If you know how much I love you, why did you take such a horrible risk?"

Greg sighed and stared at the ground. "I know you love me… but I don't know why."

Luna's eyes went wide and her pupils shrunk to pinpoints. She opened her mouth, but said nothing.

"Yeah, I created you and your world, but if that's the reason…" He stopped and took a deep breath. "You're the closest thing in existence to a literal goddess, and despite what I've done, I'm… just some guy. I thought that if I was… better… more like you... then maybe you wouldn't someday get tired of me."

She lifted his chin with a wingtip, and kissed him. "You're a brilliant fool," she said. "Oh, I'm not denying that stallion body of yours wasn't amazing, and you had better believe we're going to spend a lot of time together with you wearing it, but it's you I love. Change your clothes and you're still the same person, same thing with bodies… still you."

Greg grinned. "Well, here's to a varied wardrobe! The night's still young; should I change back?"

Luna kissed him again before she answered. "I'd like that. But would it be… uhm…" She hesitated.

"What?" Greg asked, suddenly concerned again.

"Is it possible to change some of the details of your form?"

"Sure! Anything you'd like."

Luna sighed in relief. "Oh good! Because that red-and-black color scheme? Kind of tacky."

= = =

Author's Note

I just love happy beginnings! :pinkiehappy:

Thanks to my ludicrously patient prereaders, Fāna Farouche, Jordanis and WrittenWord333.

And thanks to all of you for sticking with me through this self-indulgent and probably ill-advised little romp. Just like 2016, it's over at last!

5 It's The End of the World as We Know It

Chapter Five

It's The End of the World as We Know It

Greg slept through it.

Not that he would have noticed much if he was awake. The general got fed up with pony talk after Greg got into a discussion with Corporal Williams about the relative merits of Season Five versus Season Seven, and when they got into an argument about which pony was "best," he had Greg tossed back into his cell.

Greg was fed a fairly decent meal while a guard looked on. He’d eaten everything off of paper plates with nothing but a soft plastic spoon. The salad was a challenge.

After that… nothing. Greg used the time to think. After several hours he did a few sets of exercises to break up the monotony. Then he thought some more. At last he started yawning. He had no idea what time it was but, as he had little else to do, sleep seemed like a good idea. He curled up on the shelf and closed his eyes.

The next thing Greg knew was the sound of his cell door as it slammed open and two guards roughly hauled him up by his upper arms.

"What the hell?" he gasped, still half asleep.

The guards didn't answer. They dragged him out of the cell without even bothering to handcuff or blindfold him. He finally got a look at the bare corridors of the installation. There wasn't much but a few colored stripes, some incomprehensible signs and a few fire extinguishers. The guards frog-marched him up to a doorway marked "Prep Room A" and shoved him through it.

There were several people in the room and none of them were happy to see him. The general turned a gaze on him that could have blistered paint. "Is there anything you can do to stop this?" Greenwaldt demanded.

"If I can just get a look at the code, I might have a chance—"

"I'm not talking about the God-damned Internet!" The general bellowed. "I'm talking about this!" He stabbed a finger at a monitor on the far wall, and people moved back to allow Greg a view of the screen.

At first he thought it was a movie—a special-effects extravaganza. But it wasn't. The tanks that rolled down the streets lined with burning houses were real. The explosions, gunfire, and what appeared to be blasts of glittery lightning were real. He recognized the coffee shop where he always stopped in on his way to work.

The operators were scrubbing back and forth through the video recordings, pausing on frames that held something interesting, and then going on. Something light-colored flashed through the camera's view. It was so fast that it was just a blur but Greg thought he recognized its general shape. When the operators reversed the video and slowed it down, Rarity whirled into view, slamming a hoof into a surprised soldier and sending him sprawling. A spatter of bullets hit the pavement next to the pony and she dodged around the corner and out of view.

"What… what's…"

"The friendly purple one with wings and a horn, you said!" the general shouted. "We were ready for that… but there are thousands of them! And there are dragons and monsters as well!"

"They're real…" Greg whispered, taking several steps toward the monitor.

The general grabbed him by one shoulder and spun him around. "Can you stop it?" he shouted directly into Greg's face. "Can you do anything about this?"

Greg had no idea how it could be possible in the first place, so he settled for the most likely answer, "No. Not now."

Greenwaldt shoved him away with so much force that he nearly fell. "Get this piece of shit out of my sight," he hissed.

Surprisingly, it wasn't a soldier who led him away. It was Gwen, the woman who had pretended to be a prisoner in the cell next to his.

She took him out of the room but turned away from the cells. At the end of the hall was a door labeled "elevator".

"Two to go up," Gwen said, seemingly to the empty air. The doors slid open and she motioned Greg into the small space. The doors closed on them and the elevator began to rise. It went up for a long time.

Greg glanced over at Gwen. "So… what's it like being a spook?"

She didn't reply.

"NSA, FBI or CIA?" he asked.

She didn't reply.

"Hey… you're unarmed. Aren't you worried about being—"

"I’m a field agent. I think I can handle one computer-jockey." she said flatly, without even glancing in his direction.

"Oh," he said quietly turning his face downward. It wasn't from embarrassment. He just didn't want her to see anything in his expression that might give away his new-found hope.

After several more minutes, the elevator stopped, and the inner door opened. Gwen had to manually open the outer door, which swung out instead of sliding to one side. She motioned Greg through and he found himself in a dingy office that would have been unremarkable in any industrial area in the country. He turned back to see the woman closing the outer door. From the outside it looked like a pair of rusty equipment lockers.

The door clicked shut with a solid metallic sound and Gwen turned and pointed at a neatly folded set of clothes and a pair of shoes on the top of the desk. "Get changed. Shirts and pants first, then the flight suit."

"Flight suit?" Greg asked. "Where am I flying to?"

"These are the orders concerning you. They're sealed." She said it slowly, as if explaining to a small child. "All I know is that I'm supposed to bring you up here, get you dressed, and then hand you and this—" She waved the envelope at him, in case he hadn't gotten her point earlier. "—over to the Marines. I don't need to know anything else, and neither do you. So get on with it."

"Right," Greg said. "Uhm… could you…" He made a gesture with his index finger, indicating he wanted the woman to turn her back while he changed.

Gwen gave a short bark of a laugh. "Not a chance. You'll change while I watch and you'll do it facing me. If you want to argue, I can call some marines in here to pin you down while I strip you. Your choice."

"No thanks." He stepped over to the desk and shucked his blue paper shirt, thinking furiously. It might just work… what do I have to lose?

He kicked off the paper pants and jumped into the pair of olive drab shorts as quickly as he could. "You're in damned good shape for a geek," Gwen said unexpectedly.

Greg would have appreciated the compliment if it wasn't for the note of suspicion in her voice. "Pilates," he improvised desperately, hoping to distract her as he pulled on a pair of pants. "The company pays for it. They have this wellness program that—"

"Shut up and get on with it," she snapped, all but rolling her eyes.

Good, Greg thought as he buttoned the shirt. Now if I can just get into the right position… He pulled the one-piece flight suit over the rest of his clothing, zipped it up, and then stood on one foot to put on a shoe. He did the same for the second shoe and as soon as it was on, purposely lost his balance and began to fall forward. He caught himself by taking one large step forward, closing the distance between himself and Gwen.

She wasn't stupid. Her eyes narrowed and her hands came up… just a fraction of a second too late to block Greg's upward palm-strike. He hit her under the chin so hard that her feet came off the floor. He caught her limp body as it collapsed, easing it down onto the hard concrete floor. She was heavier than she looked… and very well-muscled, he couldn't help noticing.

"I'm sorry I had to sucker-punch you," he whispered to her. "But 'finish it before they realize it's started', Funakoshi Sensei always used to say." He quickly searched her but found nothing else. He checked to make sure she was still breathing, then stood up and looked at the outer door of the office.

Marines, she said. Well, that means a different service with a different chain of command. Greg told himself. And if she's right about nobody being told more than absolutely necessary...

He shucked the flight suit, wedged the metal office chair under the handles of the phony lockers, and walked to the door. He squared his shoulders, opened the door, went through, and then shut it behind himself with quick, precise movements.

Outside the door was a big warehouse full of oily engine parts and rusty pieces of machinery. At one end, was a large open doorway. Sunlight spilled in, silhouetting the two figures that stood facing inward. Behind them was a large military helicopter with Marine insignia on it.

Greg began to walk briskly toward the figures. Now, he thought, how would old Greenwaldt do it? As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, Greg could make out two men in helmets and flight suits. "You can stand down," he snapped at them, imitating the general's clipped delivery. "The drill's over. You'll be getting new orders within the hour."

The pilots glanced at each other and then back at Greg. "The drill…" The pilot peered at Greg's clothes, looking for some sort of insignia and then settled for the safest option. "…sir?"

"Yes," Greg continued irritably. "The drill. This drill. Operation Nightmare."

The pilots looked at each other again in confusion. "We weren't—"

"Oh, good God man!" Greg snapped, "Invading monsters from the Internet? You didn't actually believe that nonsense, did you?"

"We weren't told anything, sir." One of them said. "We just heard things."

"Stupidest clusterfuck I've ever been involved in." Greg said with immense conviction. "Now, if you marines will excuse me, I've got to get back into uniform. The Corporal will be along with your orders as soon as possible." And, with that, Greg strode past them, out of the door and past the helicopter, praying that he would find some obvious way out of the complex.

One of the Marines behind him made an uncertain "Um…" noise but Greg kept going at the same steady pace until he came to a corner of another building and turning, disappeared from their view. Then he ran.

How long would it take the soldiers below to realize what had happened? He hadn't seen any cameras in the office, but they could have been too small to notice. The elevator took at least five minutes to travel from the facility to the surface. That meant ten minutes for a round-trip. It had been two or three since he'd knocked out Agent Gwen and that meant at least six or seven minutes at the earliest before all hell would break loose.

Greg rounded another corner and saw that the defenses of the disguised facility were entirely based on its false identity as a parts depot. There wasn't even a fence around the place. There was a crowd of people at the entrance, though. Locals who had seen the Marine helicopter come in for a landing, Greg guessed. There was a Sheriff's deputy keeping them from walking onto the property.

A small vacant lot separated the facility from the next group of buildings. Greg would be in full view of the crowd if he crossed it, but he was running out of time and would have to go back into the complex to find another way out. He started walking across the lot.

It took all his self-control not to run as he heard someone in the crowd shout, "Hey, there's a guy over there!"

"Yeah, Joe," came an authoritarian voice that Greg assumed was the deputy's, "and he probably belongs there. You don't. Just stay out of the way and let the military boys do their job."

"But what if it's terrorists like in California…" the man continued. Fortunately, Greg made it across the lot unhindered. The man's voice faded away as Greg wound his way between a feed store and another warehouse.

"Minnehaha County Sheriff's Department," Greg muttered to himself. It had been clearly written on the deputy's vehicle. "Seriously, Minnehaha? I still have no idea where I am." He hadn't been close enough to read the state's name on the license plate.

He headed toward a group of buildings that looked more like a business district. That's where the military would probably look for him first, but his alternative was to head out across open farmland. He'd stick out like a sore thumb if he did that.

A couple of minutes later he turned down Main Street and found out where he was. The town's name was on a large block of granite along with the date it was founded. That really wouldn't have told him much, except there was also a map. Not too far from Sioux Falls, Greg pondered. If I can get there, I can probably disappear… but I've got no money and no car. And I'm running out of time!

He kept walking, mentally noting the various businesses he passed. Aside from the vacant, boarded-up ones that comprised almost a third of their number, there was a junk store, a bar, a Radio Shack and, at the end of the block, a diner named Hog Heaven. The large front window had a painting of a big pink pig with white wings, holding a plate with a gigantic mound of food on it. But it was something else on the window that caught Greg's attention, and it all fell into place… he now had a plan.

He briefly pretended to look at the newspaper in the machine outside of the diner and then retraced his steps to the Radio Shack. The young boy who was behind the cash register looked up as Greg entered. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"Yeah," Greg smiled at him. "Do you have any laptops I can check out?"

The clerk pointed out the display models and Greg asked, "Do you mind if I poke around on them for a couple of minutes? I'm trying to make up my mind which one I want."

"No problem," the clerk told him and returned to the counter where he had evidently been reading a comic book.

Greg opened the little netbook's WiFi panel. Surprisingly there were three networks in range but one clearly had the strongest signal. Although it didn't have a customized name, it had to be from the diner next door that had the "Free WiFi" sticker in the window.

Greg clicked the connect button and a password box popped up. He recognized the brand of wireless router they were using and knew it came out of the box with "admin" as the username and "pword" as the password. He tried that combination and it worked.

"Bless you, lazy people of the world," he breathed as he typed in meta commands designed to contact his home machine.

"Whatcha up to?" came a voice from just behind him. Greg only just managed not to jump in surprise. The clerk had gotten curious about what he was doing and had come to peer over his shoulder.

"I'm…" Greg groped for a plausible reason for the lines of code streaming up the window on the machine, "I'm trying to… uh… see if this machine will run that new online game."

"Which one's that?" The boy asked.

Dammit! Greg mentally swore at himself. Now I've made him more interested!

"Uhm… it's called Equestria Online. It's still in beta but it looks like it'll be pretty good."

"You’re a brony, huh?” The clerk said with a bit of a sneer in his voice. “I never liked that show, myself. Besides, you won't be able to get online from…" he trailed off as a square of bare ground appeared on the screen and plants began to rapidly grow on it.

"Whoa! That's pretty cool." The clerk said. "What happens next?"

I wish I knew, Greg thought sourly to himself. But within seconds, Pinkie Pie had appeared on the screen.

"Greg!" the little pink pony cried happily. "Where are you?"

"I'm in a little town in South Dakota called Humboldt—"

"That's kinda cool," the clerk said. "It's voice activated?"

"Yeah," Greg said, "and I'm sort of in the middle of a game… watch this." He addressed the pony on the screen. "Pinkie, I've just escaped from a secret underground military facility and there will be soldiers coming after me soon, if they aren't already. I don't have much time. Can you get Nightmare Moon for me?"

"I'm sorry Greg, but she's already gone through the portal to the real world with the others. She had me stay behind in case you tried to contact us again, but I'm all alone here. I can send her a message, though."

"That is so awesome!" the clerk whispered behind Greg.

"Tell her that I'm stuck here and all the rest of it. If there's any way she can get all the ponies to go back to Equestria…"

"Uh… I don't think… well… she's been a bit odd lately. "Odd and, like, super scary." Pinkie Pie finished lamely.

The "scary" part, Greg could understand. "What do you mean, 'odd'?" he demanded.

"Well…" Pinkie began, but at that moment two humvees full of soldiers roared past the store and the clerk looked up in surprise.

Shit, Greg thought, here we go. How long is it going to take him?

The clerk looked from the street to Greg and back again. He leaned past Greg and directly addressed Pinkie Pie. "Are you real?" he demanded.

"Yupperoonie, I sure am!" Pinkie Pie said. "Are you?"

The clerk turned to Greg, wide-eyed. "Then you really did escape from—"

Greg's fist caught the boy squarely in the solar plexus. The clerk folded up with a grunt and Greg eased him down onto the floor. "Sorry dude. National emergency and all that." He grabbed a package of zip ties off of a shelf and trussed up the clerk, then scoped out the back of the store. There was a rear door that let out onto an alley.

Greg returned to the computer. "Pinkie, I may have to run at any minute so can you give me an idea what's going on with Nightmare Moon and the rest of the ponies as quickly as you can?"

"Well… um… I'm glad you're alive because… because…"

"C'mon Pinkie! Spit it out!"

"Nightmare Moon said if they killed you, she'd burn the whole planet to a cinder."

Greg gaped at the little pony. "Can she do that?"

Pinkie shook her head. "I don't know… but I think she might try."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks again to my wonderful prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and the Fabulous Fana Farouche. Also, new this week, Physics Technical Adviser Cander! (Turns out that mixing Coke and pop-rocks won't kill you unless you do it just right.)

22 Tweaking Heaven

Chapter Twenty Two

Tweaking Heaven

Given the god-like power to transform their world and the added, unique ability that he provided to freeze their creation so that nobody could undo their work, Greg's parents chose to make a place remarkably like the retirement community they had been living in before their lives had been turned upside down. Several of their friends decided to join them.

Greg had taken Luna along with him to meet them, but after seeing the appalled looks on their faces when his parents had first seen her, he asked his partner to wait for him at their safe house that overlooked the Willamette Valley in Oregon. He joined her there shortly afterward.

"They always hoped I'd give up on my transient girlfriends and settle down with someone," he told her later. "But when I finally bring my dream-girl home, they..." He didn't even want to think about the hurtful things they'd said to him after Luna had left. "...they get all... funny about it. Go figure."

"They seemed..." Luna groped for something appropriate and finished lamely, "...nice."

"Boring, you mean." Greg grinned. "Well, at least they'll be comfortable now... and safe from all the changes happening in the rest of the world." He paused and sighed. "They begged me to put things back the way they used to be. You know, I really didn't expect it to be this chaotic. People seem just as intent on messing up everybody else's fantasy as they are about creating their own."

"Sister has been quite busy today. Even things that don't require her attention seem unstable." Luna pointed with her forehoof. "There's been an inland sea down in the valley there about three times while I've been waiting for you. Somebody else seems to think it ought to be the sort of orchards that are there now and it keeps switching back... oops, there it goes again!"

They watched as the apple trees disappeared under a rising flood of sparkling water. Gulls and pelicans swooped in from nowhere, and off in the distance a pod of dolphins leaped and cavorted through the gentle waves.

"I guess they haven't discovered that the changes are biased and stabilized by numbers yet," Greg said. "Nobody ever reads the damn manual!"

"Or the orchard and ocean favoring groups may have nearly equal numbers of people," Luna said thoughtfully.

"Naw," Greg said, "I bet it's just two hard-headed twits fixated on this particular valley... combat over cooperation to the detriment of both. Oh, well... not my problem any more."

"You do have one more responsibility," Luna reminded him.

"Ah, yes... Lisa," Greg said, nodding. "I think I've come up with something. I just need to do some more testing…"

Far to the north, there was a bright flash of light and glittering towers of green glass rose high into the sky, paused, and then shrank down into the deepening gloom as if in fast-reverse. "Still sorting things out," Greg mumbled, "I wonder how long it will take before things stabilize."

"Knowing humans," Luna said, "it may never happen in more than a few places." She shrugged. "But it will be their own fault and nothing to do with us."

"It doesn't bother you?" Greg asked.

"No," she said, slipping a wing around him and resting her head on his shoulder. "And it won't bother you either... after a while. You'll see."

He returned her embrace. "Sometimes I feel like I've given loaded guns to a bunch of grade school children. Look at that!" He pointed to the half-dozen whirling tornadoes of fire that danced along the edge of the bay, "Who the hell thought that would be a good idea?"

"Well, they are certainly pretty, and they don't seem to be doing any…" Luna's ears twitched. "Something's coming," she said, turning to look toward the south.

Greg heard it then; the roar of powerful engines approaching fast. "Oh ghod, now what?" he groaned. Moments later, a huge flying craft flashed by only a hundred feet below the mountaintop but climbing rapidly.

"That looked like Serenity," Luna commented.

"Yep," Greg said, grinning. "I didn't see the name, but that's a Firefly-class bulk transport for sure." He followed the ship as it continued to climb nearly vertically up through the atmosphere. In the early evening sky, only a few stars were visible and the one that the spaceship seemed to be heading for was a clear, untwinkling red. Greg began to smile. "Okay, now I feel better about things. While everybody is stepping on each other's toes trying to be Captain Fucking Planet, those guys are going off to their own planet!" He watched until he could no longer make out the light of the spaceship's drive. "Big damn heroes," he said softly. "I hope they make it."

When they looked down, the valley was full of apple orchards again.

Greg told Luna that there was some work he needed to do before they went to Terminus Village to look in on the exiled politicians.

"You might as well get some sleep," he told her, "I don't know how long this is going to take."

"I don't mind keeping you company," she said.

"Well... I need to concentrate," he said.

"Oh," Luna blinked at him uncertainly, "Alright then." He had never wanted privacy for work before. She knew well enough when he was deep in some problem and always refrained from interrupting him.

"Great," he said a little wistfully and then hugged her tightly. "I love you."

Luna was puzzled. Greg was acting stranger by the hour and she was concerned. She thought it over for a while as she watched the valley fill and the moon's reflection dance on the waves. Then she turned and went through the house to the large converted barn in the back that served as Greg's work area. She slipped in silently, flowing in the shadows. If Greg glanced up, he wouldn't see her. If he examined the corner of the room carefully, he might see her... but he wouldn't notice her.

She watched him work at his computer station. Nothing unusual there. She came closer until she could see what was displayed on the screen. It was meaningless to her; numbers, charts, and graphs with complex labels.

Greg seemed to be running a simulation. He ran it over and over again with different parameters for several hours. Luna still couldn't see why he would have wanted to be alone but she stayed, watching. She noticed something on the desk beside the computer; a manila envelope with her name written in large letters across its surface. She slowly lifted the end of the envelope and examined it. It was sealed shut. She didn't think that she'd be able to take it away and open it without Greg noticing so she let it back down again.

Some hours after midnight, Greg sighed and pushed himself away from the computer. He paced up and down for a few minutes and then returned to the machine and moved the mouse, clicking it once.

The mirror portal that stood against one wall came to life, glowing and humming on a frequency that was even lower than Luna could hear. But she could feel it in her body... and it felt different, unsteady. Then the vibration began to heterodyne, the pulses growing stronger by the instant. Luna looked at Greg, but he was calmly watching the gate. It was something he had expected to happen.

There was a sudden blurring of the gate's structure and then it split, and there were two gates in the room. They were about six feet apart and facing each other. The vibration smoothed out and sank to a normal level.

Greg walked to the gates and stood between them, facing the left-hand one. He hesitated, took one step toward the gate and then backed away. He stood there, hands clenching for a while and then returned to the computer and ran the familiar simulation again. The results looked exactly the same as the last dozen times to Luna. Greg sighed and touched the envelope with her name on it, then returned to the gates.

This time he didn't hesitate. He walked through the left-hand gate and disappeared. For a long while nothing happened. Just as Luna had convinced herself that something was wrong and that she should follow Greg into the mirror, he reappeared from the right-hand gate, shivering and breathing hard. He stood there for a while and caught his breath. He looked down at his hands and turned them over as if there was something odd about them. Finally he walked back toward the desk. Before he reached it he looked directly at Luna and stopped.

"W—what are you doing here?" he asked. He didn't seem angry, just puzzled.

Luna's only reaction to the sudden realization that Greg could easily see her was a brief blink. "I... I heard a noise," she lied. "Just now. A loud crackle like a static discharge. I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"Huh," Greg said to himself. "It shouldn't have made any noise... well, it doesn't matter. Uh..." his eyes flicked down to the envelope for a split second and he moved to place himself between it and Luna. "Let's go eat something, okay?" He gestured to the door. "Go ahead. I'll be out in a second."

Luna couldn't very well refuse. She went back into the house and Greg joined her a moment later. They walked out onto the porch in the pre-dawn light to see the ocean below them dotted with numerous islands, all covered with apple trees.

"Hey!" Greg cried in amazement, "Look at that! Finally a little cooperation between..." His praise was cut short as all the islands erupted into flames, incinerating the trees. "Oh for... screw this!" he said, turning his back on the flaming valley. "Let's wake Lisa up and go get breakfast."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks once more to the GGG (Great Group of Guys) who do the unforgiving work of slogging through my first, second, and third drafts, Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and WrittenWord333!