G.I.T.P Ghost in the Pony

Motoko and Batou where running at full speed. They where just ahead of the wooden creatures that where steadily gaining them. Batou was calling out to her.

“OK what the F%$! is going on!? Why are we being chased by walking fire wood!? Are they robots or something!?”

“I don’t think so! I can’t imagine anyone making robots with wooden exoskeletons! Besides even the most complex AI’s couldn’t mimic an animals persona so precisely!”

“Speaking of AI I really wish we had a Tachikoma with us right now!”

“Agreed! I know they often irritate me but a Mini Walker Tank would really be useful right now!”

The Wolfs where almost upon them now…

“And I also have to admit that I’m actually missing their childish banter, it somehow always made me feel a little at ease when one of them was around!”

Just as the wolfs where about to bite down at them, something large and bright blue crashed though the trees and caused the monsters to break apart into pieces of wood.

“Do you really mean that miss Major!?”

The two of them suddenly stopped and turned to look behind them. Surrounded by broken branches and scattered wood, was a single Tachikoma. It looked a little different than normal however, more simplistic and, Motoko decided, cartoonish. She also guessed that this was the same one that was destroyed along with them before she…blacked out. The machine zoomed to the pair and grabbed them, hugging them in a strong embrace.

“YAAAAAY! You have no idea how worried I have been, when I shut down I thought it was all over because I got disconnected from the main server, but then everything went white and I was all scribbly, then a funny drawing horse thingy came and said ‘I am all, yet I am nothing, I am everywhere, yet I am nowhere, I live, yet I have never been born’ and that I would have a new life, then I reactivated in a new body, and I was in a forest, then I started looking around, then I heard you screaming then…”

Motoko pulled herself out of the Mini Tanks grasp and moved to the debris. She picked up a piece of wood that had once been a part of one of the wolf’s legs, ignoring the fact that she didn’t have fingers to hold it with anymore.

“Just as I thought. There’s no metal in this, no signs of any circuitry or Nano mechanical influences. Its just normal, everyday wood!”

Tachikoma let go of Batou and turned slightly to face Motoko.

“Right! I don’t detect any inorganic materials or electrical energy signatures coming off any of the wood those wolfs where made from. In fact I don’t detect any metals or energy masses within a hundred miles of the area!”

“I was afraid you would say…”

Motoko suddenly jolted upright as she recalled what Tachikoma had said earlier.

“Waite a minuet! You saw the strange winged horse in the white world too?”

Tachikoma lent sideways a little.

“Yep…is that strange?”

Batou looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Wait that was real? I thought I was just hilusinating!”

Motoko looked at the wood in her hoof again. This was reassuring her idea that this wasn’t the world that they knew, but how could she be sure. But just as her mind was trying to figure things out, the wood began to glow a bright shade of green, before flying right from her grip along with the other pieces of wood, even the branches that Tachikoma had broken started to float towards the growing mass. The wood began to form a shape, fit into place, become limbs and fangs. The glowing had stopped, replaced by a pair of glowing green eyes. It was bigger than the others, and appeared to have a crown of green leafs, but it was un-mistakenly another Timberwolf. Was this normal for these creatures? The grate beast roared at them, making the ground shake. It was angry with them, and it wanted payback. Then suddelny…

=High Danger Levels Detected=
=Thermo-Optical Camouflage Activated=

Motoko looked at her hoof in surprise, it disappeared right in front of her face, only for a few seconded later for a faint black outline to appear around it. Motoko realized that her eyes were generating the black line as a way to see herself, she was completely invisible otherwise. She looked back at Batou and Tachikoma, there Camouflage had also activated. She looked back at the giant wolf that was looking around confused and to her surprise actually scratching its head. Motoko motioned her hoof to move away, preferably as far away as possible. The three of them moved very slowly at first, but the moment they where out of earshot they made a brake for it. They ran as fast as they could, always keeping their eyes on the Wolf. That was a mistake because if they had been looking, they would have seen the rather steep and rather large slope right in front of them. If anyone was there at that moment they would have heard something that sounded like a large hunk of metal and two squishy thinks bouncing and rolling down a slope hitting everything on the way down culminating in a dust cloud appearing at the bottom of the slope accompanied by a loud crunching crashing sound, and two ponies under an upside down blue spider suddenly appearing from thin air. Batou groaned…

“Now I remember what pain feels like! Did we really just do something so remarkably stupid like Saturday morning cartoon characters?”

Motoko squirmed under the Walker.

“At least our camouflage saved us from the TimberWolf”

Tachikoma waved its legs.

“Yep, shame it turned off in front of the Lion!”

And sure enough Motoko and Batou could see the Lion right in front of them. And that it had large bat wings and a scorpion’s tale. Batou’s head fell face first to the ground.

“You know what…death doesn’t seem so bad anymore”