Epsilon-6

Luna and Epsilon had been talking all the way through the conversation between Celestia and Twilight, and they had already learned many things about each other, though not much could be learned about Epsilon.

At first, Epsilon was skeptical that he would even care in the end, but the more he talked with Luna, the more he found it to be enjoyable. It had even gotten to the point that he asked more question than Luna asked of him.

“What is it like to live in such an immense place? Naturally, I have not had much experience in such a thing, surely it must be difficult to keep it maintained.” He asked.

Luna gave a giggle before responding, “We don't live there alone, we have ponies that help keep the castle clean and organized. Without them, I don't think we would be able to handle everything a princess needs to do AND keeping the castle in shape.”

“Surely it is looked down upon to have slaves, or am I incorrect?”

Luna looked at him, apparently horrified at the thought. After a moment of recovery, she responded, “Uhm... no, Epsilon, they aren't slaves, they are given it as a job and are paid well for it. We would never even consider having... slaves.”

Epsilon was about to ask something else when Celestia walked into the room.

“Luna, me and Twilight have had a talk, it is time for us to go.” She said, smiling at the sight of her sister having a conversation with somepony she had just met, even if the pony wasn't really a pony.

Luna pouted at that, not wanting to leave so soon after arriving, but after some insisting from Celestia, Luna gave up in the end.

“Well Epsilon, I guess I will have to say goodbye,” Luna said reluctantly.

“It was a pleasure to speak with you, Luna. I do hope we can talk once more in the future.”

“As do I,” she said with a small smile before walking out of the door.

• - -Twilight- - -

Twilight watched as the two princesses got aboard their carriage, her mind still reeling over the conversation she had only minutes ago. When the two alicorns were long out of sight, she turned around to find the machine standing there. Watching her. Waiting.

“You appear to be staring at me, Twilight Sparkle. Is there something wrong?” It said, however, Twilight's mind was still focused on the thought of her task to register its words.

The robot watched her for a few more seconds before sitting down and looking around the room, apparently still fascinated with the architecture.  It took her a little while, but she finally got to pulling herself together, she managed to stop thinking about the conversation and focus on the problem before her,

“Alright,” she said, staring at the robot who had now turned to face her once more, “Princess Celestia has ordered me to teach you how to properly deal with situations like the one in the bunker. I'm... not sure how, but I have to follow these orders through.”

The machine stared into space a little before giving its response, “What exactly will you be teaching me then? Did I not act properly during the attack?”

“What? No! Of course not, my friends were hospitalized and-” Twilight managed to calm herself down before she got out of hoof again.

With a sigh, she continued, “You defended yourself, yes, but you could have stopped that peacefully and without violence.”

“I attempted to warn the ponies that attacked me that they would not win. They continued regardless.”

Twilight resisted the urge to facehoof, and instead attempted to explain, “You told that to one pony, and that pony has an ego bigger than the moon.”

The machine seemed to process that before it gave its response, “I see. But, she still attacked me, surely I had to defend myself, yes?”

“You are made of metal for Celestia's sake, I'm sure you could have handled a few punches.” She replied, getting more annoyed by the second.

“The probability of me surviving that attack with no damage is low. Another issue with your claim is that the initial punch damaged my processor. Without it, I was no longer linked with the bunker AI, causing my systems to try and compensate to re-establish a connection with it. The risk was too high for me to simply talk my way out of the situation.”

Twilight struggled to come up with a response to that, realizing that what it had said was actually fairly true. After a moment of thought, she gave up. “Regardless, I still have a task to do. So let's get to it.” She said with a sigh.

She started moving towards the library, the robot following her closely. When she reached it, she threw the doors open and walked inside. The machine stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the sheer number of books lining the shelves, before walking over to where Twilight was now sat.

When it sat before the table, she began the lesson.

“Okay, let's try to get this finished quickly. So, I already know why you attacked my friends, but could you tell me what you might have been able to do in order to avoid violence?”

The metal pony appeared to think for a few seconds before giving its response, “I could have dodged their attacks, I suppose. However, I doubt that would have ended anything quickly.”

“But surely you must know that there was a possibility of talking your way out of it. You mentioned it only minutes ago.”

“Yes. There was a chance to talk my way out of it, I am not saying that it was not a possibility, I am just saying that it was a poor choice in comparison with fighting.”

“That may be the case, but you can't just beat ponies that come near you into a pulp. I'm sure that if you had tried to actually end it peacefully then there would have been no need for anypony to be hurt.”

“I gave a warning, as I have already mentioned. Is this not sufficient?”

Twilight gave an exasperated sigh, quickly realizing that this wouldn't be as easy as she had hoped it would be.

“No, it isn't. You could have reasoned with Rainbow or even the guards, giving them no reason to assume you were hostile.”

“...Why would they assume that I was hostile? Had I done something to give them that reaction?”

“In a way, yes.” Twilight responded, giving some thought into the next part of her explanation, “When you activated, you spun around towards me, I suppose that you simply activate like that and you were not able to control it, but because you turned so quickly towards me, the others thought you wanted to hurt me.”

Epsilon stared at her for a short while before responding, “I... do not understand. They attacked me because I moved? I had made no movements to hurt you, but they thought I would do so anyway? This confuses me.”

“Just try to understand that you are not a pony, they were cautious around you and were not sure what you were capable of. Apparently, you moving like that set them off. But anyway, there isn't much we can do about that now. We should move on.”

Epsilon nodded at that, 'It almost behaves like a real pony at times. Whoever built it must be incredibly talented' She thought to herself as she pushed a book forward.

“This book was written for ponies that don't understand social interactions. I think you should give it a read, it may help you to understand a bit about how to act in certain situations. While you do that, I am going to go check on Spike.”

Epsilon only nodded again in response, quickly opening the book's cover and reading the first page.

With one last look towards the robot, Twilight walked out of the room.

• - -Epsilon- - -

-Interaction recorded to database-

Epsilon was intrigued by the book before him, he had never seen anything like it before. His systems were capable of reading the text in the book but he was much more interested in the pictures and how thin the pages were.

Eventually, after a large amount of time examining the book before him, he got to actually reading the text on the first page. He had started when Twilight was still in the room but had quickly become distracted.

-Storing new data into memory banks-

Happy in the knowledge that his AI was now taking over the actual reading part, he started to pay more attention to the pictures on each page. The pictures depicted different ponies talking, apparently about various things. He didn't recognize any of the ponies he saw but as his AI gathered information, he began to see what the ponies were feeling in each picture, something that he found fairly difficult before hoof.

He even learned what that odd hoof movement Twilight did before actually meant.

It didn't take all that long for him to get through the entire book, mostly because he technically wasn't the one reading it. When he closed the book, he looked up for the first time in an hour to find himself still alone.

Thinking back to what Twilight had said, he had no recollection of her saying that he was to stay in the library until she returned, so he figured he might as well take a look around the castle. He quickly jumped up and trotted out of the room, choosing a random path and following it.

After a short while, he found a hallway with a large amount of doors on either side. Curious, he started looking inside of them. Many of them appeared to be storage cupboards but some looked like they were actually used frequently. There was even a few bedroom scattered around, though most of those looked relatively unused in the time that the castle had existed.

While exploring, he came back to the main door and found a door he had not seen when he was there last. It was a much larger door than what seemed necessary, implying that what was behind it was much more interesting than what he had seen so far.

His interest spiking, he pushed the door open to find a large chamber, tree roots hung from the ceiling and below them, a large table lay there with seven chairs evenly spread out around it.

-Area appears to be a throne room, high levels of magic detected from the table-

Epsilon walked towards the table that the AI had pointed out, his sensors could pick up large levels of residual magic across the surface of it. On closer examination, he noticed that there was terrain on it.

-Table appears to be enchanted to show a map of the local area. Moving new data to memory banks-

As he looked over the map, a symbol appeared on the map. It was slowly flashing on a point nearby the fields outside the White Tail forest.

But before he could think too hard about it, he heard the main door open behind him.

“Wait, what do you think you are doing!?” He heard a female voice say, he turned around to see Twilight staring at him intently with a strangely familiar lizard hiding slightly behind her.

“I was observing this table, it appears to be doing something.” He responded. Twilight gave him a confused look before walking slowly over to the table. When she saw the marker, her eyes widened and she turned to Spike.

“Spike, you need to get the others over here as fast as you can!” She said, Spike, nodded and with one last look towards Epsilon, he ran out of the door as quickly as he could.