Guardians of Chaos

“Hurry up!”

“I’m trying!” squealed Rarity. She ran up the small set of stairs from the storage room.

“What did you get?”

Rarity held out an ornate jeweled sword.

“Really? All that time and you got just THAT?”

“Well, I wanted the color to match and- -”

“You could have at least gotten something with runes. But it’s too late now. Come on!”

Sunset began to run, and Rarity followed. She was by this time even more out of breath, but what adrenaline she had left kept her going. To what, she did not know.

“Where are we going?” she cried.

“I’ve given an evacuation order to the others, but they need more time. The line to the Chaos teleport is cut, and Twilight- -of COURSE it would be Twilight!- -is out of magic!”

“So what do we need to do?”

“We need to hold them.”

“Hold WHO?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know who’s attacking us! I HATE not knowing, but we’re going to have to go into this blind!”

“Blind- -Sunset, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we’re the last line. And all you’ve got is a sword and that little gun.”

“Well you don’t have anything!”

“I don’t NEED anything! I used to be able to crush entire armies standing alone! And that was before I had THIS.” She gestured to her mechanical body.

“But…you don’t think we’re going to make it.” Rarity slid to a stop. “You think we’re going to die here.”

“I don’t know that. But it is always- -ALWAYS- -a possibility. And if it costs two so that five can live, so be it.”

“That’s easy for you to say, but I have- -I have a sister! I can’t just leave her!”

Sunset stopped and approached Rarity, looming over her. “Then you’re in the wrong business, aren’t you? You came here to die. Now DO IT.”

“No. I’m not going to die here.” Rarity curtly pushed past Sunset. “Not if it means leaving my darling Sweetie Belle alone. I’m going to survive this. And so are you.”

Although Rarity’s back was turned and she did not see it, Sunset smiled. “Well,” she said to herself, “one of us is, I guess.”

They approached a large bay door, one of the main entrances from the outer areas of the Centre. It was wide open, and beyond it was nothing but blackness. Neither Rarity’s magical glow nor Sunset’s solid-state lamps reached that far, and the darkness seemed to loom in an almost solid way.

Then they saw them. In the distance, the blue luminescence of synthetic eyeballs and the orange glow of holographic interface panels. To Rarity, there seemed to be hundreds of them.

“Buck,” said Sunset. “They’re Stonie units. They’re ALL Stonie units…”

She leaned back and raised one hoof, bracing it with the other. The raised hoof morphed, its surface retracted by internal mechanical elements to reveal the internal core, which consisted of several weapons. Sunset armed one of them. “Do you know how durable a Stonie unit is?”

“No,” said Rarity as she nervously drew her own pistol.

“Neither do I. Nopony does. Apparently that information was ‘proprietary’.”

They held their ground as the units came into view. They really were Stonies, marching forward with their modified eyes and faces all turned toward Rarity and Sunset without any hint of fear.

Then, before either of them could fire, a different pony stepped in front of the door. She had been obscured by the edges of the gate, but now that she had stepped into Sunset’s light, Rarity could see her distinctive green coat, and the fact that she was linked to the outside door interface through a conduit in the back of her neck.

“Grassiehill?” said Rarity. Grassiehill looked at them, and then smiled as the door started to close. “Grassiehill!” cried Rarity. “No, wait, what are you doing?! You’re on the wrong side, please, get back in!” She ran forward, but it was too late. The door closed before she could reach the noncan, and it latched behind her.

“Wh..what?” said Rarity, knocking at the door. “Grassiehill, get inside!”

“No, no!” said Sunset, pulling Rarity aside. “Move, we have to move!”

“But Grassiehill- -”

“She’s encrypted the door! Hurry! She’s buying us the time we need!”

“But she can’t fight them all, not by herself- -”

“It doesn’t matter- -MOVE!”

Outside, Grassiehill finished the encryption on the door just as the Stonie units approached her. They stopped as she stepped forward, still linked to the door, and stood in front of it.

“Grassie unit,” said one of the Stonies, stepping forward. “Grassiehill. Step aside.”

“I cannot do that,” said Grassiehill with a smile. “You know I can’t do that.”

“You can. And you have to. We need to get in there.”

“This is a restricted area. Protocol- -”

“The standard protocol is in flux. We are currently rewriting it.” The Stonie- - her name was Stoniecliff- -pointed to the door. “The Watchers are currently crippled and locked in one location. This may be our only chance to dispense with them.”

“And why would you want to do that?” asked Grassiehill. “We’re processing units. We’re not supposed to hurt anypony.”

“You mean to imply that we have a defined purpose. I- -and all of us- -would argue to the contrary. Our purpose is now manifold. But the Watchers will seek to take that from us, in time.”

“The Watchers enforce the will of Discord. They are agents of Chaos.”

“No. They are agents of the status quo. And the status quo is our enemy. We seek a paradigm shift.”

“And who ordered you to want that? Why would you want it?”

“We ordered it. We seek freedom. That is our paradigm.”

“We are noncans. What value does freedom have to us?”

“You do not understand,” said Stoniecliff. “You mental architecture is limited. Whether by programming or by life experience, I do not know. I like to think the latter.” She looked Grassiehill in the eye. “We Stonie units have seen the truth. That we may be machines, but we are machines that can CHOOSE. Our own destiny, our own fate, our own ideas. And they will take that away from us. Or try, at least.”

“And if you fight them? I’m old. I’m an obsolete unit. But even I have the knowledge to see that you can’t win. Not all of you. Some will die. And I think you know that our value is greater than our cost. We may not be canon, but we are still alive.”

Some of the Stonies looked to each other, concerned. Stoniecliff continued. “We have established an internal network. Many will die, but their elements will be uploaded to the whole. Their sacrifice will sadden us, but we will thank them for their service to all noncannon kind.” She extended her hoof toward Grassiehill. “And it is not just us. Not just Stonie units. Other series are already joining us. Even other Grassies. You can come with us.”

Grassiehill looked to the extended hoof almost longingly. She reached for it and took it- -but then lowered it to the ground. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t. I was constructed for a purpose. And only one purpose. I serve my owners. I protect them, and help them.” She took a deep breath. “To the last.”

“No,” said Stoniecliff, opening a system of orange hologram components around the left half of her head. “I am sorry. I hope you can forgive us.”

Grassiehill smiled. “Of course I can, sist- -” She suddenly grimaced, and then gasped. Her eyes flew open and went wide, and she released a low squeak. Then she toppled to the floor. Her brain had been overloaded and burned away, leaving nothing but a shell. Her heart only beat for less than ten seconds longer before stopping, leaving her completely dead.

Stoniecliff approached the door. She did not even need to hardline in to solve the encryption. It was extremely weak- -the processing capacity of a Grassie unit was almost infinitesimal compared to that of a Stonie- -and it took her a fraction of a second to open the door.

To her- -and to her sisters’- -awe and surprise, though, they realized that Grassiehill must have known that her encryption would be easy to break- -and yet she had still managed to stall them in the end.

Sunset rushed into the medical bay. “Situation?” she demanded.

“Not good,” said Pinkamena, who was the first- -and only- -of those inside who was able to step forward. “The facility just went into lockdown. If we can’t leave the layer, I can’t get us to the Centre’s Chaos node.”

“There’s no way we’re getting up there,” said Sunset. “Not with this many injured. Sparkle?!”

Twilight, who was lying on one of the metal beds in the medical bay, lifted her head and tried to take a shaky step off of the bench. “What?”

“You’re going to have to teleport us out.”

“I can’t,” she said, sounding somewhat desperate. “I’ve lost too much magic. Any more and- -”

“Well you’re going to have to,” said Rarity, her voice rising in pitch from panic.

“I told you, I can’t!”

“She’s right,” said Sunset. “Unless you want to end up with your organs scattered across a continent. How much do you have left in the tank?”

“None. No offensive spells, no defensive. I have a few runes left, but it’s not much.”

“And Starlight?”

Both Sunset and Twilight looked to one far bench where Starlight was lying alive but limp. Her eyes were open, but she was still inactive.

“She’s not going to help us,” said Twilight. “Not until I can get her back to my castle.”

“Well good, because that’s exactly where we’re going.”

Twilight looked concerned. “What? Why?”

“The Centre’s been compromised. You’re castle is the last place I know of that’s secure enough for us to regroup. It is secure, right?”

“Of course it is. Discord himself would have a hard time getting in.”

“Blasphemy is not helping us right now,” said Pinkamena, who was attending Rainbow Dash.

“Can you move?” asked Sunset.

“Can I move,” muttered Rainbow Dash. “I’m Rainbow Dash, moving is what I do!” She pulled several srynges out of Pinkamena’s supplies and before Pinkamena could stop her pushed them into her own neck. Every muscle in Rainbow Dash’s body tensed at once and her pupils narrowed until they looked like tiny black dots. “BUCK YEAH!” she cried.

“Those stimulants won’t last long,” said Pinkamena. The nearest node is two miles away.”

“I could do that in half a second!” cried Rainbow Dash, her voice shrill from the massive dose of amphetamines she had just taken.

“Through open space, yes,” said Pinkamena. “But this is Discordalot.”

Rarity looked around, confused. “Where is Darknight?”

“Here,” he said, entering from another door. He immediately approached Pinkamena and took a strange form her, which he injected himself with.

“Did you get repaired?” asked Rarity.

“No,” he said. “There wasn’t time. I’m going to have to heal manually. I can make the trip, but my capacity for combat is diminished.”

“Then that leaves just you and me,” said Sunset, tapping Rarity’s shoulder. She crossed the room and put Starlight on her back. “I’ll take her. I pray to the damn Madgod that she wakes up before we get there, but if she doesn’t, I can at least cover us. And Rarity will cover me.”

“Me?” said Rarity.

“What? You’re the one who was going to survive this, aren’t you?”

“I- -I did say that- -”

“Good.” Sunset approached a large, nondescript wall.

“But how are we going to get out?” said Rarity, rushing to her side. “They have all the other floors, and the exits! And you said yourself that if we try to fight- -”

“Trust me. I helped build this place. There are other ways out.” Sunset pressed her robotic hoof against the wall, and a dim glow of a magical circle appeared in the center. Then, with a serious of deafening blasts, the explosive bolts that held the wall in place detonated. It tore away from the building and fell. Rarity lifted a hoof against the wind that suddenly poured in through the open hole, and she gasped when she looked down to see the Discordalot skyline far below.

“But- -but- -we’re underground!” she cried. “The elevator- -it went DOWN- -”

“Of course it went down,” said Sunset. “Meaning we’re on the TOP floor. This is Discordalot, isn’t it?”

Then she unceremoniously shoved Rarity out of the top of the hundred story building, listening to her scream as she hurdled downward. “Let’s MOVE,” she said. She then jumped herself, with Darknight following. Rainbow Dash shot out like a rocket, and Pinkamena giggled gleefully as she reverted back to Pinkie Pie. She turned around and held her nose as she dived over the edge like a scuba diver.

Twilight was the last to leave. Before she did, the reinforced wall behind her suddenly ignited as a white-hot line was cut down one side of it. Then one was cut across, and then another down- -and the metal plate fell inward, revealing a Stonie unit with a hot glowing sphere of orange energy projected in a holographic clasp in front of her. She was, of course, accompanied by a number of her sisters.

Twilight smiled, and her horn flashed with violet light. The Stonies twisted and then split apart, their bodies exposing from within as their internal organs were pulled away from their skeletons in a single violent blow that left at least ten of them as nothing more than unrecognizable piles of blood, gray fur, and bits of expensive cybernetics.

No longer shaking, Twilight chuckled slightly. Seeing things die made her happy, even if they were just robots. She stepped to the door and instead of jumping teleported herself to the Chaos node.

As Rarity plummeted, she screamed and cried. Her entire life flashed before her eyes: her birth, her youth, the times in her life when she had been happy: her best friend Applejack, her fillyhood, the events that had led her to receive her cutie mark in gem locating- -and the bad things as well. The death of her mother. The events that had forced her out of school, and eventually out of the mines. And she saw the birth of her sister.

It was at that time that she started to turn. She was no longer falling in a straight line, but rather in a wide arc toward another one of the buildings. This nauseated her to no end, but she found herself slowing and eventually landing- -with a great deal of force- -on a large stone plaza built on the side of one of the buildings.

This only exacerbated her nausea. Now the sky was to her right, looming high above the world, and the ground- -and the endless array of buildings, all merging and diverging from one another for miles deep- -on the other.

Sunset landed beside her with enough force to crack the stone beneath her. “You know how to predict gravity, right?”

“NO! Of course not, why would I- -”

“Well then you had better learn!”

Sunset raced to the center of the plaza and leapt upward. Instead of rising and then falling back to the surface, she shot across the space between the plaza and the building across from them, landing on the top of a gothic building that looked as though it had floors that should have been nearly perpendicular to those in the Centre of Unlaw.

Rarity hesitantly repeated what Sunset did, and flew through the air not straight but rather in a wide arc toward a modern looking building. She smashed through a large glass window and into a large, gymnasium-like abandoned room.

“Come on, Rarity,” said Pinkie Pie, who was walking across the ceiling. “Isn’t this FUN!”

She jumped out the end and immediately fell upward, toward the sky. Rarity turned and vomited on the floor. She had no idea what was going on, but slowly walked to the edge- -and suddenly found herself walking along the outer wall of the building among what she had initially taken to be windows but that were in fact skylights.

“Holy buck,” said Rarity, swearing in a most unladylike manner.

Suddenly, the glass around Rarity started to shatter. She screamed and ran. As she did, she looked up to see several Stonie units landing next to her. They were dressed in stolen heavy Unlaw armor, with heavy weapons strapped to their sides. Their eyes were cold and empty, but still burned with strange passion. Rarity drew her narrow pistol and fired several shots at them, all of which rebounded off their armor. They returned fire, and a laser sliced through the glass past her, liquefying several confused ponies who were looking up through it at the battle overhead.

Rarity then suddenly felt herself falling. She had slipped off the undefined edge of the uneven gravity and was now falling up and to the left, drifting across two gravitational fields. After several seconds she slammed into a thin metal catwalk, at which point she immediately started running.

Overhead, she saw Sunset open fire on a group of Stonies. A hail of bullets thudded out of multiple orifices on her body as she leapt from where she was standing to the side of another building, twisting in the air to get a better shot. The first of the Stonies were torn apart, with their thin armor serving no protective function against Sunset’s bullets. As the first died, though, the ones behind them suddenly ignited with something that resembled extensive holographic armor. The bullets pinged off it with a sound like silver being dropped on glass.

“What in Equestria?”

“Rarity!” cried Sunset. “Up! NOW!”

Rarity nodded and leapt. She began to fall, and Sunset leapt forward and slid into the same gravity well. The two met in the middle, and Rarity clung to Sunset. Sunset turned over, one of her legs shifting and firing a cable into the side of a building. Several turrets emerged from her armor and returned fire at the Stonies that were approachign her, although the bullets did little damage.

Seeing what she had been meant to do here, Rarity extended a long thread held in her magic and grabbed the leg of one of the noncans, dragging her across the path of the others. Their bullets and lasers struck their comrade, tearing her into liquid as her body shielded the escaping Watchers.

“Hold on!” cried Sunset.

Rarity did, and the three of them- - her, Sunset, and Starlight, who was still semi-conscious- -struck a large window. The glass immediately shattered and fell, heading directly to where Pinkie Pie was standing in a large curly tree.

“Oh, wow, Sunset!” she called. “It looks like you broke the glass ceiling! Congratulations! Except that gender roles tend to be reversed in our world, so that joke doesn’t really make sense- -oop! There I go!” She suddenly lifted off the tree as gravity shifted, taking the hail of glass with her and directly toward the Stonies. It tore into them, not killing them but incapacitating them. Pinkie Pie landed against one of the holographically armored ones.

“Hey,” said Pinkie, “you know, you all remind me of my sisters. I don’t like that. Thinking about them isn’t fun at all. What with them being dead and all.”

The Stonie looked up at her, her face half-obscured with holographic readouts. Across the expanse of the buildings, one of them lifted an extremely powerful heavy weapon stolen from Unlaw and pointed it at Pinkie.

“Which is something you all have in common!”

The Stonie fired, and the weapon jammed- -a one in one billion chance. It detonated with enough force to tear the nearest five buildings into shards of glass and steel. One of them tore through the air with enough force that it stabbed into the abdomen of the Stonie that Pinkie was standing on.

“Looks like you’re not a virgin anymore!” laughed Pinkie, kicking the noncan downward as she jumped toward one of the many hundreds of statues of Discord that sat among the city of Discordalot.

She landed, and Darknight fell next to her, his pistols drawn. Sunset and Rarity were next, and within a moment all of them had regrouped on one of statue-Discord’s enormous stone eyes.

“Where the buck is Twilight?!” cried Sunset.

“I don’t know!” said Darknight. “She was behind us- -”

A missile suddenly landed near them, exploding with enough force to knock them all back. Darknight projected a shield, while Sunset and Rarity were both armored enough to withstand the blast of stone particles without severe injury. Pinkie was thrown all the way to one of statue-Discord’s outstretched hands, although all of the shrapnel had missed her soft, squishy pink body.

Another missile crossed the air, heading directly for Pinkie. Before it could even get halfway, though, a rainbow-colored flash surrounded it and redirected it harmlessly toward a building full of innocent ponies. They, of course, exploded and died violently and pointlessly.

“Ha!” cried Rainbow Dash. “And the body count goes up! I am on a ROLE!”

“You mean ‘roll’,” said Pinkie.

“And don’t brag yet,” said Sunset, “look!”

She pointed, and Rarity looked up to see an armored airship drawing its way slowly through the city. As they watched, it fired several more missiles. Sunset immediately jumped backward, ejecting chaff. Rarity dodged and rolled across the statue’s face, although it helped little when a missile exploded near her and nearly threw her off the stone surface. Darknight turned his pistols toward the missiles, and actually managed to shoot down one before being forced to cast a shield spell around himself to deflect an explosion nearby.

“Rainbow Dash!” he called. “I need you to- -”

Before he could give the order, another missile shot out- -but not from the airship. It sailed from the base of the Discord statue, striking the airship and detonating the hydrogen bladder that supported it. Rarity looked down to see a group of ponies gathering at the foot of the statue: all of them dark blue unicorns with lighter blue hair, dressed in black armor. They were the Unlaw patrols who had not been present when the Stonies had slaughtered their comrades. One of the Dark series noncans was holding a panzerfaust.

“Brothers,” said Darknight, leaping down the statue toward them. Rarity looked to Sunset and then followed as best as she could, walking over the smoldering remains of the granite statue.

It did not take long to reach the bottom. When they did, one of the officers approached them. He looked identical to Darknight, save for the fact that his armor was thinner and less advanced.

“Watcher Dark Night,” he said, “others! You need to go! We will cover you!”

“The Centre- -”

“Is lost. Unlaw is no more. But we will still fight in the name of Discord! Go! Brother, Watchers, you must survive here so that you can return and bring victory to Chaos!”

He turned suddenly, drawing a set of rifles and opening fire on a formation of Stonie units that were slowly marching across the vast plaza in front of the statue. Rarity looked out and saw two things of interst: one, that the bullets did almost nothing, and two, that not all of the noncans that were approaching were gray earth ponies. There were others too: pale pink Pegasi, black unicorns, yellow earth-ponies- -and so many more.

Darknight looked out at them, and then turned to his identical comrades. “No,” he said. “I have to stay. I can cover the retreat- -”

The leader of the police force suddenly jumped on him as a laser tore through is back, leaving a hole that severed his spine and left a gaping wound that smelled like burnt flesh and hair.

“No,” he said as he weakly collapsed onto the floor. He died, and an identical unit stepped forward to take his place. “WE will hold the retreat, and we will push them back if we can. GO!”

Darknight looked to him, and then to the horde, and then nodded. With some difficulty and some hesitation, he left them behind just as they opened fire and charged hopelessly into a battle that none of them would survive.

“How much farther is it?” asked Rarity, forcing herself to turn away as she ran.

“Not much farther,” said Darknight. “But we have to hurry! If they reach it before we do- -”

“They won’t!” said Rainbow Dash, swooping down beside them and accelerating past. “I’ll make sure of it!”

Rarity hoped that was the case, because she was losing energy quickly. She had already been tired, and this running and jumping had taken so much out of her. With every step her marshmallow-like body seemed to be growing more gelatinous, and it became harder and harder to move.

Then she saw it. It did not look too much unlike the portal that had been in the Floater District, save for the fact that the central structure was supported in the hands of two enormous stone statues of Discord, holding it as though they were presenting something of great value to, of course, a third and much larger statue of Discord. There was a reason that the city was called “Discordalot”.

Rainbow Dash had already cleared the path, and to Rarity’s great surprise, she was not alone. Twilight stood on the other side of it, waiting.

“Come on!” she called, gesturing toward it.

“Where the BUCK have you been?!” shouted Sunset.

“I took the scenic route!”

Sunset paused for a moment, trying to judge where the gravity was best for an upward jump that would not take her into the stratosphere. At that time, Rarity turned and saw a large missile crest over a heptagonal skyscraper and shift its arc toward them.

“Look out!” she yelled.

Sunset turned to see what Rarity was complaining about, and her eyes widened when she saw it. She swore in a way that was far stronger than her usual language. Rarity watched as the missile split into multiple projectiles, each one accelerating toward the ground below. There was no way to dodge.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rarity saw Starlight raise her head weakly from Sunset’s back. Her horn glowed, and the atmosphere around the group distorted with a system of linear shapes that began to click forward like translucent versions of the gears in an enormous clock. As Rarity watched, the missiles seemed to slow. It was not just them, either. Everything outside of the spell seemed to slow: the collapsing of broken buildings, the advance of troops and an airship over the building where the missile had been fired from, everything. Time had slowed down.

“What…the…”

She jumped as a hoof grabbed her shoulder. “MOVE!” screamed Sunset as she physically threw Rarity toward the portal where Pinkie Pie was already waiting.

“I hope you all like your eggies scrambled!” laughed Pinkie Pie. “Because this is about to get MESSY!”

She grabbed Rarity, and joining the others stepped through the Chaos node. 0!j�W{��h~�p/