I questioned myself whether dealing with whatever Bob pulled out of his ass is worth the headache, so far everything he throwed at me can be solved with sufficient firepower or simply ignoring it. However, this is a bit of a special case.

"...ter thousands of years we will finally have my reven…"

No, It’s not some giant dragon that spit flame hot enough to melt metals and immune to any attack or some kind of Magi Beast that can adapt at a rapid pace. While it's not something that can turn my temporary base into a crater, it damn near made me just want to pack up and move.

“...bring Eternal Night! No pony will ever chalan…”

Sure I can just ignore it and sleep away until morning comes but the constant barrage of warning notifications makes it hard to just get a wink of sleep, while I can turn it off, I don't want to take any chances in case Bob decides to slip something in again.

“...th Celestia imprisoned, we, Nightmare Moon alone, will rule Equestria fo…”

And why haven’t I burst into the room and simply killed whatever it was? Well, since Bob literally controls the playing field, I had to be cautious, that means I have to actually plan something instead of going in guns blazing, not to mention my alert notification is going off like crazy.

That, and I had jack shit in to make bullets with, well the propellant that is, I doubt pressurized air would pack quite a punch compared to gunpowder.

That’s why I opted for a stealthier approach.Entering the throne room from a hole on the roof, I was able to hide in the rafter and let my scanners gather data on whatever the hell was emitting the energy spike.

A window displaying a live feed of one of my drones showing what caused the energy spike, even as my sensor reading is off the chart I couldn’t help but sigh in disappointment and frustration.

One of the lessons I learned early on before I even joined the army was ‘never underestimate your opponent’, heck it's a lesson everyone who wields a weapon and fights is expected to remember by heart. No matter what you are, be it a lowlife bandit, a common Adventurer, or even the highest order of knight, never ever underestimate the enemies.

Even the Gods themselves learned that lesson.

Who would have thought a race that isn’t ‘blessed’ with the ability to wield magic, lacked a natural weapon unlike the Demi-Humans and Beastfolks, and considered the weakest race in the world, able to brought down one of the ‘creator of the world’ that reside high above the mortal plane and replaced one of the Gods with their own.

I knew I shouldn’t underestimate this situation…but it's so damn hard not to.

Of all the bullshit Bob has thrown at me, this took the cake. He could have sent one of the creatures residing in the forest, maybe one of those glowing bears my drones came across that's definitely a Magi Beast, but nooo, he had the gall to drop one of those pastel colored ponies right in the middle of my temporary base.

Maybe ‘pastel colored’ isn’t the right word and the equine is bigger than a regular pony, but still.

At least he made her, it's definitely a female or a mare, different from the ponies I’ve seen before. Fur that’s dark as the night it almost looks like it absorbs the surrounding light, mist-like blue mane and tail that seems like a patch of blue space dust blown by an unseen breeze alongside with the presence of horn and wings greatly distinguished her from the others.

Aside from those, she had some pieces of armor on, though calling it ‘armor’ isn’t quite right, decorative pieces is more appropriate since it offers little to no protection. A helmet, some sort of chest piece with a symbol at the center and some types of greaves that only protects the front of her legs.

However what got me interested was the symbol, on her chest piece and both of her flanks, a crescent moon on a purplish background which is the same mark on the armor set I found underground.

Is there some sort of connection? Probably those were hers at some point in the past, I should probably run a scan on those armor if that was the case.

Well, mystery armor aside, so far the pegacorn, unicogsus? have to come up with something other than smashing two words together, has only been pacing around the throne room, monologuing like some saturday cartoon shows villain.

By the 9 remaining gods, the longer I listened the more I wanted to shove a drill in my ears. Just like any cartoon villain, she goes on and on and on about her plan to take over the world, or ‘put the world under her hoof’ as she put it.

Of course she had to talk as if she's some kind of actor on a stage in front of audiences, what's that? You're imprisoned on the moonfor a thousand of years? Big whoop, most people would pay to set foot on the Land of the Lunar Rabbits, me included.

And how would she accomplish such a thing, you may wonder. No, it doesn’t involve a giant radio tower that brainwash people into mindless puppets, or poisoning water sources with dubious potion, or even the classic arming a group of rebels to topple the government and ruling the country with an iron fist, or hoof in her case.

Nope, none of the above, instead she would, and I quote ‘put the world in an Eternal Night’ so her subjects will ‘love her night’, suggesting she had some degree controlling the freaking moon. After all the absurd display this simulation had to offer, for this one I had to manually disable some sub-programs so it doesn't clog up by trying to find the logic in that because…

That’s…

That is….

That is the stupidest plan I have ever heard.

"Who goes there?! Show yourself or face the wrath of Nightmare Moon!"

Whoops, I guess I said that out loud, kind of stupid of me to disable that many sub-programs at once.

I already got enough data to confirm a 65 percent win chance if I fight her, which could be worse unless Bob decides to pull something out of his ass.

Dropping down, I landed on a three point pose and released pressure with a hiss from my mechanical limbs. My eyes instantly locked on the piece of bone that's sticking out of her forehead, according to my scans it's where the unknown energy concentrated, a potential weak spot I could use.

There's a flash of something in Moon's eyes that I didn't recognise, bewilderment maybe? Whatever it was, it's replaced by her usual ‘I-am-better-than-you’ smug look, heck she even had the gall to look down on me past her nose.

Well she actually is looking down due to height difference but it still irked me.

“Hmm, so our sister has finally lost her mind and sent a colt to stop us,” she laughed to herself, “No matter, we, Nightmare Moon, will bring Eternal Ni-”

Not wanting for the migraine to worsen, I cut her off with a sigh, “can we skip to the part where we beat the crap out of each other?"

She raised an eyebrow, "excuse us?”

"Listen, I barely got enough sleep and my head is ringing like a church bell so why don't we cut the chase and throw hands," I noticed how my mouth moved before I could process it.

Either I accidently turn off some inhibition programs or I am simply too tired to care, I don't know which.

I got in a boxing stance, the hydraulics in my arms primed to give a little bit of oomph on each punch, and the miniature jets on my heels warmed up to give extra mobility.

"Because gods know how long I could take listening to your absolutely stupid plan to take over the world by turning it into a cold wasteland without offing myself."

Maybe this is Bob's plan, to fill my head with ridiculous and illogical junk so the cybernetic part of my brain would just short circuit itself in an attempt to solve it.

Nightmare Moon, as expected, went absolutely pissed with how hard she glared, "stupid? Our plan which took ages to hatch and perfected during our time imprisoned on the moon would certainly work, even if you or that foolish unicorn tries to stop me. We will bring an Eternal Night where the moon shine brightly and everypony-”

“Would be happy forever and pray to you as their glorious goddess and yadda-yadda-yadda shut it, you already did all that speech so much I lose brain cells every time you repeat it. So for the sake of my sanity, shut the fuck up.” fearing that might be the case, I open up the equivalent of the Task Bar in case some part of my cyber-brain is on loop trying to find some logic in Moon's stupid plan.

Turns out, there is one such program that’s working as if it's on overlock and using a considerable amount of memory. Said program just so happens processing the ‘Eternal Night’ plan by pointing out its numerous flaws which my mouth happily takes.

“Did you even consider the consequences of an eternal night? Of having the moon hanging over you? Of not having a day and night cycle? No, forget that, of course you haven’t. Even a child could see the problem, you utter brain dead buffoon,” I unconsciously dropped my stance as I felt another migraine coming.

I faced a still intact wall of the throne room and a small hatch on my shoulder popped open, revealing a small projector lense that began…well, projecting images of barren wasteland, “here’s what gonna happen by the first week the temperature drops low enough to freeze everything, and without sunlight crops would stop grow, thus no food and soon starvation for your ‘beloved subjects’, in case they haven’t frozen to death.”

“That’s preposterous, surely there is no-”

“SHUT IT, I’m not done yet,” the images on the wall was replaced by a picture of an earth-like planet, however half of it is covered in desert while the other is a frozen wasteland with only a small piece of the middle part covered with lush greenery, indicating only that part is habitable, “not only you’ll doom your subjects but almost the entire world with the other part of the hemisphere turned into a scorching desert with no night time to cool it off, which is effectively a death zone for any living beings.”

As my mouth runs off on its own, I noticed my processing unit logs became less cluttered and the scan process speeded up significantly, a window popped out displaying my chance of winning has risen to 70 percent.

Well then, let's see how long I can bullshit my way out of this.

“Furthermore-”

This is officially the worst night for Twilight Sparkle.

It all started with her getting sent to some village called ‘Ponyville’ to oversee the Summer Sun Celebration by her mentor which is reasonable but usually she sent somepony else, not her. She had something more important after all like stopping Mare in the Moon’s returns.

Not only that but Princess Celestia says to ‘make friends’ while she’s here, which makes no reason, she would only be here until the celebration is over, why should she make friends?

And when she met the town inhabitant, ‘hectic’ seems to be appropriate to describe them, don't get her wrong they’re nice and all but she wishes they could turn it down a notch or two.

And after the preparation was complete and everypony gathered in the town center to witness Princess Celestia raise the sun, what Twilight had feared happened.

The Mare on the Moon or known as Nightmare Moon, returned after her a thousand years of banishment, to bring an eternal night to all of Equestria.

Of course she had seen the sign but did anypony listen to her warning? Nopony did, even her faithful assistant, Spike, dismissed it as an old pony’s tale.

And here she is now, deep in the forest, trying to find where the ancient castle of the Royal Pony Sister, the place where the Elements of Harmony was last known, is.

At least she wasn’t alone searching in this Celestia forsaken forest, speaking of which…

“So do any of you know where the Royal Pony Sister castle is?” Twilight asks her…friends? Acquaintances? It's been less than a day since she knew them, yet they seem dead set on following her.

Pinkie, who has been bouncing all over the place since they entered the forest, simply answered with a smile, “Nope, no idea!”

“Almost nopony has ever set a hoof in this here forest sugar cube,” Applejack elaborated.

“Even if they did, they surely lost their minds,” added Rarity “Just look at this place! So…dreadful and dirty.”

“Pff, you’re always scared of little dirt, be a mare for once, Rar,” snorted Rainbow, “you could take a few pages from Fluttershy here, she went into the forest almost daily.”

That stopped Twilight on her track and turned her attention to the shy pegasus who shrink under her stare, she would’ve never guessed the timid mare would regularly enter the forest.

“Well, I only explored the outskirts to forage some berries for the animals.” Fluttershy whisper-answered. “It's too dangerous to go deeper, it's where beasts like manticore, timberwolf and cockatrice make their nest.”

That puts Twilight a little on edge, she knows what kind of beasts those are from books, “So this forest is a monster nest?! How come there's not a single guard keeping watch?”

“Ah know you've been here not long ago sugar cube, but ah'm sure you know that ponyville is a wee small town,” Applejack explained, “we ain’t blaming Princess Celestia for not sending guards, we hav’ a militia if there trouble with monster.”

“Speaking of the militia,” interjected Rarity, “I’ve heard some ponies talk about how half of them and some volunteers went inside this forest, do you know anything about that, Applejack?”

Suddenly the air around them chilled, whether it's Nightmare Moon’s doing, the forest’s ‘unnatural’ property or the sudden change of topic, Twilight didn’t know. Whatever it was, it did put an uneasy atmosphere between them, even Pinkie stopped bouncing around.

The stetson wearing mare seems uneasy with the question, instead of answering she just let out a series of ‘ah’, ‘erm’, and ‘ya see…’

Fed up with Applejack’s lack of answer Rainbow huffed, “a colt is missing inside this forest after he escaped from the hospital,” she shrugged at the look the cow-mare is sending, “what? it's not like it's a secret, besides I owe that colt a beat up after what he did.”

Rarity gasped, concern making itself shown on her face, “Oh my goodness, I never thought such a thing could happen,” she then turned her attention to the shy mare, “Fluttershy, dear, do you perhaps know where he is?”

Fluttershy shook her head, “I’m sorry Rarity, but not even the critters know where he is though some of the birds said they saw him go deeper toward the timberwolves territory.”

With that revelation, sorrows enveloped the entire group, even Pinkie's bouncy mane seems a bit…deflated.

Perhaps after all of this is over she can ask Princess Celestia some help to search for the colt, and if the worst happens, bring back the remains to his herd family and give him a proper burial.

For now she can only offer a silent prayer for the lost colt, wherever he is right now.

“-nd in less than a decade, most living things would effectively wipe off the world, leaving behind less than 10% of the original population of all living things, all of which can only be found at the last habitable zone.” I finished off my presentation, “and congratulations, you are now a ruler of dying world, hooray”

If the eggheads back home heard my explanations they would be having a stroke, heart attack and aneurysm at the same time, because how ridiculous it is.

To be fair, I dont have the exact data or knowledge to make an accurate simulation of a tidally locked planet, my noggin can only store a handful of useless data.

Speaking of data, my scan has gotten me a sizable amount of data somewhere in the middle of my bogus explanation and it both filled me with relief and worry. Relief because my scanners are working properly and now have a high chance of winning, or at least doing as much damage, against whatever the giant horned and winged pony is supposed to be.

In fact the data I gathered was so accurate and complete,it's categorized the winged pony unicorn as an “Unknown Creature” rather than as an ‘N/A’’, thus automatically marked her as a 'living being' with biosigns on my hud, and that worries me

Either Bob manages to get access to my inner working codes and make some changes or he got his hand on an undocumented Quantum Computer powerful enough to simulate a whole living, breathing world. I don't know which is worse and to be honest both possibilities scare me.

I ran another scan to find any conflicting or missing data, be it the heartbeat pattern, blood flow, air intake, anything that could be a sign of something out of place. Alas, the data I gathered was very much accurate with no mistakes, an airtight system with no flaw.

However, this opens up another opportunity and a way to confirm if this wasn’t a simulation being run on a Quantum Computer. This wasn’t my first time dealing with a simulation like this, where the illusion is almost real, down to the very grain of sand, and almost all of them had the same weaknesses.

Power.

Well, to be more accurate computing power.

A normal computer couldn’t hold a candle to a Quantum Computer, however they could be specialized in a way thus can imitate the power of the super computer, be it crunching numbers of liquid capitals, decrypting a highly secured file or even simulation. However it still had its limit like any computer.

If that is the case, then I just have to overload its processor by forcing it to simulate a fuck-ton of stuff at the same times. Usually I could just turn myself into a metal factory where the computer had to simulate every spark, every furnace flame, every single particle from all the machinery, until it crashed the system and reset itself or, even better, blew a circuit.

However since I don’t have that much material I need to figure out a way.

While I was thinking of a way to wreck this simulation, a low, almost inaudible sob reached my ears.

“Th-this is not what we want,” Nightmare Moon sobbed, wiping a tear off with her front hoof, “W-we just want our subject to love our night, not…not that.”

…well this is quite a turn, I had my fair share of some nutjobs monologue their ‘evil plan’, most of them was cut short by their demise via a piece of lead shoved into their cranium, but I never seen one where they realize whats the consequences of their action, much less remorse about it.

Then again, most missions I got sent to usually never require bringing them back.

Sighing, I couldn't help but feel even more disappointed at the supposed ‘big bad’ that set off my alarm sobbing like a child after a spanking session.

A unicorn with wings containing enough energy similar to Dragon and the ability to control celestial objects alongside with a god complex sounds like, as the Commander put it, a good opponent, one that will result in huge amounts of collateral damage when fought.

However, it was reduced to a sobbing mess by a nonsense rambling with little to no thought behind it. In a way, I felt insulted. This could be one of Bob's plans to get my guard down, maybe it was his intention to target my pride so I might slip something important off.

Well whatever his plans are, I’m sure I can deal with them later, for now with a supposedly this simulation equivalent of a demi-god, a plan began to cook up in my noggin, it's still half baked but I’ll manage to make it up as I go.

“Oh, c’mon, don't be a crybaby, I’m sure you can undo…whatever the hell you just did.” I said, deactivating the projector.

“Y-yes, we are able to,” she sniffed, “b-but after what we did, we can never face our sister and subjects! We fear we might be banished once aga-”

I slammed my foot down, hard enough to crack the floor which startled Nightmare Moon, “listen here, I don't care what beef you got with your sister, or what you did to your…subjects,” I fired up my Core, the heat traveled down to the tips on my metal limbs, “after listening all of ‘revenge’ this and ‘ruling over the world’ that, really get my gears grinding.”

More heat and power began surging across my body as I armed the hydraulics, ready to release the pressure at a moment's notice.

“So how about a little spar to take your mind off it,” I clenched my left hand and pulled back, air began hissing from the mechanism inside, threatening to escape, “I’ll go first.”

I swing my arm-

P S S S H

-and the fist went flying toward her head.

Author's Note

Whooooa, another yearly update, god where the fuck is my motivation is...or have I become that lazy?

Anyway...

I'm suck at writing conversation, so I blame my introvert mind...

What else to add here...meh, I'll put it as it is.

As always, do keep a look out for any typos, grammar mistake and other error!

Thanks for reading!