Neo-Equestria Evangelion

Chapter Six:

'Into Darkness'

"Twilight, what are you doing!?"
"I'm going to save us."

"What have you got for me?" Pinkie asked as she walked briskly down the bright hallway. The building was humming with activity. The sunlight filtered in through the windows along the side of the wall, playing off the pink pony's coat and grey-striped mane.

"We've figured out how to power it, finally. Give us six months, eight max, we'll have the prototype online and combat ready." The light yellow unicorn said as she hovered the clipboard in front of her, "but that's not the most exciting part, the advances we've made in power generation will scale down as well, so fixed defenses and local power grid generation can be supplemented inside of a week for phase one."

"That's... That's great!" Pinkie almost shouted, "Great work Pumpkin." She stopped in front of her office and hoofed the door switch, "Pound, are you still working on the other thing?"

The light brown pegasus nodded his head, "If the power grid upgrades go online within Pumpkin's time-frame we should have the cannon ready to go before the end of the month. Our projections give us... Well, to put it simply, it could overpower Nightmare Moon at the peak of her power... five times over."

Pinkie blinked and rolled the information around in her head. 'That means it might actually work... but...' She turned to the pegasus and gave him a severe look, "share this with nopony. Keep only the ponies you trust the most on this project, and keep all of your designs in secured storage."

"Yes Ma'am." The twins chorused before continuing on down the hallway.

Pinkie made it half way to her desk before the door automatically closed itself behind her. Made it three quarters of the way to her desk before a full body spasm threw her to the floor. She crawled the rest of the way to her desk and pulled open a drawer, took the glass bottle of amber liquid and pulled the cork.

She held it in her forehooves and drank it all, the burn as it went down her throat a welcome distraction from the most recent episode of her 'Pinkie Sense.' She knew what this one meant, and she knew she didn't want to be sober for it. She threw the bottle into the corner of the room, it shattered on impact.

She pulled herself into her chair and dialed a number she knew well on the vox built into her desk. Three rings and the line picked up. "Another one is coming," she said simply.

The line disconnected and Pinkie slumped down into her chair, staring up at the ceiling as the alcohol entered her system, "Soon... Soon they won't have to do it anymore, I'm still trying Twilight... If I'm right... we can do this without hurting them any more."

The red crushed velvet carpeting hid the tears well as they fell from her face.

~~

The pile of books grew by one as the young lavender unicorn finished reading and discarded another tome of knowledge. "It's not in there..." she muttered to herself as she dug into the neat stack opposite the pile and dug into the many pages.

Her eyes flicked back and forth rapidly as she turned each page, her brain soaked up the knowledge contained as she poured through the tome. "Not this one either..."

She tossed the book onto the pile and sat back on her haunches. "Why can't I find anything in the books?" she asked herself. "They've never failed me before..."

She let out a sigh as her thoughts turned to the timid orange and red pegasus, the one who'd shown her kindness, the one who'd sparked this new-found interest in her, this drive to understand.

She'd always had a yearning for learning, this was different, this wasn't academic, quantifiable, something about her, a familiarity... only not. It ignited unfamiliar feelings, feelings she didn't know how to understand, how to deal with, but a single word rose above all of that.

Friendship.

And so she poured herself into studying it, learning what it meant, what it was, but no dictionary definition, no clinical analysis could satisfy her curiosity, fulfill her need. She thought about those kind blue eyes looking at her as she gasped in pain on the catwalk.

Kindness.

She had another word to research, and so she dove back into her pile of books.

~~

The mare found some humor in the fact that she, of all ponies, would have gone down this path. She watched the red-maned pegasus standing out on the balcony of the apartment across the street. She'd been following the adolescent for days, logging her movements, her habits.

She turned her head sharply as a noise caught her attention. Her cloak and body suit masked her identity, but she couldn't have anyone knowing she had the suspected pilot under surveillance. She saw a cat prowling on the edge of the roof she was perched on. 'So it was nothing...'

She turned her head back towards the orange filly and sighed, "If she is the pilot, I feel sorry for her. She should be out with her friends at that age not... this." Another noise distracted her and she turned again, expecting the cat again.

She was met by black hooves rushing towards her. She gave no thought to it, she ducked and rolled away from the edge of the roof. She caught her gaze locked onto the green eyes of a pitch black stallion. He lowered his head to charge.

The mare planted her feet and closed her eyes, "I'm sorry." Her magic lashed out, simple TK, despite the relatively damaged nature of equestria's magic, she was still powerful enough for the basics. The stallion looked surprised, and the look stayed on his face as a loud snap echoed across the rooftop and the black pony fell down and lay still.

The mare wiped a tear from her eye and looked at the pony she'd ended, her sadness turned to shock as his coat burned away in green fire to reveal the changeling it had been.

"This just got complicated."

~~

Whisper jerked her head to the side and looked up, her ears pivoted towards the nearby rooftop. 'What was that?' she thought, she'd heard... something, but she couldn't see what it was. Her ears fell and she turned and walked back into the apartment.

"Um, Miss Dash?" She asked as she pressed further into the apartment, "I heard something outside, it sounded like somepony might be in trouble..." She moved deeper into the shared apartment, turned down the hall and advanced on Rainbow's room.

"Miss Dash..?" The young mare crept down the hall, she heard a muffled voice from Dash's room. Her face twisted up in frustration, she didn't want to eavesdrop but at the same time... She stuck her ear against the door and listened in.

"-ost contact? How? You know what, It doesn't matter. It's been detected? I'll bring her in," she heard Dash say on the other side of the door. She sounded stressed, a change from the way the older mare usually acted around her. "Thanks AJ, just make sure Vinyl has it ready to go."

The young mare heard hoofclops in the room approaching the door. She took a step back and chewed on her lip nervously, 'She's going to know... she's going to be mad, she-'

Her thoughts were cut short as the door opened and her handler stepped out, "Oh, hey there kid, we've got to head into HERD, they think we might have another attack on the way."

Whisper paled and her mind started to race, "Another one? So soon? I don't know if I can even..." she sputtered as she started to backpedal away from the elder pegasus.

Dash placed her forehoof on the filly's shoulder and smiled, "Don't worry about a thing kid, you'll do great, trust me."

She mentally facehoofed as the younger mare smiled, 'I'm telling her she's going to 'do great' at piloting a war machine. I am a bad pony.'

Dash watched as the young pegasus nodded and forced a determined look onto her features, the change, though slightly out of character, looked right on her somehow. "Then, I'll... just have to do my best."

Dash smiled and nodded as she inwardly cursed herself, 'She's just like her mom... I am the worst pony.' The elder mare sighed, "Alright then, let's go."

Author's Note

This was a long time coming wasn't it?

I swear, i totally didn't forget about this fic and stop writing it.