A Monstrosity of Science! Digital Damsel in Durance Vile!
The basement was much like any other whose residents had outgrown it: Shelves of dusty toys awaiting garage sales that might never come, three-generation-old video game systems, and other detritus of a play area where no one played anymore. The boy had moved out years ago. The girl now spent more time in her room, in the garage, or with her newfound friends.
Newer additions to the quiet clutter had crept in as the family had made use of the available room: books, for there was never enough shelf space; serving dishes brought out only for one or two holidays each year; and sometimes, the girl's failed experiments, those that contained still-usable components, qualified as hazardous waste, or were simply too big for her makeshift laboratory.
She would later curse whatever perverse forces guided the wisp of otherworldly magic so close to her and yet so far from her ability to observe and analyze. The glowing mote wavered about the room for a moment, as though trying to choose from all the available options. Finally, it dove for an action figure that hadn't been moved from its seat on a metal shelving unit for more than eight years.
A light flared. Plastic flexed. A hero clad in white leapt to his feet. His state-of-the-art visor, blue against the bold red of his helmet and collar, enhanced the faint light filtering down from a cracked-open door, letting him survey his surroundings. "What is this?" he said to himself. "What strange whims of fate bring Justice to a place so desolate?"
His eyes stopped on the moldering monoliths on the other end of the strange cavern, clearly artificial in coloration and textile in composition, but scaled for unfathomable entities. "And what strange titans need to feel its fiery sting?"
He shook himself. "But no. No! Blind vengeance will not avail me in these strange circumstances. Care! Forethought! Reconnaissance!" With every word, he assumed a different dramatic pose. "These are the watchwords that a true hero must hold to his breast in such times of uncertainty." Another pose, this one assumed with the speed of long-ingrained muscle memory. "For I am Space Hunter Drake Redcrest, and I am a true hero!"
The room was silent, perhaps filing away this information for future reference.
Eventually, Drake unfolded himself out of the pose and continued to examine the area. Once he had determined all he could from his perch, he leapt off the shelf and into a flawless three-point landing on the hard cement below.
"Curious," he said as he looked back at the towering tiers from which he'd jumped. "No sign of my ship, or even tracks in the dust leading to that spot. There are forces at work here beyond the obvious. I must be vigilant." His attention moved to the ground-level shelf. "Oh?" He approached a construct of metal and plastic, half again his size, canine in shape, and sitting motionless. "Some manner of inactive droid?"
Drake brought a hand to his chin, nobly gazing into the distance as he thought. "Ah, but what if it is hostile? Deactivated for the safety of all?"
He dismissed such thoughts with a wave of his hand. "Then it is better dismantled by my hand than left in such an easily recoverable state! Ally or enemy, I shall not hesitate! Justice demands no less! Now awaken, construct, so that a hero may judge your positronic heart!" He brought his finger forward in a dramatic sweeping motion, pressing the robot's nose.
The nose slid back until it clicked like the button Drake knew it was, thanks to long experience with similar units. Cooling fans sounded rising notes as they started spinning. Circular panels on the robot's joints and eyes lit up. "System startup in progress," a pleasantly neutral female voice announced from deep within the awakening machine. It moved each joint in turn, front to back from eyelids to tail, shifting to a standing position in the process. "All servos functioning nominally. Initializing primary neural net."
The robot shifted subtly, its stiff posture relaxing into something more expected from organic life. It looked about in a manner reminiscent of Drake's own first survey. The same voice sounded, though now inflected with confusion. "This unit... is online?"
"Indeed! Greetings, mechanical friend!" Drake shout-greeted, as per the Space Hunter Code. "I am Space Hunter Drake Redcrest!" He contorted himself into a suitable greeting pose to match the occasion. "And who might you be?" A subtle shift brought the greeting pose into a more combative one. "You are friendly, yes?"
It nodded, and he relaxed. "This unit, designated 'Ro-Barb' by its creator, was designed as a romantic companion for a canine sophont. Friendship is coded into this unit on a fundamental level." Ro-Barb's ears drooped. "However, this unit was deemed unsuitable by its designated user and, after a brief exhibition, was deactivated. This unit has been offline for—syncing clock—ninety-seven days, three hours, seventeen minutes."
Drake flinched back as though struck. "You... you were created for love? And tossed away like so much garbage?"
"Affirmative. Also hurtful."
"My sincerest apologies, but this... this is a travesty!" Drake snapped into a properly affronted pose. "What callous being could even think to reduce the beauty of love to an equation to be solved, a rote task to perform, much less discard one whose sole purpose is to love as best she knows how?"
"This unit's creator is designated 'Twilight Sparkle,'" answered Ro-Barb.
"So be it!" Drake pointed towards the heavens, so that the wise and ancient Star-Lords could witness his oath. "Know now, Twilight Twinkle—"
"Sparkle."
"Sparkle! This day, you have made an enemy of Space Hunter Drake Redcrest! And with that, your fate is surely sealed!"
Ro-Barb stared at him, no doubt awestruck. "Adjusting user settings." She leaned in and nuzzled his visor. "My hero."
Drake felt a heart that had withstood galaxy-spanning tyrannies melt at the simple gesture. He knelt before her. "I will see to it to that Justice is done, my lady. I shall serve you as the knights of Altair VII did in days of old."
"Huh." Both looked to the colossal stairs, where a voice filtered down from above. "Why's the basement door open? Twilight must've gotten something and didn't shut it."
Drake leapt to his feet, eyes locked on the source of the sound. "And who is that?"
Ro-Barb tilted her head, lines of data scrolling through her eyes for a moment. "Voice match. My former user, designation 'Spike.'"
"Hmm. Hmm! The one who so callously discarded you returns, does he?" Drake strode towards the stairs, purpose in every step. "I will make sure he sees the error of his ways."
"Voices? Someone's down there!?" A growl sounded from above followed by barks and thumps. Drake stood his ground, ready to defend himself, his newfound love, and Justice itself.
Then the thumps got faster, the barks became a panicked shout, and a puppy the size of an Polaris bull elephant, Drake not even coming up to its shoulder, crashed into the floor. "Oof!"
Even a seasoned space hunter found it difficult to maintain a combat mindset when his sworn enemy lay whimpering before him. "Are you harmed?"
"I'm okay." Spike got to his paws. "Not the first time I've crashed into something, though at least Twilight usually makes sure it's a soft landing."
"Abusing her minions, eh?" Drake nodded. "Just what I'd expect from such a soulless monster."
"Hey!" Spike bared his teeth and growled, "Twilight's the best!"
Drake shook his head. "Ah, poor creature. Your loyalty is noble, yes, but your mistress does not deserve such devotion."
"You don't know her! You..." Spike blinked and relaxed, tilting his head as he looked at Drake. "Wait, why am I arguing with an action figure?"
"Ha!" Chin up and hands on hips, Drake gave a winning grin. His face seemed strangely locked in that expression, but it was fitting here. "Indeed, Space Hunter Drake Redcrest is a figure of action!" He directed an accusatory finger at the beast. "And the action I take now is to condemn you for so cruelly tossing aside a sweet maiden such as the one I rescued from whatever cruel machinations Twilight Sparkle has on her mechanisms!"
"Greetings, Spike," added Ro-Barb.
He barely spared her a glance. "Oh, right, that thing."
"Thing? Thing?" From a lesser being, Drake's tone might have been called a screech. "She is a lady, you cur, and if you cannot appreciate her, you can at least treat her with the respect she deserves!"
"Eh," said the clearly callous canine. "I don't know what you see in her. She doesn't smell like anything but dust and lightning."
"Hmph." Drake crossed his arms and turned up his visor at the uncultured brute. "Truly, yours is an alien mind if you are blind to such beauty as hers. But perhaps I cannot expect much more from you." In an instant, he assumed his most potent combat pose. "Now prepare yourself, for I shall bring you to Justice! Amazing Force Shield of Forcefulness!" A coruscating barrier of pure justice energy snapped into place around Drake, utterly impenetrable by the forces of evil.
Spike looked down at him, impossibly unmoved and unimpressed. A moment too late, Drake realized that his signature ability did nothing stop any forces who were already within the shield. Then a nudge from a colossal paw sent him reeling. "You are a sad, strange little man, and I pity you."
"Spike?" called a feminine voice from above. "I heard an impact. Did you fall down the basement stairs again?"
He sighed. "Yeah."
"Are you okay?" Thumps pounded down from the ceiling, approaching the grand steps.
"Kind of? The robot you made me turned back on and I think we have a magic thing?"
This was met with a weary sigh. "Of course we do. It's been almost two whole weeks; we're practically behind schedule at this point." Those thumps moved to the stairs themselves, as something even larger than the hellhound descended into this strange underworld. A purple, bespectacled face leaned down over the banister. "What are we dealing with—?"
Drake, having wisely stayed silent as the forces of darkness told him all he needed to know, sprang back into action. "Ah ha! The mistress of injustice herself! Prepare to pay for your crimes, evildoer, at the hands of Space Hunter Drake Redcrest!"
Twilight stared down at him, clearly awestruck by the pillar of virtue before her. "Yeah, no, I'm not dealing with this today." She then went back up the stairs.
"Ha ha! Victory for Justice!" Drake turned and held out a hand to his beloved. "Come, dearest Ro-Barb. Let us celebrate!"
She gently put a paw in the outstretched hand, eyes squeezing shut in delight. "Commencing celebration,"
"Um, yeah. You two do that," said Spike, before fleeing as his mistress had before the unassailable might of Justice.
Pride swelling in his heart, Drake felt a song come to his lips. Something he had never heard, yet knew by heart.
"A dashing hero flashing through the spaceways..."
Twilight Sparkle was not angry. She was just fine. Really. She definitely wanted to spend a weekend with the house all to herself cleaning up after yet another dimensional incursion. That faint hint of green along the edges of her vision was probably psychosomatic.
A voice cut through her concentration on how not angry she was. "Uh, Twilight? You, are going to take care of this, right?"
Twilight waited until she'd finished her breathing exercises to answer. "Of course I am, Spike. I'm just not going to humor the delusional toy."
"Okay." Spike fidgeted as silence stretched on for a few moments. "So... what are you—?"
"Firstly, collecting myself." She pulled out her phone and started scrolling through her contacts. "Secondly, skipping trial and error and just asking an expert."
After a few rings, a familiar voice picked up. "Twily! How's it going?"
"Fairly well, Shining, thank you. How do I defeat Drake Redcrest?"
Silence answered her. "Specifically—"
"I know who you mean." Shining gave that sigh he always did whenever he disagreed with Twilight over what qualified as a reasonable question. "Twily, you remember how you told me about the whole 'Midnight Sparkle' incident?"
"As I recall, that convinced you that transferring to CHS was in my best interest."
"It did. But do you remember how I wasn't really surprised by the idea of you turning into a reality-destroying dark angel?"
Twilight sighed. "Shining—"
"This kind of thing is why."
"Shining, this isn't hypothetical."
More silence, followed by a deeply confused "What?"
Twilight put her phone on speaker as she went back down the basement stairs. "Equestrian magic brought one of your action figures to life, and now—"
"The violet witch returns! But she is no match for true Justice!"
"Yeah. That. I'm deferring to an authority on the subject: What now?" After several moments of dead air and gratuitous posing, Twilight said, "Shining?"
"Sorry, I'm trying to contain my inner fifteen-year-old right now."
Twilight gritted her teeth. "And I'm trying to contain my inner reality-destroying dark angel."
"O ho!" crowed the toy. "A confession of your cruel and terrible misdeeds!"
"Reminder: That is this unit's creator," noted Ro-Barb.
Drake shook his finger at her. "Just as starlight can pierce the inky depths of the void, my love, so too can good come from foulest evil."
Twilight felt her grip on her phone tighten. "Shining, please give me an answer. Going by our track record, if I call in the girls to rainbow-blast this thing, it won't come out of it in mint condition."
"I've been thinking about it," he said. "The problem is that Drake is honestly kind of overpowered in his series. The only things that ever really gave him pause literally ate galaxies for lunch. I know you have actual magic to go with your scientific genius..."
Twilight double-checked her phone, confirming that she hadn't lost the call. "Shining?"
"Sorry. Just realized that my little sister has literally become Professor Peril."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not actually evil, Shining."
"Depending on the timeline and writer, neither is he. Still, I don't think you have something quite on that level."
"Ha ha! Your colleague is wise, Twilight Sparkle! Nothing can overcome the power of Justice!" Drake punctuated that statement with yet more posing.
Twilight trembled with what she was willing to admit was repressed anger. The white-knuckle grip on her phone was evidence of that. But it relaxed even as she looked at it, a smile finding its way to her lips. "I think you're both overlooking an important point."
"What?" chorused brother and toy.
Twilight raised her free hand and enveloped Drake in her telekinesis, ignoring his indignant shouts. She let the magic flow like a liquid into the screws on his back, then hardened it and spun. Then it was a simple matter of pulling back the open panel. And just like that, Drake went limp as a glowing wisp floated out of him.
"You can't take the batteries out of the real Drake Redcrest. Talk to you later, Shining." With that, Twilight triumphantly hung up.
A nudge brought her attention to Spike. "Uh, Twilight? You kind of forgot what to do with the magic."
"Oh." Twilight considered the floating glob of energy, which bobbed about as though browsing the basement for an alternate host. "Right."
"Worry not, Creator," said Ro-Barb. The heart panel on her torso opened, revealing a familiar circular grid. The magic drained into it like gas into a black hole. "Thaumic anomaly contained. He will always be with me."
"Um. Okay," Spike whimpered, tail between his legs. "That's creepy."
Twilight shrugged. "A bit, yes, but she was designed to fall in love. Drake might have been obnoxious and potentially dangerous, but I suppose he had a certain hammy charm to him."
"I meant more how she has that thing that turned you into Midnight Sparkle built into her."
That got an eye roll. "Look, her intended use meant she could be miles from a power outlet when her batteries ran low, and it's not like I could just put a solar panel on her back. Her power draw is way too high. My only options were refining the spectrocapacitor or refining more uranium, and I know how Mom and Dad feel about the latter."
"More uranium?"
"Right, that was before we got you. Not the point. The point is that the arcane siphon is incredibly safe and efficient. One percent of the energy I gathered at the Friendship Games could power Ro-Barb for six months." Twilight frowned. "And why do I even need to tell you this? You were there for the whole development process! Rarity made you an adorable little lab coat and goggles!"
Spike gave her a flat look. "Just 'cause I was there doesn't mean I understood what you were doing. I'm a puppy, Twilight. All I know is that you poked and yelled at a computer until she came out of the big tube thingy."
"That's fair." Twilight went down to the basement floor, picked up the Drake figurine, and sighed. "Shining just couldn't pick up after himself, could he?"
"You are no better, Creator." Twilight turned to see Ro-Barb glaring at her as best she could without a suitable expression in her optic image files. bedroomeyes.png didn't work well, but it got the idea across. "You left me to rot in the dust and dark when Spike rejected me."
"I..." Several counterpoints sprang to mind. A quick analysis found all of them wanting. Twilight sighed. "You're right. I've seen enough sci-fi to recognize when the creator of a true AI tries to pawn off responsibility for looking after it. For what it's worth, I thought I was only working with pre-sapient algorithms. I guess powering you with magic got rid of the prefix." She squirmed. "And the hard-coded robotic diction might have been a way to cheese the Turnip Test."
Ro-Barb dipped her head. "Concession recognized."
The squirm became a full wince. "Exactly."
"Query: What now?"
Twilight looked back at the toy still in her hand. "Now we do a few things we should've done long ago."
"Here's his apartment building."
Fluttershy nodded and turned the Rainbooms' tour bus into the little parking lot next to the complex.
Pinkie pouted. "I can't believe you never told us you had a brother!"
"Most of us, anyway," said Applejack, giving Sunset a sidelong look.
Sunset shrugged. "Hey, I only found out after he personally thanked me for talking Twilight down."
"It never really came up." Twilight did a double take as Fluttershy backed into a spot. "Wait, isn't that Dean Cadence's car? I didn't know she lived in this complex."
Sunset shrugged. "Well, she is Shining's fiancee."
"She's what!?"
Sunset's mouth bent into a disbelieving smirk as she got out of the bus. "You didn't know?"
Twilight threw her hands up as she followed. "I never thought about it!"
"We've all had dinner together at your parents' house."
"It was Yuletide!"
"Your dad lamented how he'd never get to threaten another boyfriend," said Sunset.
Twilight rolled her eyes. "You've met my dad. You can't take seventy percent of what he says seriously."
"Pretty sure this was the other thirty,"
"Hey! Eggheads!" Both turned to Rainbow Dash glaring at them, one hand on her hip while the other steadied a cardboard box on her shoulder. "You gonna help or what? He's your brother."
Sunset shrugged. "Not mine."
"In-laws count."
"I— That— Sunset—" Twilight sputtered.
Sunset put a hand on her shoulder. "Relax, Twilight. You can't take seventy percent of what Dash says seriously."
"I'm pretty sure this..." Twilight trailed off, her blush having consumed most of her head.
"If'n y'all are done," Applejack said through her teeth, teetering almost as much as the stack of four boxes in her arms. "Strength ain't much good when the stuff ain't stable."
"Sorry!" Twilight took two of the boxes in her telekinesis, passing one to Sunset. She looked at the one she'd kept for herself, taking out a robotic dog and an action figure. Her expression turned contemplative as she looked at them.
"I thought you were going to use that AI somewhere else," said Sunset.
"I am. This is just the prototype chassis; I cleared out all the data from its drives after copying it onto a secure server. I know Ro-Barb's not even in this body right now, but..." Twilight shrugged. "I couldn't bear to break them up."
Sunset smiled. "Aww..."
"Really now," Rarity said, flanked by gem constructs that each supported a box. "Adorable though you may be, I'm getting more physical labor done than you two. Step to it!"
Sunset smiled and picked her box back up. "You heard the lady. Plenty of boxes in the back of the bus."
"Are we really just going to leave these on his porch?" said Fluttershy, who was standing by the growing pile of boxes outside one of the ground-level apartments and generally fretting.
"Most of them only have one or two items in them," said Twilight. "This is more about making a statement than anything. After all, Shining has had years to move his stuff out of the house. The next time magic possess one of his action figures, he can deal with it himself."
Fluttershy blinked. "But how would he—?"
"He can deal with it. Him. Self."
Author's Note
The best context I can provide for our hero:
The funny thing is that only after outlining this story did I realize that I was replicating Smash Ultimate's story mode, at least in terms of an ethereal entity possessing a hollow duplicate of a great hero.
And yes, I know there's not much actual romance for a shipping contest, and that more of it is for my OTP than the actual prompt character. Drake isn't exactly the most romantic character is his own game either.
Also, friendly reminder that Twilight totally made a robot capable of love that exists outside of that music video. And that we never see it after that second appearance.
