Author's Note

Fast I know, but the hands are healed.

What in a name

Twilight was sitting on a pillow in a hospital waiting room. After the second spell, he had collapsed. “Finally!” Twilight teleported them both straight into the hospital.

Shining Armor and Cadance trotted into the room and sat down on either side of Twilight. After a moment of awkward silence, Shining spoke up. “…I’m sorry Twilight, I never should have allowed that fight.”

“It’s alright, Shining. Just from the way he withstood my spell alone makes it clear that he has a stronger will then anything I have ever seen before.”

“Miss Sparkle?” Doctor Hoarse called out as he trotted into the waiting area. He had the most particular look, the look of someone that had decided that someone had rutted up and it was his time to teach them a lesson.

“Yes Doctor? What is it?” Twilight looked up,

“Miss Sparkle, Where did you say this child is from again?” Doctor Hoarse posited,

“I didn’t. He had only just learned to speak Ponish. We had yet to get down to asking those sorts of questions. Doctor, from the sounds of it he’s not going to make it, is he?” She cut straight to what she believed was the heart of the matter.

The Doctor seemed surprised at this question. “Actually, I’m not sure we could kill him if we wanted to.” Everyone seemed completely surprised and unsure of how to respond to that. “He was regrowing his organs even as this strange energy was trying to destroy them, and I’m am afraid that’s not even the strangest part. He is covered in a field that we can’t seem to get through with our magic and it’s preventing us from removing the energy that’s killing him. So, we did the only thing we could think to do. We’re pumping him full of nutrient fluids to fuel his own regeneration abilities. That seems to have had the added benefit of allowing him to heal his organs without even the traditional scarring that we would have seen at this point.”

Cadance was completely focused on one simple fact compared to her two fellows. “So, breaking this down. He’s not going to die?”

Doctor Hoarse was surprised that that was the point that she had chosen to lock onto. “Yes, I believe the reason that his health deteriorated was because of the fact he pushed himself so far that his body was unable to keep up against this destructive force. I believe that we should place him under an extremely high caloric diet until we can find a way through the shield around him and remove that mass of destructive energy that seems to be mostly focused in the area of the large intestine. We are keeping him on a powerful sedative in order to make sure he does not wake up and cause these problems to resurface.”

There was then a crash, followed by the very loud scream of a nurse who was having just about the worst day of her life.

Shining Armor, following his training, sprang into action. Quickly finding himself in a hospital room with none other than “G-478972” himself.

G-478972 was waking up. He had been running analysis on his body and realized that he was being fed a highly caloric sugar and protein mixer combined with sedatives. He followed his training and began producing a compound to bind to the sedative and negate it effects.

The next thing that he realized is that somehow his Language Matrix had finally finished its initial translations. He had expected this to take far longer. The only thing that he could think of for it to have finished so soon is that it had some similar idea in structure, if not in the vocabulary, to something that he had already known.

Opening his eyes, he found one of these strange horse creatures adjusting his sheets. She then saw him looking at her. “Well, if it isn’t our cute little patient.”

Well, time to finally end this farce of ponifying me. “Your attempt to comfort this organic weapon is pointless. Please inform whoever is in charge here that all medical procedures done to this unit without consent will result in immediate termination.”

Talk about easily spooked. All it took was one small death threat and she screamed her head off and fainted. He couldn’t help but feel slightly pleased that he can produce such a reaction. The emotion was strangely nice to have before he felt it being removed. “I think I could wipe them out even in my weakened state.” Just then, the white competent stallion breaks into the room.

“G-478972.” The stallion said surprising clearly given that he been the one to issue their duel with the premise of changing his title.

“I believe you won our bet, so you have chosen a new name for this unit as it currently exists.” Shining was unsure of this. He seemed to feel guilty about the bet. “You do not have to feel guilty for my current damage, it is my own fault for failing to control the remaining void energy within me.”

Shining locked on to the fact that he knew the source of his damage as Twilight walked into the room. “You said that what destroyed your organs is called void energy? My sister and the doctors are going to have to ask you some questions about that. Secondly, Twi interfered with our battle so it’s more like a tie then a victory for me. So how about you help me come up with a better name for you.”

Turning towards Twilight, G-478972, responded, “It does not matter, the problem will resolve itself in time. Till then, it is not an issue”.

Doctor Hoarse was the one to respond. “I’m sorry son, as a doctor it is my issue given that you are my patient. I tried to remove this “energy” when you were unconscious but I could not get to it.”

G-478972 turned his attention to the presumed doctor. “The energy is secure in my large intestines because if it were to get out… allow me to demonstrate.” G-478972 hoped that this was not going to destroy the floor they were standing on. Lucky for these easily scared ponies, he had measured it correctly. Bringing a hoof over to the bed side table and bringing a small amount of the energy into the area in front of his hoof, the side table and most of the lamp simple disappeared as the atoms that made them up ceased to exist. G-478972 never broke his stare during the demonstration. “That was just a small amount, if I were to release the amount that is stored in my body it would do a great deal more damage.”

The ponies fell into a state of shock. The purple one that seemed to be called Twilight, she trotted over to exam the zone in which the table had been mere moments before.

“It’s not some form of dematerializing… It seems to be that the atoms are slipped or in layman’s terms removed from reality like they never existed… That not possible.” Twilight’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates, an impressive sight given that her eyes were already large enough that they took up far more of her head then seemed biologically sound. “So, you really are from another world. But… There’s no trace of portal magic! The only other way to get from one world to another without a portal is to travel without protection through the void. That’s just not possible! Every experiment run by ponies has had the test material disappear without time to even gathering any data!”

“Hush! I did travel through the void. My spatial defenses were able to keep me alive long enough for my enemy to drag us to this world. Yet a great deal of damage is left behind.”

Shining again proved he was the smart one by asking the important questions. “Why were you in the void if you knew the dangers?”

“I was trying to kill us both.”

“Why?”

“My enemy is a destroyer of worlds. He was trying to destroy mine, so I fought him to get revenge for all of the problems he has caused me. I had brought him inside my personal world. Then, I set it on fire to destroy us both. He was going to escape, so I threw both of us into the void, believing that we would both be lost.”

Shining was the only one not shocked by the clearly clever planning. “I see... If you have done all that, I imagine that you don’t have the dimensional coordinates that would be needed to open a portal back to your home universe…” He trailed off as the hope of sending the colt home faded. “Well, I think it’s time to switch to something happier. If you say that you have this “void energy” under control, I’m willing to trust you on that.”

“Shiny!” Cadance yelled indignantly “He’s got energy that could simply erase him stored inside of him! We have to get it out and contain it!”

“Cadance!” Shining yelled at his wife for what might have been the first time in his life, “I know you’re worried, but we don’t have the authority or knowledge to handle this stuff correctly. He also seems to have a plan in place to deal with the Void energy?” He said, eyeing G-478972 quizzically

G-478972 responded, “Yes. I have a plan. I plan to feed all of the chyme from my large intestines into it. It might take a while, during which I won’t produce waste, but it is the safest method that I could think of in the moment. As for names, I do have other titles which I have been called during my functioning years. Perhaps one of those would be more suited to your ideas of identity?”

“Sure, try a couple of them on me.” Shining smiled.

“The most common of the titles that I am know by is The Butcher of Taiwan” The name made most of the ponies pale, so No. “There was also The Slaughter of Berlin, Carver of Yankee-land…” With each name the whole group had gotten paler until they were all the same color as Shining. Which was impressive for the doctor had started out the color of stained hardwood.

Cadance was the next to speak. “Those are great titles, but they’re not names. I think it might be better to go with Pinkies suggestion.”

“…Where did those names come from? If you don’t mind me asking.” Twilight seemed to be more scared of him in that moment then of the energy within him.

“They are from the major battles that I fought in for my former masters.” G-478972 stated matter-of-factly,

“Former masters?”

“Yes. This unit is defective and is no longer taking orders from them due to the fact that they destroyed something this unit was programed to protect. The logical breakdown of my masters destroying something that I was made to protect labeled them as my enemy. As a result, this unit has developed faults.”

“Those titles… did you earn them before or after you left your masters.”

“Before. I earned them on my missions to put down rogue humans.”

“Rogue humans? It makes it sound like your masters weren’t human themselves.” Cadance was clearly confused by this.

“You know what humans are?”

Twilight answered wearing a face that reminded him far too much of lectures at the compound. “Equestria is at the center of a universal nexus. With our magic, we can travel to several different realms if we have something that leads us back to them across the void. But answer the question, were your masters human?”

“No. My masters were the U’le’tek, an alien race that served my enemy. They conquered Earth and made it a farm world.”

“I see...”

“One more question,” Shining interjected, “then we will leave you to eat and sleep. You’re still healing from the organ damage after all. Do you plan to hurt any of the ponies that I am charged with protecting?”

G-478972 didn’t understand what he meant by that. He was a piece of equipment. He killed based on commands and goals, not on a whim or out of desire to do so. “I am an Esper combat unit, I fight based on orders and objectives. I will only kill a pony if they in some way prevent me from completing my mission to destroy my enemy. As long as you don’t allow your naive morals to try and move for some idea of sparring him, I will comply with all commands that do not challenge programmed protocols.”

Twilight seemed put off by choice of words. “So that means if I give you orders, you will follow them?”

“As long as they don’t break any of the protocols which are written directly into my neural make up or interfere with my mission.”

“Is there any way that I can get a list of those protocols? It would be helpful to understand the general information that we have to play into.” Twilight requested.

“I can give you the ones that I am aware off.” G-478972 answered begrudgingly, confusing Twilight again. Why would he not be aware of orders he is supposed to follow?

Far away, in a castle as large as some towns on the edge of an even larger city built right onto the edge of a cliff, shining in the noon day sun, standing on the balcony outside her personal chambers, a pony stared off into the Kingdom that she loved so much. Her fur as white as freshly fallen snow, and a mane and tail of pastel rainbow paradoxically blowing in the opposite direction of the wind coming from the city below, her white wings tucked in to make her slender form all the more so, she fretted over recent events.

“So sister, how were the nobles? I felt sorry leaving them to you, but I was busy handling the bureaucrats who worried that we were going to throw off the entire planet because we were a bit early with the sun.” Princess Luna explained with a bitter sarcastic tone as she walked onto the balcony with her sibling.

“It was fine, Luna. They were the same as they always are. I think a great many of them were mostly complaining that we could throw off the fall harvest if we give the plants too much sunlight this time of year. They wanted assurances that we were not going to make a habit of this and to keep to the schedule their ancestors put in place back during the days of Unicornia.” Celestia was distant as she told Luna of her day, her mind elsewhere.

“You’re still thinking about that colt.”, Luna stated matter-of-factly.

Celestia hesitated. Still clearly unsure of her response only forming her thoughts as she said them.

“Yes, Luna. How could I not? …I had a vision last night. Before you ask, it was far too confusing for me to give you clear details.” She paused briefly between each statement, and sighed, “What I can tell you is that it was bad. I saw Equestria at war with something more powerful than all of us.”

Luna’s face became a mask of pure terror. “Tia! If this is true, then all is lost! We have just lost the Elements of Harmony, the only thing that would have been strong enough to stop just such a threat!”

“I know, Luna!” Celestia snapped, “There was a hope though, I saw a pair of Alicorns I did not recognize, who had the strength we needed to defeat this great threat. I hoped the storm had been the source of the threat and acted far more aggressively than I should have. I should have known better. I had thought I could cut off the cause of my vision at the source and prevent events from unfolding the way I saw before.”

“Then, Tia, I am afraid that I may bring far worse news that I at first believed. Cadance has sent us a report of everything that happened since we left this morning. The colt has woken up twice and with the information he has given, along with your dream, I fear for the future.” At this, Luna passed over the scroll carrying the information that Cadance had sent.

Celestia skimmed the scroll before grimacing, “I see. It appears that I used the Elements on the wrong force. A destroyer of worlds? That would certainly explain the powerful force I saw in my dream… Luna, speak with the Captain of Squad Nine. I want him to put every one of his agents on this. If we can find this threat and eliminate it before it gathers its strength, then all the better.”

As Luna left to speak to one of the Captains of the Guard, Celestia’s eyes returned to looking out at her kingdom, fearing the worst and plotting to help make the best of the current situation.