Gerhardt was in his lab studying a few drops of the blood samples he had taken from Celestia and Luna. Having just finished fully sequencing their D.N.A. he saw that their D.N.A. actually had fairly distinct differences between them and normal ponies. He was tempted to try cloning them to see if the clones would become demigods like them as an experiment to see if these differences in their D.N.A. was part of what made them demigods but he refrained, albeit with great reluctance.

To truly know if the clones were demigods or not, he would have to allow their brains to develop so they would have souls. However if he did that he would have to murder the clones soon after as the princesses had definitely not given him permission to clone them and he suspected they would be quite upset if he did. Not that he really cared if they would be upset, but it would cause more trouble than it was worth. Furthermore it would be morally reprehensible to force them to care for their own clones as their children which he would definitely need to do as the clones would inevitably be discovered and he did not want more children himself. Thus killing them would be his only viable option and that was similarly morally reprehensible.

Then again… If he altered their genetics to give them the brains of animals rather than actual sapient beings then it wouldn’t technically be murder any more than what he was doing with his lab rats… Hm… He would have to think about it. For now he just shelved the idea.

Suddenly his sensors informed him that Pixel was standing behind him, likely having teleported there since Gerhardt had taught her the Arcane Equation he had developed for teleportation. “Yes, Pixel? What is it?”

“Daddy, I need your help.” Pixel stated, though her tone didn’t indicate it was anything life threatening so Gerhardt just continued working.

“With what?”

“Making a costume!”

This actually gave Gerhardt some pause. Stopping what he was doing he turned around and looked at her. “What? For what purpose and wouldn’t Miss Rarity be better for this sort of thing? I am no tailor.”

“It’s for Nightmare Night! It’s in just a few days and I don’t have a costume to wear for it. And usually, yes Miss Rarity would be better for this sort of thing but not this time. I want to dress up as a standard non-mage soldier from your kingdom! She’s really good at making clothes but she can’t make armor and I don’t know what it looks like so even if she could make it for me I couldn’t give her a sketch of it.”

“I see… Well such armor could have some practical use if things go poorly with the Changelings or if there’s another Manticore attack… When is this “Nightmare Night” exactly? And what is it celebrating? We had a few holidays back in the Human Kingdom, I rarely participated in them but I was very much aware of them, what they were about, and how they were typically celebrated.”

“It’s in two days! Um… I’m honestly not sure what it’s celebrating… I never asked… After I learned about it and that people dressed up in costumes for it, I was so excited that I sort of just teleported here to ask you to help me make my costume… What were some of the holidays in your kingdom?! You said “rarely” so which ones did you usually participate in when you did?”

“Well there was the day celebrating the death of Caedes, the Day of Retribution. I would partake in the celebrations of that day every few years or so. It often involved music, dancing, and copious amounts of food and alcohol. I never danced, I don’t even know how, and I could never eat or drink but I would occasionally be present during the celebrations and that would be one of the few times I would take a short break from my work and have somewhat casual interactions with others. Said interactions were mainly just me telling stories from the first Necromantic War to the recruits, and I suppose to the public as well over a live broadcast on television.” Gerhardt explained.

He paused for a moment, smiling as he fondly recalled the day he was informed of Caedes’s demise. Later that day he personally impaled Caedes’s severed skull on a large steel spike embedded in the ground in the middle of the Capital City for all to see after the heroes who brought the skull back were granted medals for their valiant service and noble sacrifice. The skull was later put in a museum for its historical significance, spike and all, where it has been ever since. A large golden statue of the heroes was put directly on top of the place the spike had been embedded in the ground, Gerhardt had insisted on it as he believed they deserved it and more for killing that son of a bitch. That was by far one of his best memories.

After a moment, Gerhardt continued. “There was also the Day of Salvation, which celebrated the end of the War of Survival and the Greater Gods banishing Deimos from the mortal realm forever. It was celebrated similarly but with an added bonus of exchanging gifts at the cost of making offerings to the Greater Gods for saving our species from extinction. Even as a child my parents never allowed me to participate in such frivolities nor did they themselves participate, though we did make offerings to the Greater Gods every year and that continued on even to the day I was banished from my world. I would continue that tradition even now, but there’s no point since this is a completely separate universe and the Greater Gods thus have no way of receiving any offerings I could give them. There were more holidays, of course, but those were the only two holidays I ever really celebrated in any capacity.”

“It seems wrong to celebrate someone dying…” Pixel muttered.

Gerhardt scoffed. “Pixel, I didn’t give you any knowledge of the First Necromantic War when I built you. So you have no idea the level of destruction, death, and evil he brought to the world. Caedes was absolutely not a person, he was a gods forsaken monster. From what I understand, the Devil himself, the Greater Spirit of Evil, actually held great respect for Caedes and legitimately lamented the destruction of his soul due to how much death, destruction, pain, and suffering Caedes spread while he was alive. Well... as much as the perfect embodiment of the concept of Evil possibly could lament the death of another that is. So when the living concept of Evil itself respects someone and laments their destruction that is a very good indication of how horrible a monster that individual truly was. So trust me when I say that Caedes’s death deserves to be celebrated. And I fully plan to continue celebrating his death even here in this world, even if I am unable to attend any major event like I was back in the Human Kingdom.”

“Okay… um… I’m sort of sad we can’t celebrate the Day of Salvation since the Greater Gods can’t receive our offerings here… Are there any major holidays from your world that we can celebrate?”

“From the Human Kingdom? Not really. Most human holidays are either religious in nature or have to do with major military victories and as such are fairly major events. So since the gods can’t hear us or receive our offerings here and there’s no one else to hold a celebration with aside from Isabelle any real celebration would be impossible. The Dwarves, Elves, and Merpeople also had several holidays a few individuals in the Human Kingdom sometimes celebrated, though I know absolutely nothing about them. Isabelle is a half elf, so if you have any questions about Elven culture or holidays you could ask her about them since she does usually take time to celebrate Elven holidays, unless there’s an emergency of course.”

“Oh… Okay… Well, at least there’s still Equestrian holidays! So… Will you help me with my costume?”

“I see no reason not to. It will be ready by tomorrow. You can try it on then, and if you like it you can wear it for Nightmare Night. What sort of main weapon would you like to accompany it? A laser rifle, a particle rifle, an arcane rifle, a teleportation rifle, a rifle that fires specialized bullets such as antimatter rounds, or a weapon like my personal combat rifle which is a combination of all of the above? Same question for the side arm.”

Pixel gave him an uncomfortable look. “Do I have to have a weapon, daddy? I don’t plan on hurting anyone…”

“Well, yes and no. You are going to have to have weapons of your own eventually so you may as well have them now and learn how to use them now. Also I thought you wanted to dress up as a soldier from the Human Kingdom in full combat armor. No soldier from the Human Kingdom would be wearing that armor without having their weapons with them. Besides, you don’t have to use them. You can keep the side arm holstered and keep the rifle… wait… no… Your wings would get in the way of it being slung across your back… hm… Well you could keep it slung over one of your shoulders rather than across your back. After all, it would come with a strap to make it easier to carry when not in use. Plus I would fully expect you to keep both of your weapons safety on at all times.”

Pixel frowned slightly but nodded. “Okay… In that case, I want a rifle and sidearm like the ones you have!”

“Hm… Why am I not surprised? Very well. Just be extra careful with the laser barrel if you ever go out to practice with it. It will permanently blind anyone who’s close enough to the beam and temporarily blind and severely damage the eyesight of anyone outside that very large radius regardless of what frequency you have it set to. Plus it will cause an explosion the instant it contacts anything living be that a plant, fungus, or an animal as all the water inside it along with some of the regular matter will immediately be vaporized and turned to plasma. Thus the reason it operates in pulses rather than a single continuous beam, the plasma and steam gets in the way and makes the beam less effective by blocking the light. The pulses are timed perfectly to make them as effective as possible. Still they’re perfectly accurate, highly effective for getting past translucent shields, and even a single shot can completely vaporize a person’s head if they aren’t wearing any armor resistant to such powerful lasers.”

“Okay, I’ll be extra careful with the laser. I don’t want to hurt anyone by accident.”

Gerhardt smiled at her and turned back to resume what he was doing. “Good girl. And remember what I told you about the rules of gun safety. I’ll head over to the factory to have it build your weapons and armor in a few minutes, I just have to finish studying these blood samples.”

“Thank you, daddy!”

A few days later Nightmare Night had finally arrived. While Gerhardt refused to dress up as anything he did go out and purchase some candy at the advice of Twilight Sparkle, and set out a bowl in front of his house with a sign that said “Take one” so he wouldn’t have to bother handing it out himself. Unfortunately she had decided to try to make this event one of her “friendship lessons” and told him to go out and try to make a friend, though this time she made it very clear that she didn’t want him to literally build one like he built Pixel. So Gerhardt was in a justifiably foul mood that night, though he made sure to keep that to himself so as to not ruin Pixel’s fun.

Isabelle, on the other hand, actually went and commissioned Rarity to make a costume for her about a week in advance. Neither Gerhardt nor Pixel had seen it yet, so they had no idea what she was dressing up as. However, she was apparently quite happy with how it turned out and was excited to wear it. Gerhardt was actually extremely surprised by this as he hadn’t expected her to have any interest in participating in Equestrian holidays. He wouldn’t have expected any of the other high lords to have an interest in such a thing. Then again he knew very little about them or their interests since he didn’t care about them or their interests in the least and had thus never bothered trying to learn anything about any of them.

Gerhardt was standing in the living room of his house, waiting for Pixel to finish putting on her armor. While he outright refused to wear a costume, he had decided to put on his formal uniform as somewhat of a compromise.

Eventually he heard footsteps coming down the stairs and saw Pixel walking down in full combat armor. She was wearing the drab green power armor normally worn by the non-mage members of the army branch, which enhanced their strength such that they would be able to lift five tons and could run at similar speeds as Gerhardt or Pixel. It was fully environmentally sealed so it could be used in any conditions, be it space or the middle of a warzone in which military grade poisonous or acidic gasses were being used.

Every inch of her body was covered by a highly advanced metallic ceramic partially based on dragon scales, making it resistant, though by no means impervious, to magic. It was extremely heat resistant and could withstand temperatures upwards of 44,699.817 degrees Kelvin before melting which made it resistant to laser and plasma weaponry. It could also withstand kinetic energy up to 44,937,758,936.841 mega joules of force before being pierced. That was the equivalent of a 25 gram bullet traveling at one fifth the speed of light making it resistant to most modern particle weapons let alone standard bullets. Such high force would still definitely kill the wearer if it was all concentrated in a single bullet, but for particle weapons it may knock the wearer down but they would live and that was the point since particle weapons were the main concern.

The armor itself looked somewhat bulky and angular as it was designed to deflect projectiles away from the wearer, and it was intentionally designed to look as intimidating as possible without compromising any of its defensive capabilities. There were absolutely no gaps in the joints or glass in the helmet that could possibly serve as a weak point. By far the weakest parts of the armor were the two holes in the back for her wings, which Gerhardt wanted to do something about but hadn’t had enough time to come up with a solution for.

So while the helmet completely lacked a traditional glass visor, the wearer could see through a screen built into the inside of the helmet itself connected to a series of sensors inside the armor that detected light coming into contact with the front surface of the helmet so that they didn’t have to rely on cameras that could be targeted and destroyed, effectively blinding the user leaving them vulnerable. Though even if those sensors were damaged or destroyed somehow it was also capable of functioning on echo location and translating that into images that would be displayed on the screen, among several other backup systems. Finally it had a small built-in barrier generator that wasn’t very powerful but could be used in case of emergencies.

Magnetically holstered on her hip was a small ornate teleportation pistol and slung over her right shoulder was a rifle of the exact same design as Gerhardt’s personal combat rifle, just downsized to fit Pixel’s significantly smaller frame.

Everything Pixel was wearing and carrying was significantly more advanced and powerful than any of the weapons or armor that Gerhardt had sold to Shining Armor. It was all completely up to date by his world’s standards and in fact the power armor was actually upgraded with several pieces of experimental technology Gerhardt had developed exclusively for Pixel since he had no intention of selling such advanced military technology to the ponies. At least not for a few centuries.

“So, how do I look?” Pixel inquired, her voice having a significantly enhanced mechanical reverberation to it as it was emitted by the armor’s external speakers.

Gerhardt created an optical illusion next to him to show her exactly what she looked like. “See for yourself.”

Pixel examined the illusion for a moment. “I look pretty scary! Well… The wings sort of detract from it a bit but that’s fine!”

“Indeed. Well, do you have your bag to carry the candy you collect tonight?” Gerhardt inquired, not seeing it with her.

“Oh! I left it in my room. I nearly forgot!” Pixel said before a silver aura surrounded one of her hands and she teleported the empty bag directly into her hand.

“Good, now I suppose you shall want to go off to celebrate with your friends. I trust you to be responsible with your new weapons and armor. Just be careful and don’t let any of them, especially not the “cutiemark crusaders”, touch either of your weapons because I definitely do not trust any of them to be responsible with such dangerous technology.”

“I wasn’t planning on it. I’ll see you later, Daddy!” Pixel bolted out the front door, a large smile on her face underneath her faceless helmet.

As soon as she was gone Gerhardt sighed and shook his head. “I can’t fucking believe I have to do this… Gods damn Sparkle and her “lessons”… Ugh… How in the names of all the gods am I even supposed to go about this?” Continuing to grumble to himself in frustration he proceeded out the door.

Once he was outside he had no idea where to go or what to do, so he decided to just head straight for town hall and stand around outside. If nothing happened there within two or three hours he planned to wander aimlessly around either Canterlot or the Crystal Empire until morning.

About thirty minutes after he reached town square he saw Isabelle wandering through the town dressed as a dryad, a Fae born from a mid grade nature spirit mating with a mortal, typically elves. Like nature spirits, dryads had a very close symbiotic relationship with the Elves. So since Isabelle was a half elf he supposed it sort of made sense why she would want to dress up like one for this “Nightmare Night”, in a somewhat stereotypical sort of way.

Having nothing else to do since Twilight had decided to force him to try to make a friend, Gerhardt decided to go talk to Isabelle. Approaching her he said, “Greetings Isabelle. So this is the costume you were so excited about?”

“Oh, hello Gerhardt. Yes, it is! I realize that it’s a bit stereotypical but I have always found Dryads absolutely fascinating. Both from a cultural and from a biological standpoint. Living beings that are as much plant as they are animals with a far deeper connection with nature than the elves could ever have, being directly related to nature itself. As I am a biomancer I’m sure you can understand my interest in them.” Isabelle explained.

Gerhardt nodded. “Indeed I can. Personally, as a technomancer I was always fascinated by the machina hominum, the technological equivalent of Dryads, given the fact they were quite literally born with what we would classify as augmentations were they attached to any mortal being and those “augmentations” are so advanced we can not reverse engineer them. And believe me, I’ve spent my entire gods forsaken life trying and getting absolutely nowhere… Though their culture was of no interest to me. Regardless, yes, I very much understand your interest in Dryads having had a similar interest in equivalent beings.”

“I see. I’ve actually met a few machina hominum in the past. I never really liked them. They were always so cold and emotionless. Even more than you ever were and that’s saying something.” Isabelle commented.

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. They may seem that way to us because they process and display their emotions differently than normal organic beings. This is because the emotional centers of their brains function very differently to ours and their main method of communication is via transmitting signals to each other wirelessly, similar to how phones, radios, or computers communicate. So they mainly display their emotions through these transmissions rather than verbally or through body language, unfortunately having little to no real augmentations you could never receive these signals and thus could never communicate with them properly. I, however, have communicated with them properly in the past and I guarantee they are just as and in some cases far more emotional than any mortal beings like us. In fact, there were a few I would interact with quite frequently. Unfortunately they died about two centuries ago, murdered by the orcs.”

Isabelle grimaced. “Oh, um… I’m sorry to hear that…”

Gerhardt shook his head and raised a hand. “Oh no, it’s completely fine. I had no emotional attachment to them, though I think they may have been somewhat attached to me for whatever reason… Regardless, their deaths angered the spirits that were their parents and they went on a rampage slaughtering the individual orcs complicit in the deaths of their children. So in the end their deaths were avenged.”

Isabelle sighed and rested her face in one of her palms. “I honestly don’t know what I was expecting… of course you of all people wouldn’t care… Ugh… Whatever… What are you doing out here tonight anyways? You made it pretty clear you had no intention of participating in this holiday.”

Gerhardt grumbled in frustration before saying, “You’re absolutely right. I have no intention of participating in an alien holiday I have nothing to do with and absolutely no interest in. However, as part of Miss Sparkle’s ridiculous “friendship lessons” that Celestia forced me into when I first arrived, Miss Sparkle has decided to give me an assignment. That being, I am required to go out and try to make a friend… Gods damn it, I detest these damnable ponies gods forsaken obsession with friendship… I would say I want to return to the Human Kingdom and never see this accursed land ever again, but that goes without saying.”

Isabelle forced herself to restrain a laugh, and only barely succeeded. “Y-you? Make a friend? Ha! Gods above, these ponies know absolutely nothing about you if they really expect you to go out of your way to try to make a friend… I apologize, I don’t mean to be rude but honestly… From what you just told me, you didn’t even care when some of the closest beings to friends you have ever had were killed by the orcs and I remember what you told me in the factory. I still expect you to continue attending therapy by the way. Anyways, at this point I don’t think you are even capable of forming emotional bonds with others due to your current world views and mental state, which you have held for almost a thousand years. Maybe after we start making a bit of progress in your therapy, and that’s a rather large maybe, but now? Definitely not.”

“Please, for the love of all the gods, as a medical expert tell that to them! Celestia and Miss Sparkle, to be specific. I will give you and send the two of them phones for free so you can call them if I have to!”

Isabelle chuckled slightly. “Alright, Gerhardt, I guess I can try to talk to them. Not tonight though. I want to enjoy this holiday as much as I can. I haven’t really had a chance to look into their culture since I got a job at the local hospital, this is the first chance to actually experience it first hand that I have received, and I intend to capitalize on it. I am genuinely curious about them and their culture, especially since their magic is biological in nature and I find that extremely fascinating.”

Gerhardt sighed in disappointment. “Damn… I was hoping they would let me go without actually having to do this gods forsaken assignment… Well, hopefully they’ll listen to you whenever you decide to talk to them.”

[Pixel]

Pixel had been going from house to house collecting as much candy as she could and her bag was pretty much full. Grabbing the sides of her helmet, there was a hiss as the environmental seal released and finally allowed her to remove the helmet. Smiling, she grabbed a piece of candy from her bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. Due to the chemical that filled her mouth the candy dissolved a lot faster than it would have if she had normal saliva but she found it delicious all the same.

She was about to eat another when she heard Scootaloo’s voice from behind her, “Hey, Pixel!”

Turning she saw all three of the Crusaders dressed up in costumes approaching her. “Hello! How are all of you?”

“We’re great! With that portal to Canterlot we were able to go there and we got a lot more candy than usual this year!” Sweetie Belle said, with a large smile.

“Nice costume! What are you dressed up as?” Applebloom inquired.

Pixel quickly put her helmet back on and said, “I’m a soldier from the Human Kingdom! This is the armor they wear, and the weapons they use! Daddy made them for me. Best of all, the armor is real, not just a costume! The weapons are too, but I’m less happy about that…”

“Really?! Sweet! Can we look at that thing you’re carrying on your shoulder?” Scootaloo asked excitedly.

Pixel shook her head really fast. “No. Definitely not. I just told you, daddy built real weapons for me. They’re really dangerous, especially the laser barrel on my rifle. All of them are able to kill people in one shot, but the laser also permanently blinds anyone within a certain radius of the beam who either isn’t wearing specialized gear to protect their eyes or doesn’t have augmented eyes like me or daddy because of how extremely bright it is. I don’t intend to use any of them and I’m really worried you might hurt yourselves if I let you mess with them, so no.”

“Why did yer pa give ya somethin’ that dangerous?!” Applebloom inquired, staring at the rifle and the pistol warily.

“He says I need to learn how to use them at some point so it may as well be now. And he trusts me to be responsible with them. So I really can’t let you touch them. It’s for your own safety and the safety of everyone else around us.”

“Alright…” Scootaloo muttered in disappointment. “...Sooo I know you said the laser is too dangerous, but could you at least show us what one or two of the other barrels can do?”

“Hm… No. Not without daddy’s permission, and it being in a controlled environment where I know no one can get hurt. I… I already hurt something once and I hated it… I don’t want to risk doing it again by accident.”

Applebloom grimaced. “Oh, yeah… I heard about that… I saw the big bloodstain that manticore left on the ground outside the barn, and the trail from Big Mac dragging it off back into the Everfree.”

“Mmm…” Pixel whined sadly. “I didn’t mean too… I… I was just so scared and I was trying to get it away from me…”

“Aw, don’t you worry about it none, Pix… I heard how many ponies it hurt here in town… If you hadn’t done what you did, you’da probably have ended up like them… Better that mean ol’ manticore than you or anypony else.” Applebloom stated.

“T-thank you…” Pixel muttered. Even after all this time thinking about what happened with the manticore was still really hard for Pixel, even though she would talk to Isabelle about it some times before her biomancy lessons.

“Well, uh… Want to come to town hall with us? I think Miss Zecora will be telling us about Nightmare Night again, just like last year! You gotta come listen with us! Then we gotta give some of our candy to Nightmare Moon so she doesn’t eat us...”

“Oh, alright. Lead the way.”

Author's Note

Alright, another extremely short chapter. This is the last bit of filler before I time skip to the winter filler. Yeah, pretty much everything after Isabelle saving Twilight has been filler to pad out the time the story takes, in universe, because people voted to not let the spirit get free too soon and because I didn't want to skip two full seasons worth of time. So the entirety of winter will also be filler. Sorry about that. I'll try to get through it all as fast as possible so we can get back to the non filler stuff.

I hope this bit of filler wasn't too boring!

Fun Fact #1: The Human Kingdom's power armor is fairly standard for their world. Their tanks, heavy tanks, heavy combat golems, and super heavy combat golems all have equivalent armor (it's either equivalent or maybe 10% stronger at maximum) but it's just significantly thicker. Stealth units like the serpents Mechanica Mk. 2 ripped apart when he was introduced do not wear power armor as power armor does in fact make too much noise to be even remotely useful for stealth missions. Thus the reason why Mechanica Mk. 2 was able to rip those serpents apart as he did.

Fun Fact #2: Half demonic Fae are Cambions and half angelic Fae are Nephilim. Both being the offspring of arch demons or arch angels specifically, just like the Dryads and Machina Hominum are the offspring of mid tier Nature and Technology spirits. So Cambions are obviously definitely not born from "willing" mortal parents, if you catch my drift, and they're by far some of the worst Fae you can encounter save for the offspring of the Devil himself.

Yeah... There's a very good reason Gerhardt didn't include "certain types" of Fae in the combat simulators he's making for Shining Armor. Cambions are just as evil as the arch demons that are their parents, though they aren't as powerful. So being driven to insanity just from witnessing the atrocities they commit is to be expected when facing them, even if it's just a hyper realistic simulation. Though if you're their victim, they definitely won't give you the mercy of letting you go insane. Nor will the demons themselves. They will use magic to force you to remain sane and completely cognizant the entire time.

Anyways, as always, constructive criticism is more than welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much if not more than I enjoyed writing it!

Stay safe out there everyone!

Edit: My math for how many mega joules of force a 25 gram bullet traveling at one fifth the speed of light was wrong. I have corrected it.