Alexander Mercer (what was left of him) spat out with his cranial mandibles as he ran, spitting out a hoof that he borrowed from a beige pony. Much worse than acid pie! Well, but an eye for an eye, he thought wickedly and ironically. The doctor had an opportunity to take revenge on the horse people for all the psychological and physical injuries to earthly children that these biting creatures have ever inflicted at fairs - and he, protecting the brain, used this opportunity without hesitation. Alex hesitated for these few moments while they tried to damage his optics. Probably, at that moment they could have swaddled him even more in chains, finally captured... But the guards who turned out to be nearby were clearly shocked that a creature from another world so easily cut off the leg of Celestia's servant. One armored Bat-hybrid made frequent swallowing movements, desperately trying not to vomit. Another individual, a "pure-blooded" mare, which had so far gone into hand-to-hand combat with a spear, froze in horror and only barely audible whimpering on one note, bundles and so big eyes, because it was so nicely doused with blood from the extremity chewed by Mercer.

“Merciful sisters!!!”

“Oh, Goddesses! He didn’t...?”

I didn't overdo it? Alex tried to figure it out. Was not premature such cruelty? Well, how will a moon-ass remember from his experience of the Middle Ages, what is "acceptable losses"? Maybe she will forget about her subjects right now from such a picture and will concentrate all her efforts on stopping the insolent monster! He will put all his strength into one powerful gravity well and simply press the developed one to the ground... crushing any of the ponies who accidentally happened to be near Mercer. By concentrating his attention and the focus of the sensors on Luna, Alex realized that the winghorn, occupied by the next victim, saw everything perfectly. Moreover, such an unfriendly action on the part of Mercer disheartened her: the alicorn flared her nostrils, her ears were pressed, the anger of a true aristocrat was read in her eyes. The human swore to himself, with a slight skid changing the direction of running by almost 180 degrees, and then flying up into the air altogether, dodging a beam of some bad kind of energy. Devil, there was no choice anyway! Fight off Alex now with less drastic methods, and he would be tied, so just follow the original plan. Don't let this treacherous bitch go on the offensive! Don't give her even a second of time to think about the balance between ends and means!

And how much time is left there for him? Why, the hunter tear her, solar demi-godhood has not yet appeared in person?! Teas with cakes drives and does not blow in the mustache, that her subjects are naturally killed here, or what? Well, is still not natural, so multi-colored xenos right on the battlefield had the opportunity to nurse conditionally wounded, and not to issue funeral sheets right away.

“Doctor here! Doctor, hurry!”

“Carefully! He's coming ba-a-A-A-AH!” Another dwarf horse abruptly cut off its scream, when the man at full speed knocked it down, practically flew into its face with its chest, perhaps not trampling it. Once again it seemed to Mercer that in this universe merciless irony ruled the ball.

Time, timer... Well, if Alexander Mercer were a real android, then his "vision of the terminator" would now show a whirlwind of indicators, of which exactly one was encouraging: the fire in the engine compartment was extinguished. And even then I had to rip off the upper muscle layers from the heart, throw them into the hole from being hit. The tentacle, which began to burn in flames, followed, which made repairs, for the green rubbish turned out to be extremely sticky, even worse than napalm. Burned mercilessly, did not react at all to blocking access to local oxygen.

Strictly speaking, due to signal substitution, Mercer did not feel as if a firebrand had been thrust into his chest. On the contrary, it was cold as in the ninth circle of hell. Chimeras, except that they do not yell with good obscenities, that the energy and building materials are close to each other, even taking into account the economical form of the scout. Alex did not take into account the danger of "freezing" his limbs to the point of impossibility to control them, as ordinary people stiffen their fingers in winter. There were also more serious problems... He will still lose physical the ability to move faster than the illusion will be capable of, which replaces the damage signal, complements the indication system and avoids neural blockade. Simply put, only when Mercer's kneecap is blown apart by another spell, then the leg will "mentally freeze" in the knee joint. If T Only there will be nothing to warm it with, that is, to allocate mass for repair.

And spare parts were not foreseen - in view of the very more serious problems that glowed with scarlet flashes of indication throughout the body. Critical depletion of the right scapular, right thigh armor plates. Desynchronization of the placental connection from the returned limb. A critical load on the heart, functionality is reduced. Unexpected abnormalities in the conduction of nerve tissue after being struck by crystallizing lightning. Damage to the cerebral cortex in its frontal part. The danger of repeated failure of optics, it is recommended to switch to a thermal trail. Well, the worst thing is the battery. Partial shutdown of systems after seven and a half minutes at the current level of power consumption.

And yes, how is lightning capable of irradiating radiation at all?!

As many as seven and a half? So where to hurry? Mercer would have grinned sarcastically, but his face was still a loosely assembled skull with no lower jaw. Let the mass consumption turn out to be more intensive than expected, the developed one still has a lot of time! It took Mercer only six to save New York from the apocalypse that he himself brought upon the city... with the broadest assistance of the US government, it was worth noting. He dealt with the Supreme Hunter in just three minutes. True, then it was a fight between two professional biological weapons, a fight for exhaustion, for the exchange of the most inventive techniques and blows, for their timely use. Not like now - hide and seek behind the backs of other people's minions, waiting for a convenient moment to attack, until the first serious mistake of one of the opponents. Up to a single successful attack that will decide the outcome of the battle and leave a bloody mess from the loser.

I wonder if you understand who you got in touch with, eh? Alexander thought angrily, keeping his peripheral vision on Luna. Do you have any idea who you decided to stab in the back? Are you afraid of predators, herbivore? Alex rushed in a wide arc to the border of the dome, as if breaking the distance with the night princess. If so, then in vain. The Predator itself is a vulnerable creature of flesh and blood, which does not at all want any hefty four-legged fool to break his head with a hoof. The predator always aims at the most vulnerable places, trying to finish off the victim as quickly and efficiently as possible, at the same time - safely, inexpensively in terms of energy. All he needs is for the prey to stop moving and let him get enough meat, to stretch out for some more time, leaving offspring with a successful outcome.

Do you think a predator would torture you for days, weeks, fresh alive, tearing apart the flesh and the information it needs, because in your shitty wrong world you can't pump anything directly from your brains? making another long-distance jump and in flight releasing a bolo-bomb at the so successfully substituted pegasus. Guardian Night, you do not even know the pitiful quarter of real nightmares that I can bring on your subjects, otherwise I would not stick here personally to capture, but simply dropped a meteorite on me, spitting on all the victims among the civilians. Do you understand, you filthy anthracite, that the leg that was so easily gnawed off from Lyra's friend, the traumatic shock of this fluffy pretty guy, because of your whim, is forced to resist me - this is not my maximum, this is just the beginning?!

“Group up!” came to Alex's ears the loud (but therefore no less melodic) bass of the officer. “Don't let him divide you, it will start now!”

As if having caught a wave of hatred coming from Mercer, Luna suddenly rose, with one powerful flap of its wings rose into the air. Great target! Distracted from the victims? Want to end the fight with one blow? Faster, faster, get away from the blow! Goes to another attacker! Attack! The swarm artificial intelligence embedded in the mutant produced variants with very different levels of reliability, but Alex chose to remain deaf to his advice when it came to predicting anomalies in this abnormal universe, especially the direct use of the princesses' abilities. No, Zeus will not attack right now, this is a deliberately losing move. Early, early... the location of the figures on the battlefield is not right, the pegasus will easily intercept his attack, plus there is a semblance of magical screens on Luna. Moreover, it is much stronger than usual from the guards, such a blow of a fist cannot immediately bring down.

The princess, meanwhile, raised her hooves to the sky. "Singing" some gibberish on a variation of Equestrian incomprehensible to Mercer, the alicorn gave out with a horn the glow of all shades of turquoise. The air around her somehow perceptibly thickened, and Luna, obeying the call of its mistress, began to appear more and more clearly in the sky, approaching the sun. As if overpowering resistance by day It shone, ignoring the whistle of the spells below and the mutant rushing across the battlefield, Luna continued to hold the occupied height until the satellite crawled onto the magical pseudo-star, leaving only faint stains from its crown. Twilight enveloped the battlefield, and only then did the cat-horse's pose stop showing the highest tension, as if it were manually... experimentally pulling a heavy load. On the contrary, now it was as close as possible to a fighting stance; the wing-horned pony turned into a giant bird of prey just before it fly down at peak, trying to overtake its prey. Luna's eyes lit up with a cold blue light, and then she (for lack of a better word) screamed. Having discharged her lungs in the Canterlot manner, the Luna rushed downward, burning the earth with a beam in the direction of Mercer's movement, but unable to shoot at him with direct fire for fear of offending her own. The battle cry was picked up by the Batponies, who immediately rushed after the evolved teams of beaters. The pupils of the hybrids narrowed to barely noticeable stripes, they themselves began to move somehow faster, in a more aggressive and reckless manner...

Oh shit, thought suddenly Alex, pulling his hand away from the sharp teeth that clicked a couple of inches from his forearm, It seems she still understood.

Mercer brushed aside his whip with the flare of his whip, trying, as before, to grab and throw away the enemy who had climbed into close combat, but with a more maneuverable thestral such a trick did not work. The night pony flew away, breaking the distance with a single sweep, and in exchange for it two more men settled on Alexander, aiming at his limbs with sharp claws on its wings and accumulated blades. They still tried to incapacitate him, immobilizing now more radical, crippling methods - not to kill. Well, of course. The risk that a viral beast will rip or even devour one of their subjects is highly justified by governments of all stripes when it comes to Zeus' stuffing. If it were not for the notorious desire to capture Mercer alive for the sake of ingredients for a potion based on the blood of virgins, or whatever the pony queens indulge in quietly from the general public, he would have been incinerated a hundred times already. And so - a ray of energy all did that played the role of another beater, each time not reaching Alex by a foot or two or three. If at that moment Mercer had a hairline, a stream of cold plasma, maybe his eyebrows and cornea would be singed, but that's all. It will not work to drive Alexander, he will not shy away from the beam like a wolf along the flags... not like earthly ones made of flesh and blood, at least. Mercer, with an emphasis on his hands, rushing to the ground plowed by wild golems, dived into a previously prepared narrow hole, similar to those along which hunters landed at the siege of Times Square.

M-mother, after all, I went too far with gnawing off the limbs of the overly persistent and arrogant xenos! Alex cursed until a tunnel lined with epithelium threw him out from the opposite side of the Crusaders' house, which was engaged in flames. Too early, the dark one reached the boiling point, too, and even half of the enemy fighters were not out of action! Maybe Luna in its normal state served only as a background feed for the "creatures of the night", but from the ritual that the princess performed, the thestrals were not badly intensified. Hymenoptera shortened the reaction time, acted now... on a whim, or what? It became difficult for sensors and the eye to keep track of all of them as usual. The radiation damage, just now beginning to subside, also did not help the cause.

“All calm down! As soon as he appears, hit immediately on the area of the spelli-i-I-I-I!!!”

And yes, go into the scorching the radioactive hell, Luna! Mercer emerged to the surface and, clinging to a plate of armor, launched the commander unicorn into flight, only the wind in its tail flapped. Almost immediately, Alex increased his frontal armor, further protecting what little of value he had left — his brains. In terms of receptors, he completely switched to hearing and thermal perception, streaking the helmet with the usual scattering of sensory pits. One hell of a lot, watery eyes are vulnerable in an environment where spells have started to flicker so often. The low resolution of the sensors-cameras on the periphery will not play a role, since the civilians were removed, the cartridges have long been out, and an accurate sight is not required: there are only enemies around, there is no point in distinguishing between friends and foes. There is only the main target, the largest heat footprint, and its entourage. That's the whole alignment. It is a pity that the enemy sees no worse than Mercer in the twilight... Even at night, Alex was thinking of arranging a complete restriction of visibility thanks to infovirions, a preparation for the smog of a Manhattan outbreak, in case he was attacked by the guards. But he decided that even Celestia's soldiers would have something to oppose to this, the same helmets with night vision mode or, in extreme cases, infrared crystal-flashlights... Probably it was, since the solar cuirassiers did not lose their combat effectiveness from the change of time of day, poke back and forth like the next pym kutyatam did not hurry. And although they were a little dumbfounded due to the actions of the younger princess, the shouts of their commanders obeyed implicitly, dragging off the victims, diligently covering each other, setting up barriers controlling the territory and periodically firing Mercer with self-returning boomerang spears and ramming spells.

You can't pull anymore, decided Alex, when he had to dodge at an incredible angle to avoid the gas stream that hit after the underground passage. Luna, looking for a mutant who again managed to escape from the cordon, snorted angrily and rushed to Mercer at top speed. The most appropriate time, express test, right now! Alicorn was so inflamed that she hit where Mercer would obviously no longer be! With this attitude, she must fly into a trap, she must... Maybe, of course, Alexander underestimates Luna-faced, and she burned out the tunnel mainly because she wanted to deprive him of another means of fooling her head, to elude retribution. But Mercer understood this: it is unlikely that Luna will only imitate the weakness Alex is looking for. Based on the psychic profile that Mercer built during all this recent "diplomacy", she won't have the cunning to pretend to be weakened. Not now, not in the heat of battle. Meanness, intrigue, a shot in the back, poison in a glass - these are the weapons of the aristocracy in a relatively peaceful time, after all. For the battlefield, there are other, more effective means, and from the side of Luna, Alexander now expected the most straightforward, albeit deliberate actions.

“Your Darkness, stop! He's something behind...” came from somewhere the half-choked squeak of that same beige mare, which pretty much surprised Mercer.

But it was too late. The jumping mine "blew up" the earth and jumped up, almost close to Luna flying at full steam. The princess cast a cancellation effect on the go, but this time it was a different charge, one of the few that were filled exclusively with virions. Ordinary charges also easily removed the shield, but this was more likely a consequence of the magician's loss of concentration due to the Stinging Fool. Mercer knew that his information environment caused some kind of arbitrary bursts in the currents of what the aborigines called "magic"... He knew that the very fact of his life causes problems for sorcerers. he looked into the city at the light, it was imperceptible - the reigning sisters covered the areas of detonation with powerful spells, and not with personal physical barriers that move with the owner, more difficult to maintain and easier to neutralize with counter-spells, according to Lyra. In addition, the previous time, Mercer did not give his microscopic assistants a command to collect energy, an excerpt from the terraformer program...

As, for example, now. Trying this trick was not given in advance, even though the ponies, not counting their rulers with speculatively thousands of years of experience of intrigue, for the most part seemed to Alex as ingenuous and harmless creatures. Perhaps Lyra would not be tormented by suspicions if Mercer asked her to check the shield for breakdown, but the unicorn was a musician, not a martial artist, and she did not own anything from the specific arsenal of the guards. So, on trifles, everyday incantations, telekinesis, musical tricks, unpretentious protective measures in case of getting out of the forest of assorted angry creatures, but that's all. That is why Alex held his breath when a scarlet flash licked the barrier of Luna, enveloping the princess and spreading in the air with another smoke bomb, this time crimson...

“Princess, beware!”

“What's going on there?!”

Yes! Yes, dammit!

As soon as Mercer gave a signal, the barrier of the princess, which had already almost flew out of the crimson cloud, flickered and dissolved in pieces, and Luna itself stumbled in flight, as if it had fallen into an air hole. The anger on her sleek face gave way to confusion, but she almost immediately renewed the shield with her own spell, so that the entire breakdown took no more than a couple of seconds.

A couple of seconds!

Is it possible to demand more from the coincidence of circumstances? Two seconds in the focusing mode on the target, when the conductivity of the nerves at the cost of overloading the AI increases sharply, forcing the world around to freeze like a sleepy fly - there is already a whole life. Only the very confirmation of the factor that the technologies of the virus are capable of causing discord in the magical processes of even an alicorn now mattered, but not the duration of this factor.

Dr. Mercer felt that in the next few minutes he would be able to take a step that would put an end to this protracted buffoonery. He did not reveal his card ahead of schedule at all. Although the reminder that "magic" feels uncomfortable next to a stranger clearly cleared Luna's head, made her rise higher to the edge of the dome with a flash of teleportation, it will not complicate Mercer's life in any way. Probably, the princess of the night will not sink to the ground at all, and will begin to beat with a beam from an unattainable height for an organic "frog" and move the wounded by telekinesis. But Alexander did not need her to substitute herself a second time, to give the developed one another chance...

Continue shelling!” already with some almost anguish in his voice, the officer shouted. - We almost crushed him!

You need to make three times more effort so that I at least feel pressure from your group, you naive idiot! desperately trying not to laugh at the feigned radiation comic, Mercer thought. If it were not for the inevitable lethal response from the princess, you would have all been lying lifeless on the ground in varying degrees of integrity.

If only one could be smacked along the ridge with all his might, breaking his spine, the other was to release his intestines with a thorn that had picked up from the ground... But no, he had to hold back with all his might. If the pony-headed warriors could predict his tricks and detect the approach in advance, scanning the dust curtain, Mercer would have had a hard time, but not in the current situation. Alex believed that the guardponies had never encountered an enemy like him. Well, they did not feel the experience of fighting against the metamorph, which now can be a heavily armed bully, breaking ahead, and after a dozen seconds already a dexterous killer, tearing the victim's trachea from the back and striking lightly armored targets with a fleeting stroke. The guards worked out the algorithms as if they were dealing with an ordinary large monster, and the princess could not burst into a hundred small ball-shaped Lunas to cover everyone. Alicorns, for all their innate power, were obviously not strong at multitasking... An excellent alignment for field work developed.

However, instead of his usual symphony of well-coordinated destruction, Mercer simply fled, ignoring the enemy fire - pursuing almost the same goals as in pursuit of Taggart. Wet earth and claw-twisted blades of grass rose up under the stilts. Skip-skip-skip-skip. Mercer rushed with all his might, trying to keep at least one enemy target near him at all times. No matter how the ponies tried to break the distance, no matter how many shields, partitions were placed, Zeus was more agile, more agile, and quickly adapted to changing situations. They are trying to overwhelm his legs with a net - so he just soars into the air, dodging between subsonic spells, like a long-footed mutant weasel. They beat Mercer from above, trying to drive him into cover - but the developed one rushes to all four, like a giant spider, pressing him to the body to the ground, rearranging his limbs with incredible speed, thrusting his sharp elbows and knees up. In this state, Zeus looks even more like an unknown and deadly creature, which is why the guard nearby screams in fright when he jumps over her with a single jump, almost ruffling the crest with his claws. Her scream only dissolves into the general cacophony of the battle - thanks to Mercer, everyone under the dome was busy with something. Someone pumped out the victims of the shock dose. Bon Bon was pumped out the same, although it was dragged away somewhere out of sight of the sensors. The ponies were much stronger than they looked, earthly for sure... A couple of times, lost in radioactive delirium, Mercer did not calculate the strength, so his blow would surely have ripped the internal organs of a man - and these are nothing, they whine, roll on the ground, but they are quite lively, do not die from extensive internal bleeding. Aha, kind, harmless pussies, of course! Ubersoldiers without viral steroids...

Mercer cursed sullenly to himself, spitting the first burst of radioactive plasma. In a parallel slice of consciousness, scraps of analysis floated up, where he was mistaken in the perception of these illustratively friendly xenos. Where, well, where did he miscalculate, huh? It seemed to Mercer that his plan was good, optimal, and would lead to the best scenario. After all, he could not stand it when circumstances placed the heavy burden of improvisation on him and did not allow him to feel satisfaction from his own superiority, from complete control over his own life!

This day, which did not at all stand out among the last three, he needed to talk with a representative of the diarchy. He knew, thanks to the girls and Lyra, that the mental magic of Luna was quite capable of making any dialogue one-sided and more than unreliable for Mercer. Alex believed that a fictional personality with the introduction of more and more inconsistencies would help him deduct whether Luna could feel a lie and even get into a developed head, as Green did insolently when they first met. The low level of biomass only contributed to the reliability of the image of the biorobot, which Alexander diligently kept in his head. Everything seemed to go well, almost perfect, similar to the "disappointed" trick in the case of Lyra. The Princess of the Night was clearly relieved and became weight She was in a more endearing way when she found out that hundreds of thousands of enemy battalions were not going to invade their world, and the formidable alien weapon was built in fact only so that no one had to use it. People do not have the habit of throwing nuclear missiles around them at the slightest misunderstanding... And a stranger with an ominous orientation of skills is only one, and not a whole civilization, and he speaks quite peacefully, you can agree with him, and not immediately drag him to dungeons as a hostage! Mercer did not feel any pressure on the skull, as well as outright lies in the Luna’s words. The only serious doubt that began to gnaw at Mercer was the question: who might need to slander him? This very Bon Bon is completely crazy in her desire to stack monsters in piles and sees a boogeyman kidnapping children... a boogieponi where he is not?

So what went wrong? Luna did not even try to immediately justify herself, saying that slandering Mercer is the work of third unidentified persons, and if her servants, they will be held responsible for it. Mercer found it natural for her desire to continue to maintain an aristocratic manner, a "good face"... In the end, Luna herself initially reacted to the appearance of a stranger with skepticism. She prepared for aggressive negotiations, counting on the worst.

Mercer, on the other hand, hoped for the best, but reluctantly prepared for war. He also decided to reproach himself, thinking that the experience of his native Universe is unlikely to be useful here: I am paranoid. I'm an idiot by the standards of this world. I take precautions in the event of a development that is almost impossible to imagine in this dimension. Probably... There is only the possibility that I should slow down. And after shaking the hoof of Luna, Alexander mentally breathed out with sincere relief. It seemed to him that crushed, but not broken, he finally went through another moral crisis, keeping his principles intact. I have already dreamed about what topics I can raise in a conversation with the elder archiwizard, what properties of this world I can adopt, use them for the all-encompassing progress of my own state... Stupid, stupid, stupid human!

He decided on a combination of factors and a bit of faith in b o the greatest adaptability of the world of xenos to trust ponies, and what? Mercer believed that someone else would have considered Equestria a collection of concentrated delirium - bright, carefree, and caramelly squeaky teeth. But even Dr. Mercer, an adherent of a more rational approach, did not expect so soon to meet his most hated enemy in this corner of paradise - betrayal. Maybe the diarchy cares about its own people, maybe they are a peaceful nation , but then their own, and Mercer is a dangerous creature who knows what can be thrown out, so it is better to calm her down with sweet speeches and quickly take her into custody. Mercer is by no means a relative of someone from the ruling elite, not someone's sister-usurper (we will not specify, but still the same Yin), who, after referring to Luna, can simply be slapped on the back and moralizingly say "don't do that anymore." But everyone else should be allowed out of harm's way, after giving out cement vestments... The incompatible was even less fortunate, the park was left to decorate, and not quietly thrown into the river, not otherwise that he was always under supervision. From among the enemies of the diarchy, according to the girls, there were some "shape-shifters" from the time of the wedding in Canterlot, but Mercer was not aware of what became of them. Not otherwise, they also blew up with friendship magic with their shit.

Seriously, doc, are you learning anything? Alex hissed in anger, parrying the guard's blow with an emphasis on the claws and a sharp movement of the elbow, driving his teeth into his throat. Remember how many times it has already happened. How many were those who promised to help you, before whom you counted on trust, because you were bound by common interests. Each time there was no trace of their participation, as soon as they got what they wanted. The last two cases are the freshest, most painful, accentuated by a change in state. And unlike colleagues who thought they were the smartest and the smartest and most capable of fooling Dr. Mercer, Karen and Fake Cross didn't get off so easily.

They were aiming at the battery, bastards, Alex noted with some masochistic satisfaction, finally closing the hole on his back. They wanted an easy victory, immediately disarmed... Especially in such a case - if the lunar-sized person downloads the details of Zeus's internal structure from Lyra's memories - Mercer changed his organs before going out to the public, so that the charge after breaking through the armor on the scapula only set the heart on fire. Alex hoped that in the worst case, Luna would use this knowledge to incapacitate the developed one, take him alive... the worst prediction came true. Luna pony must have probed Lyra's memory and relayed the location to one of the soldiers in the rear. This is your main mistake, princess, with dark anticipation of n thought Alex. By relying on the guardponies, following due status, or simply wanting to intimidate Mercer with a crowd, Luna has significantly reduced the space for her own maneuvers. The human had no doubts: if they had performed "under the dome of thunder", one on one - and the alicorn would have twisted him in an instant. She missed her opportunity, and such an alignment would turn out to be death for the Protecting Dreams... How I want to rush to the damned hypocrite right now, to thrust a blade into the back of her head, so that the blade appears between her jaws, and then sharply pull up, breaking the horned skull!

Her mistake... You yourself, apparently, did not have much time to think about from your latest experience, came to an unexpected conclusion Alex. This is where Mercer's oversight lay: in his humanity, in his anthropomorphic perception. Working for people, working with people, Alex's thoughts and actions were constantly limited by the standards of society and the environment, which were adults with the manners of an eccentric scholarly fraternity. But next to the zoomorphic xenos, the safety systems were not involved... Mercer's behavior became much richer in emotions, and after experiencing an incessant, almost three-week stressful situation, he was by no means against communication. Having succumbed to these positive emotions, the dopamine storm in the glass, Alexander allowed the momentary benefit to prevail over his long-term plans! It would be better if he continued to hide, in the manner of a spy, studying the pony society from the inside, and only then Alex would make a decision about his disclosure!

Well, that's wonderful. If so, Mercer will simply return to a state similar to the one that prevailed upon him after McMullen's revelations. If the naughty bastards have rejected the proposal for peace and so want to get it to their collection of park statues, let them try to cope with a faceless, cold machine, which only cares about the optimization of calculations, and which until now has not killed everyone just because this option is guaranteed will lead to the termination of its functioning, here and now. Themselves asked for, you scum four-legged!

“Well, you asked for it yourself!”

One such four-legged, but rather cute scum right in the direction of movement turned out to be either overly lucky, or could boast a horn with better sighting. The mare's spell hit Mercer right in the ribs, and his body cramped. It seemed as if the mutant had been hit by a plasmoid, so that a plume of smoke was instantly formed behind Alex, and the armor in that place was scorched. Not a bad move, in fact: Mercer ignored any structurally complex spells, but the usual elemental ones... Electricity, temperature, radiation, radiation - all these negative factors could ruffle Alex, if they were not absorbed by his armor and, if at all, could catch a developed, winding circles in the clearing like a mad dog.

Lightning strikes twice, he thought briefly. It couldn't be said better.

“Alexander, you attacked my subjects, but I’m ready to close my eyes to that too,” rumbled a voice behind him, filled with restrained anger. “Listen to me! We are not responsible for...”

The human was unable to recognize whether this projectile was homing, like a real ball lightning, but the guard definitely achieved her goal. Alex slumped awkwardly to one side, hiding behind the crown of the uprooted apple tree and picking up limbs, struggling to become invisible. The muscular corset is damaged, Alexander briefly noted his condition, preparing to urgently pull the base. Guardponies... They, as Mercer thought, were not such shitty warriors, except that they were not used to the ultraviolence of the Burgess name.(6) It is their peaceful outlook on life that Alex will use as vulnerability when he will deal with Luna, and Celestia will appear according to his soul. Mercer could no longer be deceived by the sedate and benevolent image of the Lady of the Sun. Let the people they rule are rather herbivorous in nature, alicorns certainly were not. All their feigned pacifism is a deception, they were and remain children of the Middle Ages. Mercer didn't even think of listening to Luna's luscious speeches - he couldn't even imagine for a second that the Princess's personal guards, the only of its kind armed forces in Equestria, could be so incompetent. The incident could be dubbed an "annoying oversight" in some other surrealistic world, invented from scratch - where the elite military units recruit those reasonable ones who can not keep their nerves in check and shoot at the newly-minted diplomatic face shaking the hoof of their leader. The Noon Universe(7) of the same brothers in the swamp that had surfaced in their memory seemed to fit perfectly - there to the honorary position of pioneers, on the idea of the most responsible, competent and mentally stable creatures in the Galaxy, for some reason they admitted complete idiots.

Raising his head to the darkened sky, Alex suddenly remembered that the conflict between the younger diarch and his sister took place precisely because of her refusal to lower Luna. Dick you will understand why Celestia has not yet flown to the aid of her bastard sister, but Mercer now did not exclude the possibility that Luna hoped in this way to attract her attention. And if the alicorns sit down on Alex together... This will be the final fiasco - Dr. Mercer and so wasted b o most of his preparations. Either we will have to seriously consider extreme measures, or... no, we just had to hurry up, time was running out.

Forgive me, girls, Alex thought with a vague amount of regret, I think I'm a liar after all. and it's not destiny to treat them to ice cream. He will either hide from aboriginal society, starting his own undercover game, or...

And all because of you, crowned bitches and your minions, almost trembling with rage, Mercer turned his head towards the creamy white guard, who released a pretty fireball in his direction. Probably, in the twilight, the pits burning with red light, combined with expressive bubbling, overtook the mare with horror, as she swallowed:

“S-sorry... I didn't mean it, really!” as if seriously trying to ask for an apology, the unicorn looked down. “But you forced me!”

“You have nothing to apologize to him for, my little pony! Alexander, I suggest you immediately...”

While Luna continued to broadcast with inspiration, judging by the tone of a little calming down, Alex slowly finished his thought:... or what remains of him will be placed in autoclaves, around which the pony shines will try their best to build a theory of what Mercer is and what can you do with it. Sorcerers, more likely due to the patient's unwillingness to cooperate than for safety reasons, will begin to try to sew all sorts of magical devices and artifacts to him, like a dog's fifth leg, and among them there may be that sorcery that Alex, based on his genetics, will be able to master, and then and explain to the captors on the fingers that in his native language the expression "here hev ai bi-kamm" means. To save time... Mercer spent three weeks trying to solve this puzzle to the end, and then they will do the whole project for him for free, so that he will get everything then to get out and take over the work of understanding, as Alex collected other trophies.

No! Set aside random defeatist moods, mentally grimaced Alex, puffing with a single lung and accelerating the withdrawal of the decay-affected tissues of the sub-armor and cerebrospinal fluid. He is not destined to die either in the casemates of the four-legged esculapians, or in a stone shell. Alexander was not going to give up - he would survive, grow meat on his bones and leave this inhospitable country, not necessarily in such a sequence. Whatever the outcome, the fight with the diarch, in the end, still gave him a good chance of surviving and remaining at large, somewhere 65 to 30, 5 in his mind in case of unforeseen circumstances. The Evolved One slowly got up, swaying on his singed prosthetic legs, and looked expectantly at Luna.

“Stop,” she said imperiously from the domed skies, “until things get worse”.

Her personal guards were nearby, staring angrily with their feline eyes, but now keeping their distance, forming a cordon. Unicorns generated personal shields in front of them, earth ponies held spears at the ready in free gaps... Do they think that now he will not go anywhere from under the beam of the princess, which is guaranteed to knock Mercer out, since the mutant cannot reach her? Hell no! Yes, Luna is an old and experienced fighter - Mercer sees this by her concentrated gaze, which follows not only the developed, but also controls the entire sector around him, for now she knows for sure that the metamorph can strike with a still non-existent limb from any side, even tongue, even from the ground. But at the same time, the alicorn itself is a creature of flesh and blood with a completely human mind, it can be defeated, deceived, defeated again! Such a self-sufficient, mobile and super-protected combat unit, moreover, possessing solid firepower, can really be hit in only one way... A surprise attack. And it, as you know, is bad because the next time it will not work. Mercer doesn't need a second chance, he still hasn't used his first. And let's call a mine with infovirions, say... sabotage, reconnaissance in force without the intended distraction. Yes, that's better.

Alex, deeply biting his claws into the bark, bent over in a stringy somersault and, finally turning the tree out of the ground, threw an innocent apple tree into the ranks of the enemy. Stop. Is he a fool to stop permanently under enemy fire? Maybe Dr. Mercer also enter into a highly intellectual dialogue with an opponent, since he is given the floor? Well, no, Alexander will no longer give vent to the tongue that has untied due to hard radiation, and asks to demonically laugh out loud or release a caustic comment Aryan out loud, not in thoughts. He will never stoop to talking with the enemy, with the future filling for the coffins. Taggart is a rare exception... Just like during the race to the Brooklyn Bridge, there is no time to stop, there is no chance to block the path of the main goal. One has only for a moment to be away from the beloved little ponies of Luna - he will trample and will not notice, the developed one will not even have time to be frightened.

Don't look back, doctor, Alex spurred himself mentally. Run as fast as you can. Don't think about why or for what, don't think about cause and effect anymore. Follow only the outlined plan.

One of the last mines jumped out of the ground near the cordon, spinning madly like a top, and Mercer immediately rushed through the window formed by the poisonous smoke. With gleeful glee, he noted that the horn of the sorceress who had hit it sparkled with a beam of lightning, as if the Joke had strengthened her innate talent for controlling electricity, causing an overload or closing on itself. The unicorn screamed pitifully and, falling to the ground, began to convulse. If Mercer had more time, he would have prepared a love potion with the help of the girls as aerosol traps. Maybe the soldiers would go into hysterics from the wrong way of using, since this rubbish twists feelings to the maximum and obscures the mind, while leaving the victim the opportunity to speak quite articulately and more or less adequately act... Just think, a world in which there are three schoolgirls can easily mix a love essence! What's next? Truth Serum made with the DIY Kids' Kit? Rocket fuel at the school science festival? A particularly advanced version of Gilbert's Atomic Laboratory? just overloads receptors with a data stream. A feather of a pegasus... well, let it be due to the fact that the winged people are known for their somewhat windy and sometimes eccentric behavior.

Curiously, did the alicorns actually combine the features of the Pegasus, being a kind of higher evolutionary form, as Mercer initially believed, or were they a separate species, similar to commoners exclusively in appearance, with a number of design features? Insufficient data. Ponies of all three races could interbreed with each other, but the fact that Cadence willingly took a spouse from "ordinary" unicorns does not mean anything.

And yes, when will Celestia show up? Given the notion that Alexander had arranged, he would like to get out of the way by this time; the griffin island, which is easy to get lost among the rocks, should have come up. This ideological opponent of jogging and dieting will not be so far away. Although... Considering that Mercer is right now trying to finish off her sister (he did not see any other option to escape from the battlefield), and Celestia is still not in a dream... Maybe everything is not so scary? What if Celestia, for some unknown reason, can not be expected - it is not for nothing that the youngest expressed herself in the spirit of "what's wrong with her now"? - and Luna dimmed the lighting only so that, as that beige shouted, to take away from Mercer the opportunity to recharge directly on the battlefield, at the same time giving an advantage to the phastrals? From this position, Alexander was doing quite well: all that remained was to thin out the remnants of the flyers so that they would not become an obstacle at the very last dash, and to pull the ground forces to the other side of the dome, away from the makeshift infirmary.

Want to fight? Alex rustled his mandibles, rushing forward and to the side. Well, let them come up if the horses smile so much to substitute their fuzzy asses for his kicks! Come on, don't hesitate - Dr. Mercer is going to rip off your beloved princess's head, gnaw her to the skull, stick horn into a tree and make a great birdhouse as a result! I bet one of the well-known Guardians will be delighted with such concern for the forest birds!

“D-don't move!”

“Whatever you are, don't come near!”

While Alexander, in Jackie Chan mode, was scattering two muscular earth-droning guards (this turned out to be a little easier than picking up a pair of super-soldiers in hand-to-hand combat), Luna still managed to burn Mercer with a beam, almost scorching the guardpony. The hostile energies had badly damaged the winding of the whip, so that this limb was incapacitated for some time, and "preparation for muffling the systems" now threatened to come in two or three minutes. The response was a volley of corrosive, rusty slime, which Alex threw out through the heat loops on his shoulder blades, at once hampering the movements of three guardponies at once, who went behind him. Combat formation of a magician and infantrymen got bogged down head over heels, having ceased to be combat-ready. Maybe the composition did not eat at once the flesh to the bone, like a phagocyte culture, but in all the expanding chemical burns on the skin, there is also little pleasant.

”What are you doing, scoundrel?!” Luna rumbled in the tone of a noblewoman offended in her best feelings.

Guess in three times, bitch, Mercer muttered to himself. He had already made sure that it would not be optimal to grab the hostage - just as quickly the Luna teleported all the victims to be treated. Is that the whole guard at once to capture, for which Mercer has neither the mass nor the control, and one intelligent with a blade pressed to his neck, Luna will easily lead away from the clutches of the mutant.

Since she cares so much about her own people, and the whip is out of the game for a short time, it's time to divert the alicorn's attention and clear the sky a little. Two-fingered palms folded in ticks shot up sharply, launching the remaining bolos into flight. Inside the shell, which looks like frozen amber, there are two bomb-weights with several dozen turns of veins, which are not inferior in tensile strength to a hardened wire; skin. Alex's hand could independently calculate the trajectory of enemy flyers along the heat trail, and then push out the charge with the screen, unmistakably choosing the lead. Four bombs - three pegasus fell to the ground, screaming in pain - from the hematomas accompanying the fall, from the twisted wings, which busily began to entangle the tentacles, from cut wounds on the skin... Luna managed to save one of this fate by placing a barrier between the pegasus and the projectile...

Come on, forget about them, focus on the main threat, appealed to the rationality of Luna Mercer. And she seemed to listen, entrusting the care of the defeated flyers and their release to other magician guards. A graceful winged figure of a mare loomed over the running Alex with a gloomy shadow - it was about to attack. Surely she was going to use something new from her arsenal, since Mercer was still circling around the pony, jumping, maiming and again dissolving among the guards. A good commander would try to turn the tide in his favor, introduce additional conditions.

And so it happened - Luna changed her magic and this time beat with some kind of freezing ray, harassing Mercer with it, now not paying attention to her own. The princess must have decided that the rapidly growing layer of ice would be less dangerous for the henchmen, since the ponies themselves are heat engines and, in general, will be stronger than the usual mammals of the earth. Pegasus sneezed from a high cloud at low temperatures, but at Mercer's ice, perhaps, if not constrained movement, then slowed down.

Well, yes, I'm already slowing down, hurrying and falling, running and stumbling, gritted Alex indignantly, grabbing the heavyweight, stunned by this approach, under his belly, jumping up into the air with him and hammering his head into the ground, after what a cannonball flying off to the side. He's still too fast for Luna to focus a spell on him for any length of time to freeze Mercer. Another question - Alex himself became even more limited in maneuvers. Although, if you look like that... Developed from the very beginning could not turn around to the fullest, as he used to at home, so the difference with a ray of entropy, that without it, seemed insignificant in Equestria. Here is a fight with zoomorphic mutants in New York - it was a very spectacular process (for an observer not involved in the action), quite. Accompanied by top-notch dismemberment, crazy acrobatics and tossing everything at each other: from lamp posts, taxis and air conditioners to army trucks, helicopters and aerial bombs.

In Ponyville, Zeus is just... running around, occasionally snarling. But this monotony has come to an end. A few more furry four-legged guards made opponents of Alex, holding a shocking spear and horseshoe blades at the ready. Having decided on the basis of the alignment of forces of the enemy that the time had come, this time Mercer did not stand on ceremony and show complacency and made a counter attack extremely shortly and cruelly, with the release of a charged impulse. The unicorn guardpony tried to set up a barrier to block the blow, but Alex ducked under him and drove his hand into his throat with a crash, overloading the armor's aura. The stallion wheezed, rolled his eyes, and fell to his knees. With one right, already gathered for lack of ammunition in the usual armored fist, Mercer threw the fighter into the pair of thestrals accompanying him and, bringing his whip to strike, rushed forward.

Although the largest ponies of the people were much smaller than the super-soldiers, due to the four-legged platform they occupied b o the largest area horizontally, and it was difficult for them to approach all at once the elongated, high-spirited enemy, and even all these overlapping barriers, spells, long spears... Mercer successfully used this combination of factors. It is pointless to break the distance, it is harmful to abandon what was conceived - a much more formidable rival looms behind, whose magic makes the armor become covered with frost and small pieces of ice from a couple of successful hits.

The thestrals wanted to drag the victim behind them, but only a charged forward throw is a faster movement than bouncing backward, albeit with the help of wings with flight magic. Merce p simply struck from the side with a whip directly at the base of the wing, interrupting it, permanently depriving the hybrid of the ability to fly. It doesn't matter that ponies even know how to make such prostheses that they give a disabled person to rise into the air again - only Zeus will get out of the carnage under the dome alive today. The second Batpony Mercer, snapping his long neck, rewarded with a blow to his armored forehead right in the nose, turning his muzzle to one side, and then completely his palm opened like an excavator bucket. Releasing the blade-dagger, the modified thumb, Mercer broke free from this fight, parting through the skin and muscles of the thestral between the front legs, scratching the ribs, barking the cuirass and tearing off the plates of armor. Blood spurted out of a long wound with a generous stroke from some alternative artist. Thestral both flew backwards and fell with his broken muzzle up, twitching and almost on the ultrasound screeching from pain. And Alex, resisting the temptation to crush his throat in order to interrupt this scream that beat on the eardrum, galloped on to bypass the infantry and find himself behind the backs of the magicians, where his second escape route was located.

The first step is provocation. To create the appearance of already a real threat to the lives of soldiers, so that Luna has less thoughts in her head, but more anger. So that the dark princess wants to immediately unleash a fair punishment on Mercer... something more powerful. Something that hits the area and is guaranteed to cover a nimble mutant, supposedly not responding to telekinesis.

Mercer managed to bring Luna to condition from the very first call. She set the developed heat in all senses at once: under the dome, out of nowhere, a burst of clouds formed, the barrier sphere itself was swept by counterclockwise wind gusts, and lightning struck from the gloomy veil, but what! On the area where Alexander was and from where all the guards disappeared abruptly in flashes of light, a real electric storm fell. Who also chose Alex as his target! The human, shaken by the discharges passing through his body, sluggishly thought that it would be nice to try to make a good face in a bad game on his own - just the Luna began to carry another sublime nonsense in the spirit of "MY HORSE MAJESTY WILL CRASH THE FORCES OF EVIL AND PROTECT YOUR PERSONS!!!". Maybe, really, spin the lunar ass for a dialogue, invite her to join the developed one in order to jointly take the throne from Celestia? She, too, is not afraid of the night and did not shy away from extreme measures, at least in the last millennium. And as soon as Mercer's proposal hobbles (ha-ha) the flight of her thoughts - to answer in the same way: to shoot in the back...

No. Dr. Mercer will no longer rely on chance, on unverified facts, albeit due to the state of radioactivity. He will deal with the immortal grace, possessing godlike powers, here and now, and will not think about her resemblance to Alexander. Empathy is the whim of a disturbed mind. Victory at the cost of exerting all the mental and physical forces of his renewed state - this is where the true recipe for success is hidden! So Alex blew up the penultimate infovirion mine next to him and, hiding behind the curtain, fell into the second tunnel.

“Where... where did he go?”

“I don't see anything! All around this discord haze!”

“Medic here, now!”

“MEDI-I-I-I-”

Step two is distraction. Now is the time for the good old fade trick that Alex learned back in the early days of the humanhattan outbreak. The difference between how he destroyed Karen's killers, (10) and Alex's real move lies in an additional false target - when Mercer, in the guise of a commander, indicated one of the fighters as a potential enemy, a monster in a human shell, and under the guise of doing business. Ponies, creatures with a rich emotional palette and equally rich imagination, will do just fine on their own.

“Wings, what do you have?”

“Concentrate, my warriors,” Luna called to the guards in a tense tone. “He definitely stayed here, cowardly hiding from our sight. You can't escape the protective sphere, Mercer!” she raised her voice. “Stop this senseless resistance, and we will talk like civilized ponies!”

“If necessary, we shake up every grain of earth, Your Darkness!” responded the officer, still a little trembling with fear after Mercer sent him flying, as if launched from a trebuchet.

“There he is!!!” one of the night ponies suddenly shouted. “The wounded is being taken away!”

“Yeah, we caught him!”

Entering the tunnel, Alex almost immediately activated a small remaining fragment of the itestinum, which was used for battery fusion and partial recharging. The human had dropped it in advance about halfway to the border of the dome. Obeying the command, the tentacle clung to the armor of the red-haired pegasus, which, together with its partner, was dragging with an emphasis on the shoulders of another wounded. In the heat of the battle, the parasite was not noticed, and then it was too late. As soon as the pegasus approached the field hospital, surrounded by the most powerful shields, a tentacle quietly seeped into his tail and mane set by the mohawk. V Bending in a manner, dividing into more and more veins, it began to glow actively, just as Alex's tissues did during disguise. Naturally, it was a surprise for the guardpony that his comrades suddenly all at once followed his modest person with a resounding stomp. They looked the most unfriendly; even his partner, bulging his eyes, single-handedly pulled the victim away, shouting:

“Watch out, he's disguised as Flash Sentry!”

“What..?” the flyer opened his mouth in surprise. “But I am not at all-“

“Here it is, hold him!”

The Pegasus did not have time to say anything else in his defense, as he was overtaken by charges from spears. The air was filled with the hum of spells and barriers. Almost all free guards came running to keep the beaten "metamorph" in order, with rare exceptions like the remaining pegasus-sentries. Luna, convinced of the capture of a dangerous creature, sank to the ground, but continued to keep her distance - not because she was cowardly, but for the sake of control, in order to avoid losses among the soldiers of the diarchy.

“I didn't do anythi-i-ing...” the pegasus groaned, screwing up his black eye with a blind eye and desperately trying to figure out why everyone was so angry with him, and Her Highness personally imprisoned him in a multi-layered energy cage. “Please, do not need more-e-e... so hard!”

Having worked out its number and spent almost all the energy, the tentacle was released from the pony hair, fell on the barrier and died safely. The guardponies, who had recently beating their own colleague, froze, looking at each other in confusion.

“Em, this is Lieutenant Flash himself!” the commander exclaimed in amazement, casting some kind of diagnostic spell through the barrier.

The first time it was me, the second me, so now I am, huh? Not a bad attempt at the principle of three "yes", (11) medieval mugs, grinned to himself Alex, immediately jumping out to the surface like a concrete bomb in reverse shot. It took Mercer a split second for him, Luna and the final dug-in surprise to line up. And now it's my turn!

Step three is crushing. It does not matter that Luna has descended from heaven to earth - Mercer knows very well how to make her return there, to scare the princess. It is much more important that at the moment it has become much closer to the border of the dome, and does not fly somewhere at its very zenith. Do you think you alone can use such a powerful element as quantum processes to trivially control the territory? Alex grunted from under the lower edge of his helmet. Dr. Mercer was also able to do something similar, although due to the specifics of his metabolism, he preferred a more aggressive style, close combat interspersed with ranged attacks. Getting into a fighting stance, leaning slightly back and putting both hands at chest level, as if wishing to push away an invisible enemy, Alex sat down sharply and thrust his hands into the ground with full swing. The earth swelled when the nuclei of crystallization, using the soil as a base, rushed along two channels, torn apart by the mass, and sharp stalagmites suddenly began to pop out along their entire length. A palisade of dark thorns barred Luna from the outside world - the only passage was blocked by the lean figure of Mercer, and the main barrier flickered behind her.

Alexander rushed forward. The tightness of the two rows did not provide room for maneuvers, only made possible an obvious frontal attack, but right now Alex chose to take advantage of this narrow space and not go out into the open, to make a false maneuver. All in order to be at the minimum permissible distance from Luna in the absence of nearby interference guards, so that it would prefer defense to attack. The night princess nevertheless attacked, but due to confusion or some other factor, it was the same energy beam, and not some more suitable blow of the singularity, which at once would break Mercer's every bone and turn his internal organs into mush. Even if it were him, the spell is not instantaneously, the developed one has a couple, two or three seconds to approach... Alex dodged, jumping up; immediately after that, it collapsed downward thanks to the dash-screen. Mentally freeing the last tree wolf "from the leash", I saw through the sensors how the princess's beam behind him smashed the already burning house of the Crusaders into chips.

Apple Bloom will kill me, Alex thought sadly. Yes, and the final skiff has arrived at the onboard radio station. One thing is good - this rubbish managed to let the girls go, so they won't see what happens next.

Luna, in turn, remembered that Alex did not bother to create a roof over her head (and if he did, she would easily make a passage for herself), and in fact she can fly. In her place Alex would have suspected that something was wrong - well, what can you do if Luna is accustomed to taking "high gray-un" in the event of a threat, and not going down, burying herself under the ground. The alicorn soared upward to prevent the enemy from pulling one of his dastardly tricks in close combat. On the run, Mercer made a grasping movement, simultaneously with a jump forward, he sharply spread his palms on his double hand, clinging to the wolf by the withers. Creature Like the rest of the golems, all this time lay quietly underground, deprived of the ability to move, with its living paws and jaws wrapped around, and so as not to arouse suspicion, she was also not deprived of the figured mask of a hunter. Having found freedom at the signal of the neural node, the wolf began to climb to the surface, tearing a thin layer of turf with its paws. As soon as the spawn of the Eternal One got out of the ground a little bit, Alex flew into it, pulling it out of the hole at once, and then launching it into flight with one mighty throw.

Step four - the final attack, finally! Luna has long been convinced that the tree wolves hidden by Mercer are a trick for creating confusion and creating false targets. Like ordinary dendromechanoids, they were practically harmless for the same trained terrestrial monkey, and therefore this mockery of nature was accepted by Luna on the barrier without hesitation, continuing to scatter a beam at Alex. From the charged throw, the wolf shattered with a squeal on the force screen, crumbling down a disassembled blank for the fire - only a super-soldier could withstand such a collision.

Time slows down for a fraction of a second, when Alex focuses on the Pegasus - one of the survivors who were the first at the place of his personal showdown with Luna. They're fast enough to outrun the unicorns, sings, and thestrals, but not fast enough to realize that Mercer was counting for that. When something resembling a fairly burnt knight's armor for dystrophics flies straight into the face of their leader from behind a spiked fence, the pegasus does not even have time to understand that this is something new. Mercer, who until now only with filigree precision fired bolo charges at them, now flies into the air himself!

Out of the way, another useless henchman! Alex growls to himself. You are not worth a second of my attention! Evolved does not crash into its victim, but clings with clawed prostheses to the plates of armor and living flesh under them. Gaining speed even more, he pushes off and flips with a burnt swift to another guardpony, who flies a little higher. Barely touching the armor on his back and making a jump at the optimal angle, Mercer puts all the accumulated momentum to move to the sphere of the dome and run along it, fiddling with his foot plates, while inertia pushes the mutant into a glass-like state of space.

Only after that, he allows himself to return the circuits of perception, groaning from overload, to the usual mode of operation. Alexander was lucky enough to avoid "anti-aircraft fire", which would certainly have knocked him to the ground - most of the unicorns remained at the infirmary. A hail of spells was just about to fall on Mercer, so he was not afraid that a single stray plasmoid would deprive him of his only chance of victory. That this alien world would rudely interfere with the plan with its crazy realities.

Dr. Mercer succeeded. He ran extremely gracefully along the protective barrier and, putting all his strength into the last accumulation of charge, abruptly pushed off to the side, flying along a descending trajectory straight to Luna. Why should she look behind her back and up, if a creature from another world, unlike her, flies a little better than a chicken? By some miracle, the Lady of the Night did not just notice Mercer - she managed to react. She began to turn in the direction of the attack being made, still not believing that a developed one could strike at the level of her position in space... Luna knew that personal barriers would protect against any physical impact, and her trained reflexes, combined with the experience of a powerful witch and not such blows, did not howl in this split second that you need to leave with a teleport flash.

It was then that the parting gift of the piece of wood worked. The idea was simple: the mine would not jump to where the princess would hang out, plus, upon breaking the shield, it would leave from under the blow and restore barriers without waiting for Mercer's attack. This means that it was necessary to deliver an explosive package to Luna under the guise of something more harmless. And be sure to attack from two directions at the same time in order to knock her concentration, to divide her attention! If Alex detonated the charge on himself, Luna could have time to react and leave, leaving the developed one with a nose... well, that is, without him. On the contrary, the mine that fell from the throat of the tree wolf went off exactly then and exactly where Luna least expected it! A cloud of infovirions enveloped the princess - like an electronic electronic warfare grenade was thrown. Her barrier, like the first time, flickered...

The window!

Alex threw his right hand forward, putting every muscle of his over-optimal locomotive apparatus into the punch. The fist flew to the most vulnerable point that Mercer could reach in the shortest possible time - the graceful spiral horn that emerged from the bangs fluttering in the ethereal wind.

It should have felt more than just fucking how painful it was. Mercer had hoped to drive this bone growth right into the brains of the Princess of the Night. And then immediately carry out a series of blows, almost automatically, worked out by the Kadom movements to grind the already dead body, from above with a final double fold her vertebrae like an accordion and drive the skull into the chest. Just like that, for prevention. What if these magical superorganisms based on all three races have an oblong neck in addition to the brain, so that damage to the main one will not be so critical for Luna?

The blow came from the oncoming movement of the princess's head and therefore turned out to be especially powerful. So much so that the space surrounding Alex naturally exploded. Mercer came to himself a moment later, tumbling over his head on the ground. When the human collapsed with a crash on his back to the ground and began to rise quickly, bending broken limbs, one of the flyers swept past him, thrown by the explosion. For some reason, the poor man was shaken much weaker than Mercer - he even managed to somehow level his flight, but, exhausted, eventually he also collapsed to the ground. While the other ponies were busy gasping for air, Alex quickly focused on his main goal.

The culprit of all this disgrace lay not dead, but unconscious. The princess suffered a lot, and although Alex's fist did not inflict visible injuries, her silver diadem flew away somewhere behind the crowns of apple trees, and her impeccably polished horn was thrust into a fire. The same ash color, the same smoke curling upward from overheating... Instinctively or by virtue of the magical nature mentioned by Lyra, this organ survived a blow that could pierce human through and through!

Finish off. It was necessary to chop off the neck at once, and that's the end of it, decided Alex, like an animal, rushing on all fours to the princess, who was still breathing and, moaning, made weak attempts to open her eyes. Run up, with a limb changed on the move, make a circular motion and drive the blade into the insensible back of the head.

No! It is not known if I would have had time before she threw me off! he parried his own argument. What came out in the end is even better! The princess can be used as a hostage! Flood her bloodstream with anaerobic organelles similar to those scurrying through Mercer's lymphatic system, and...

The limb, stretched out towards Luna, was suddenly shot through by a flash of cold. Alex had only a dozen meters to pass, like a hand brought up for a new blow or grip, as if dipped into boiling water.

Extensive thermal damage! chimeras shouted in their machine panic. Ignoring armor!

”ENOUGH!”

Space exploded again, not only throwing Alex away, like a dog in the path of an aggressive drunkard, but also simultaneously demolishing the dome erected by the magicians. The barrier cracked open with a rumble and began to crumble even at the first sound of the Canterlot voice, as if it were really made of glass. Fragments of the dome dissolve before reaching the ground, and in the dazzling brilliance of these fragments, against the background of the rays of the luminary, which escaped from Luna that was giving it its rightful place, descended.

And here's an unforeseen 5% arrived, Alex thought wearily. He vomited radioactive plasma right under his feet, and suddenly there were no thoughts left in his head - neither his own, nor the noises of artificial intelligence, which, at Mercer's discretion, could sneak through flesh and bone, filling in the gaps in the brain, nor parasitic neurocurrents from being struck by lightning.

Was it all in vain?

Alex indifferently watched the snow-white mare with his visor, never realizing why he was fluttering and generally trying to get up. An impressive picture blossomed in his IR vision: new colors flashed, the space was filled with thermal radiation, with his perception filter evoking thoughts of ozone before a powerful thunderstorm. Mercer felt almost like a skin on himself the attention of the one who was infinitely more powerful than him. In such a sluggish state, the feeling did not even strike Alex as unpleasant. Did it feel like something... natural? The logical outcome of this whole protracted, stupid story. The completeness of the picture, which opened before the surviving photo sensors, filled Alex with calmness.

Out of old habit, he didn’t like the fact that potential hostages were disappearing from his field of vision. Mercer thought that the pony-headed orderlies in horror would drag the victims beyond the border of the destroyed dome, even prepared in his thoughts on the remnants of radioactive courage to sarcastically ask if these amateurs, who had nothing to do with anything bloodier than a cut from cooking, that it was impossible to move without preliminary help seriously injured, but they just began to disappear with the characteristic sound of teleportation. Probably, dropping Her Serene Highness Celestia along the way broke the barrier against the teleport outside the sphere.

I already hate her, Mercer calmly summed up to himself. The goddess-ex-machina descended from heaven at the very last moment, then, out of the kindness of her soul, to solve all the problems of the characters. Disgusting feeling. All your achievements, earned in the course of the play, turn into nothing at once... what you are not worth in comparison with the higher powers, and all this is accompanied by loud applause from the audience. I hate her with all my heart.

Alex watched, without any participation, as the picture that had developed around him was transformed. The guards arrived from the reserve remaining in Ponyville. Winged multi-colored figures emerged from behind rare clouds, their horned and "normal" versions were carried by flashes of light. Here and there were scattered spears broken by Alex, scraps of golden and dark blue armor, crystals knocked out of grooves and other things that once belonged to the guards, but the newcomers quickly cleaned up all the most valuable that he could use, and did not forget to control Mercer. The devastated machine gun was stolen. Behind him, Alex even saw how one of the healers fished out of the ground a Bon Bon limb, which had been bitten off to the elbow, and was heavily stained with earth and blood. Nervously squealing "Out of the way!!!", the unicorn telekinesis dragged the stump away. The broken trees were pulled apart, clearing the clearing, reaching those fighters who, after the injury inflicted by Alex, preferred to lie quietly and not shine. One of the guards bowed and handed Celestia the younger sister's crown, hastily wiping it with his own wing. The remains of the Crusaders' house were extinguished. It seems that on the periphery of all this fuss, members of a family of farmers were running, screaming in fright. Well, still, on the territory of their economy five minutes later the sunny Armageddon did not come... Or were they calling, looking for someone?

Celestia, meanwhile, was concerned about her sister's condition - her horn was enveloped in a warm glow, so that streams of liquid gold glided over the younger's skin. The picture, at the very least, brought to a civilized form of devastation did not make the slightest impression on Alex, did not cause any emotions. He knew for sure: there would be no good moment for an attack now. It was not in the least like Mercer being trapped in a Blood-Toxin-fueled hangar with a crowd of Marines and a dog-angry super-soldier. Even if we take into account that Celestia is now busy with improving the health of the youngest, he simply will not be allowed to knock out the most dangerous targets in order to deal with their retinue later. The white alicorn, again, can apply it again... with a microwave beam, or what? Look, the tissues of the left hand were baked right into the armor, it’s good that she didn’t mark the head, which was valuable as a prize. It will be necessary to find out what kind of attack this was... somehow later. Haha.

“Lulu, can you get up?” Celestia asked worriedly, holding out her hoof.

“Ye-yes, I can,” Luna muttered, wincing desperately as if from a severe migraine. “You are just in time, sister...”

“Guards!” Celestia raised her voice. “If you cannot move, it is better not to try to get up, now ponies will help you!” Grabbing her sister by the bend of her leg, the once sole ruler of Equestria gently pulled Luna up, putting it on her hooves. “How are you?”

“A couple of ribs seem to have cracked on the fall,” Luna gasped. “Haven't broken my ribs for six hundred years, except counting the last thousand. This discord bastard achieved a spontaneous release and...” the princess looked up, where the daylight had already come into its own, and shook her head:

“I'm sorry, Tia, but I haven't seen another way to call you.”

“It's okay, Luna,” Celestia smiled with relief. “Well, at least we evened the score again in asking “what did I miss? ”Luna reacted with a nervous laugh to this acuteness that only they could understand. “Now I will finish you, but give yourself a little brea-“

“And now...” the younger sister turned her head to Alex, placing the crown between her ears with incorrect telekinesis. Cold sparks of anger, knocked down by Mercer's blow, clearly flared in her gaze. Limping on her front left leg, Luna walked slowly towards him, flaring her nostrils:

“You, a miscarriage of Tartarus..!”

Come on, Alex thought almost indifferently, feeling for the stilts in a crouched position for a better support. Come on, dark princess, go berserk. You are weak, your power has been challenged by a simple hand-to-hand fighter. Don't you want to feel at least a little bit of your superiority? Jump to the already pretty battered mutant, wanting to trample him, to avenge the attempt on your majesty!

Please?

But Celestia was not going to give him another chance to take hostage, albeit a ghostly one. She took and intercepted her sister, resting the bend of the wing on a fluffy chest with a silver cuirass:

“Don't go near him, Luna.”

“Do you even know what we will do for this, you fake Generalissimo?!” the princess of the Night growled, her eyes sparkling unkindly.

My prediction in this path cannot be called reliable, but I absolutely know for sure what I will do to you when my tentacles reach you, sluggishly disappeared into Alex's thoughts. Celestia, making sure that Mercer's attention was riveted on the reigning sisters, took the floor:

“Enough,” she announced more calmly. “Alexander, right? Alexander, nothing irreparable has happened yet. That was an infiltrator of the species unfriendly to ponies - not our soldier. We call them...”

Do you really think I'll believe this? Alex thought bitterly. Now that I know that magic is not capable of such a thing? He won’t buy a fuck like that. Not again. (12) Mercer knew that there are so-called "changelings" in Equestria, which were mentioned by children and which are able to change their appearance, somehow feeding on psychic emanations aimed at the object of replacement. Only this is an obvious and convenient lie - for Mercer to surrender, because Celestia does not want to lose valuable biomaterial. I don't believe any third party got in here, thought Mercer briefly. I don’t believe it. It was a pre-directed performance of Luna to make him surrender and get by with a little blood. Everywhere lies. These millennial politicians have become so ossified in their lies that they continue to speak teeth to Mercer even when it became obvious that he would never trust them again.

But you suspect that there may be something else lurking here, right, doc? Alex asked himself. Some hitherto hidden facts that stand out from the general plan. Which do you consider unreliable, because they turn the whole picture, that you have drawn in your head, upside down?

“... and if you don’t believe me, take into account that you are surrounded,” Celestia raised her hoof, frowning at the concentrated mine. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t intend to just watch you injure our subjects. Please don't put up any more resistance. We will calmly deal with everything and discuss everything as civilized beings.”

Why discuss something? It has been worse, Alex chuckled to himself. Ha, not really... it couldn't get any worse. However, Mercer would not be surprised if this is not the limit of the local universe, and she has something to surprise Alex with.

Alexander still had a tiny but real chance. Judging by what he saw now and heard from the girls, Celeste, "Shining", although she has an outdated experience of combat clashes, prefers to crush with pure power, which she has - like Einstein's brains. Look how I broke the dome right off the bat. The dark princess is more dangerous by her more subtle techniques, but she is weakened... The shot with the microwave beam was warning, its purpose was to protect Luna from the encroachment of the evolved. If Mercer survived the next volley and dealt with the little sister, something could be done before Sel spat and baked his brains right in his skull.

Can the sun-blowing stop Mercer? Maybe, but she is unlikely to have enough reaction speed to understand. Luna had already tried to levitate Alex, and for obvious reasons it did not work: the first element of the spell was not superimposed on the otherworldly object, cutting off the subsequent matrix. Well, Celestia can also just blast the increased gravity across the area, like her sister, and Mercer will squeeze - especially since most of the victims have already been evacuated, while Alex was swarming, assessing the situation and making a decision.

Mercer accepted him. He rose to his full height, getting into a fighting stance, clawed arms bent to his chest and slightly spreading his elbows to the sides, stooped and threw his long neck forward. Fuck unhealthy doubts about facts. In the end, meticulous analysis is one thing, but finding the right solution in a combat situation is quite another. Alex had a whole minute before either allowing the body to feed on itself, or starting to turn off the peripheral systems... Who knows, otherwise Mercer would prefer to follow the advice of his internal systems aimed at keeping the body intact and relatively safe. "Run! Drapai as quickly as possible, especially since no one is in a hurry to install a new dome!" No... they will catch up, but there is no convenient trap or, in extreme cases, a military refueling station where you can lure the enemy. That's all, basta, Zeus ran back for these three weeks. It may not be possible to defeat him, but no one is stopping Alexander from trying. It's going to be fun now, in a way that doesn't at all suggest fun, Mercer thought. Celestia, correctly assessing his stance, only managed to open her mouth and squeeze out of herself:

“Please don-“

Mercer hissed, spat on caution, and zigzagged into the attack, dodging desperately and preparing a burst of infovirions on the move. The sun princess shibanula at his legs with a narrow beam of plasma - easily and without straining, as if she did not replace the entire grandiose ITER complex alone. Grimacing from the recent blow, the youngest launched a front of disgusting-looking shadows at Alex, which it was probably best not to step on. Mercer dodged the blow of the first sister, the shadow pulling the ghostly tentacles to him jumped with a jerk, shot Celestia with a whip, probing her defense and reaction. Alex escaped the spells that flew into him from the guardponies, slipping on the ground, basically did not notice the spear thrown at him, taking it with honor in his shoulder.

“Luna!” Celestia blurted out suddenly, turning to the younger one. “Now!”

I begged you for a long time I didn't have to. This time the youngest, taught by bitter experience and the briskness of the developed, struck not with a narrow beam, but with an extensive stream of cold air. This was clearly weaker than the entropy concentrate, which at once enclosed the target in an ice shell, but Alex was now unable to avoid it. The human chuckled at his thoughts, making a detour and swiftly approaching the royal sisters' disposition. Terribly cold, of course, but not absolute zero. And ice is taken only from atmospheric moisture, freezes on the armor with a thin crust, does not hinder movement... What does Luna want to achieve by this, to plunge Mercer into suspended animation, into hibernation? Or does he want him to faint from such a contrasting shower?

...uh-oh.

As if in confirmation of the thought that flashed among the convolutions, Luna stopped her attempts to freeze the developed - and immediately hit Celestia. This was not a directional plasma beam; thermonuclear energy was dispersed, burning Mercer like a vase in a pottery kiln.

Limits reached! Threat of loss of protective cover!

Mercer howled like an alien caught by a polar explorer's flamethrower. Not from pain, but from plunging into the ice abyss: each new jump responded with needles of cold, piercing straight into the nerve nodes. His armor... He saw how more and more pieces flew away from it, as if ripped off by air straight from a blast furnace. Even without taking into account Alex's own vitality, his lightweight armor was good, allowed him to ignore many penetrating actions, protected his wearer from temperatures close to extreme.

However, for such a sharp drop of these very temperatures, the reconnaissance's light armor was obviously not designed.

Alex's left prosthesis, a part of this very structure, broke on the next contact with the ground, unable to withstand the overload. Mercer collapsed with his helmet into the ground, not having reached a dozen meters to the princesses, froze with his mouth gaping in his mind. The stream of hot air that made his body peel off and burned instantly dried up, leaving only small tongues of flame that ate up the fringe of soft tissues protruding from the joints. Alex felt frankly lousy, in full accordance with the indication that a crimson halo had filled the visor. The trachea was burned, the winding of the whip too, the thermal circuits received a shock dose of heat, from which they actually have to get rid of, the armor was knocked down almost completely... It seems that he even managed to lose something from his internal organs when the ribs burst, when pieces of armor turned outward with an evaporating liquid. There is nothing to restore even vital systems, because in the mind's eye there is held what, for human perception, could be described with an orange-red status, like the visors of the Marine augmented reality:

The battery is depleted. Forced transition to power saving mode. The alternative is to go to the refueling station.

It's not that bad, somehow recovering from the first bout of cold, Alex decided. An almost monolithic helmet, this scalp fused with the skull, remained practically intact - except that the brain was squeezed in a hot vice. Here is a cunning horse! How an armored, weakly vulnerable to undirected spells and too fast a target to take alive? It's very simple - elementary physics! By knocking his armor off with an explosive expansion, Celestia and Luna joined forces to render Mercer virtually defenseless. Alex has nothing to grow new armor from, except from extra bones, or waddle around the battlefield on one leg, collecting pieces that have fallen off. Not so bad... Ha. Ha ha ha.

It seems that I am required to give out some kind of proprietary phrase in the end, he thought. Or to say something clever and with a fair amount of irony... "Moral of the story, children - do not try to shove the head on reasonable females who know how to juggle celestial bodies", for example. Yes, that will do.

It was the end.

Mercer put his hands on the ground, trembling, and got up on his surviving knee. Celestia gazed at him with pain in her eyes, probably masking her true feeling, disgust. Alex really looked unsightly, for the temperature drop skinned him, almost completely tearing off the exoskeleton. The bare segments of the muscles at Mercer's went whitish spots - this is how the hemosurrogate manifested itself, trying to cover at least some burns with nutritious gruel, and then with scabs. The spots were blurring, joining, streaming over the twisted remnants of the muscles... Alex felt that a little more - and he finally began to fall apart. The chest was exposed - there, behind the bars of ribs, the heart was throbbing convulsively and the insides were chomping. Luna about this whole picture, as expected, exuded hostility and dislike. Most of the rank and file ponies looked at what was left of Alexander with horror; few were still angry. One of these was the officer of the hybrids, under whom the developed disguised himself during a visit to the city. However, his feline grin quickly with was replaced by a frightened mine, when Alex, in turn, bared his chest, opened it slightly, moving his ribs like jaws, dumped out a pair of secretion glands, intending to make a sling out of them for the injured leg. It seemed impossible for the Batpony to become grayer with fear, but Luna's henchman somehow succeeded.

“Don't get up,” Celestia said flatly. “If my sister and I wanted to, you were long dead. Can't you see?” something similar to bitterness and compassion was heard in her voice. “We don't need to be enemies. Why are you trying to kill yourself... is this what you desire with all your heart? Enough, please. You lose. Why do you keep trying if it will destroy you?”

What can I say, the ability to give up was never one of my habits, gave a sharp whistle through Alex's burned trachea. Until now, this strategy has worked, albeit not without reservations.

Sing, birdie, sing. Whatever she said, no matter how pitiful she was, Mercer was unable to believe the white-skinned mare. He did not survive the nightmarish 18 days of the epidemic and the nuclear explosion in order to surrender in cold blood and be taken to pieces in the experiments of fucking dwarf horses. He labored in a new world, as he labored on the battlefields of Manhattan, working blindly to avoid such an outcome. Alex chose meaningful paths where others would blindly wander among the humany options. And then the fucking Celestia landed almost on his head, and all the efforts of the developed were canceled out with one single blow!

Whatever world you enter, whatever you do, you will be defeated everywhere from forces more powerful than you are, doctor, for some reason Mercer thought. Fatalism, like a Web of Intrigue, gently entangled the brain, absorbing rationality, freedom of choice, taking away the desire to resist, driving into a trance. The thought that everything could have been arranged better pleased Alex, reminded him that he remained a human being by so many percent, with his shortcomings and limited thinking. Honestly, there were plenty of options for how to arrange today's battle differently, to lead it to a different course of events. For example, the fight is not to be fought in an apple grove, but right on the farm, where there are more buildings, the same shelters, and you can not count dangerous surprises. If not for the damned time factor... Exploding chickens, a crowd running out of the poultry house at the enemy. In some way immobilize and hide the hydra in the swamp of the local pigsty. Blow up the mill with a volumetric explosion. Arrange an earth pony for D-Day, scribbling from a machine gun, digging in with your hand in some barn and periodically throwing bitchgranades with it. There were many options, except that the limit on the mass that Mercer had at his disposal did not disappear anywhere.

Alex stopped shaking from the cold for a moment. Restriction of mass, the remainder of his living cells and nutrients, the rest of his body... No one took away from Alexander Mercer the last opportunity, when he spent all the rest. Clenching his fists, Mercer turned and looked closely at the diarchs, who were all expecting something from him, maybe public repentance. It's not over yet!

Yes, maybe Dr. Mercer lost. But, as in his home world, always and everywhere he will have the opportunity of victory through defeat. If the method worked twice, then why not try it for the third time? He is Green's out-of-control weapon, a master of gene manipulation in a past life. And now, to start a pandemic of some particularly sophisticated strain, one index finger will be enough for Dr. Mercer.

Of course, he wanted to return to humanity, to his sister, to his own people, and to hell with them, with heartache and moral issues. But if an even tighter cell becomes an alternative, where there will be no other people besides him... There is nothing worse than being in the Mother's place, being a rational being. Alex knew it for sure, "trying on" the memories of the one who brought him back to life and who did not have a mind in the usual sense of the word. From this position, the need to die again, this time finally, did not frighten.

The scenario of "gray goo" Mercer would not have been able to achieve even in his home world due to the characteristics of phagocytes - and here, in Equestria, the eternally hungry microscopic piranhas had nothing to reproduce from at all. As much as Alex can produce them, so many will be at his disposal now. So why not use your body as building materials? The houses of the chimera, carefully guarding the wearer, for the sake of this, in emergency cases, even turning off the consciousness of actions, would definitely not allow them to do this. But in Equestria... something has changed. Here this fuse disappeared along with the urge to feed the brains of other people's lives, remaining conscious at any cost. And when Alexander gave the go-ahead, he did not feel any resistance from the built-in AI. The emergency status is just something and illuminated in front of the inner gaze with all the colors of the rainbow.

Self-destruct protocol initiated.

Inhabitants l the imphs of Zeus were very reluctant to touch cells with a friendly genetic code. But now they began gnawing at Alex's tissue, increasing their population more and more, especially zealously taking on the legs, the most useless part at the moment. Puffs of orange smoke billowed from the corners of Mercer's helmet, from the throat under the visor, from the heat loops. After gnawing at his thighs in a dozen seconds, the phagocytes took up the human's tattered torso, starting from the right side, where there was no longer a valuable battery, burning the flesh on the corresponding arm to the bone. For the sake of Alex's idea, it was possible to postpone the demolition of the only lung on the left... and also to heal the tattered throat. Painfully remembering how to speak without lips, Alex strained his vocal cords and uttered as ominously as possible, even in an insane tone:

”I really... loose... then... I will take your world... with me...”

Alexander really looked even more menacing than he had before. A crimson-orange glowing composition with a rustle began to swirl around his body, so that the guards began to murmur, even though no one stooped to a shameful flight. Today Mercer did nothing but bluff, but now he couldn't do without bluffing either. Otherwise, Celestia and Luna will simply teleport all those involved from here, and they themselves will leave the affected area. On the contrary, there was a chance that they would consider Mercer to be something more dangerous and grander than he is... again. That Zeus is able to devour not only himself, but all of Equestria. Look how at his feet the sod began to melt, leaving reddish streaks! The chance is criminally low, given the experience of communication between Luna and Mercer, but still.

And then everything is simple. They stay, try to somehow neutralize Mercer, and then zhahnet so that the bones will be gone. The release of infovirions under the energy intake will corrode their shields, and phagocytes will eat everything else. If the sisters run away, considering a bluff a bluff, and then return, or they watch from a distance inaccessible to Alex... Well, goodbye, Dr. Mercer, phagocyte culture will deal with your brain no worse than with other internal organs, and your the double postponement is finally over.

Luna and Celestia looked at each other with worried mines on their faces, as if mentally talking, deciding whether to throw away or try to freeze the alien into the ice. It will not work: phagocytes with proportional losses will eat up any material obstacle, and more serious tricks, like stopping time, will not work on Mercer. With every passing second, Mercer was approaching the critical mass that would allow him to reach the princesses at such a distance. The developed one shrank and turned into a smoking, gutted scarecrow, into some kind of caricature of a human body. Now all that was left of Alex was the head and the right half of the torso with an arm, so he had to lean on it so as not to fall prone to the ground.

“Stop,” Celestia said quietly, staring stubbornly at the human. “There’s no point in hurting each other anymore. Everything can still be fixed, Alexander. All of this is just one terrible mistake.”

Mistake? Mercer thought irritably. Shooting in the back is a mistake for her?! No, you couldn't afford to be provoked. Do not enter into dialogue with the enemy under any circumstances. Do not stop. Seeing that Mercer did not react in any way to her words, and the seething of microscopic culture around him only intensifies, Celestia commanded:

“Back off and place the main shield. Stay outside it until my sister and I return,” she addressed the order to the officers of the guard. The solar commander rushed to execute immediately, but the batpony asked cautiously:

“Your Darkness?”

“Do it,” Luna confirmed her sister’s order, frowning in concentration and creating complex-looking currents of energy with her horn that formed a red-hot cage around Alex. There was no fear on their faces. Either the alicorns saw through Mercer's bluff, or they did not understand exactly how Alex was going to harm them. But they continued to stay here, even if they entangled the developed with multi-layered spells, like a head of cabbage! How, in time, Yin-Yang sent their soldiers away - the chimeras were already climbing into Alex's brain, escaping from the sprawling machinery of the body. If one head survives, Mercer will not be able to cope with all the guards, but he will simply be able to escape, provided that the explosion will cover both sisters at once. Then immediately grow a few spider limbs to the smoking helmet and run away, finely seed them, bury in the roots of one of the apple trees... Energy. There is less and less energy. Mercer felt one of the two surviving photosensors go offline, and his own thermal vision field seemed to ripple, dimmer around the edges.

“Alexander, come to your senses,” Celestia started her song again. “You will not believe if I tell you about the guarantee of your immunity, but my word is worth a lot. If you owned magic, it would be easier for you to understand.”

“What happened here?!”

“I don’t know, but it looks just like after the Appleloosian rodeo, which didn’t work out! Hooligans embrace curled up again, or something like that.”

“Aha, how the whole earth is trampled and dug up! Oh, what about the apple trees? Girls, what should we do now?! Applejack will be furious!”

“Is this our treehouse burning down?!”

Well, yes, right in the middle of some lousy apple orchard, destroyed in order, near a village inhabited by intelligent colored equiids, agreed with Alex's voice coming from nowhere. Not the most shameful place to bend. Worse than the waters of the Atlantic, the deck of an aircraft carrier, or the central hive of the Butler Library? Toxic air and hostile mutaforms of life, again, are present.

Figuratively, Mercer's breath caught in his throat. Time for him almost stopped when the evolved realized who the voices belonged to, and that the triple heat trail that showed up among the apple trees was not at all from among the enemy.

“Princess Celestia?” Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were surprised in chorus, already appeared in the field of view of the photocell. “Are you here too?”

“Silly ones, we saw Her Grace fly in and crash into the dome!” Scootaloo rolled her eyes.

“Oh, really!” Sweetie squeaked, making a hasty bow. The rest of the Crusaders followed suit. “Princess, what's going on here? As Princess Luna let us go, everything was all right... We wanted to wait at Apple Bloom's house, and then everyone started running!”

“You at least warned that during the exercises our headquarters will be needed!” some angrily said Apple Bloom, trying her best to hide the insult from the diarchs. “We, of course, were going to ask Big Mac for help in order to repair a little, but not to the ground!”

“Nah, the treehouse is nonsense!” whined Scootaloo. “The Rainbow Dash posters are all burned out! And they were named, with her own shoe!”

“Scoots, she will sign at least a hundred more!”

“Oh! How are we going to keep the Marks lists now?! I don’t remember everything we tried!”

“Go right now, let's look, maybe something survived!”

“You again?!” Luna was amazed, telekinesis stopping Scootaloo, who rushed into the ashes. “Young ponies, how did it happen that you ended up here?”

“Well, as Her Grace removed the dome, we heard all this rumbling and decided to look!” happily reported Sweetie.

“We just had to run away from Granny and Mac,” Apple Bloom muttered under her breath.

“And then we had to crawl on my belly among the trees, hide from the guards,” Scooti grumbled, looking at her fur soiled with wet earth. “But they were busy, everyone was running in circles and shooting spells, like,” Scootaloo giggled. The pegasus probably perceived their presence in the real combat zone as a fun game of saboteurs. What can be said - all in her rainbow-colored mentor!

Celestia looked equally shocked, and Alex brooded frantically as the phagocytes gnawed at his fingers. No, no, no! What have they forgotten here? The relatives did not keep track of the mischievous foals... or is this another trick of the crowned sisters? Could Celestia stoop to such villainy to check if Mercer would risk exploding in a stream of a wave that eats away at everything in its path, like Green's, when his new acquaintances are nearby? She thinks this will force Dr. Mercer to abandon the only viable plan?!

“By the way, where did Alex go?” Sweetie Belle twirled her curly head. “Princess, you seem to want to talk to him? How did everything go?”

“Yep, can you tell us?” Apple Bloom echoed her. “Will he stay in Ponyville or will you take him with you to Canterlot first?” not for years, the observant pony suddenly froze, seeing something familiar among the pile of shields. “What... is Alex there?”

“Exactly, his helmet, almost like the first time we met!” confirmed Scootaloo, screwing up her keen eyes. “Just... listen, where is everything else? I can only see his hand in small things!”

“Alex!” the little unicorn gasped, the last to see what was in the maelstrom of energies and glowing scarlet smoke. “What happened to you?!”

The foals tried to rush to the developed one, but Luna with an unreadable expression on her face intercepted them with telekinesis.

“We had to do this, my little pony,” Celestia said quietly.

“Your Grace, in what sense "had to"?” Sweetie Belle didn’t believe.

“Doesn't he do it himself?” the earth pony asked a reasonable question. “The haze is spinning around him again, Sandy did the same thing before...”

“Why did anyone even need to do this with him?!”

“So the guards what...” looked incredulously at the royal sisters Scootaloo, “fought with him? All this time?!”

She will never take the children out of here, Alex thought wistfully. Believes that this will force Zeus to lay down his arms. Celestia does not know that Mercer is an alien machine, which, in theory, should not give a damn about everything except the task at hand. And even if I knew - those beginnings, the very roots of empathy, craving for "friends" that were always with Dr. Mercer, in this world involuntarily gave shoots. Will he be able to take innocent girls with him to the next world? Destroying civilians, not even to attract attention to the crimes of the United States, but just along the way, in a vain attempt to get at least one of your enemies? Will Dr. Mercer become an indifferent butcher like Randall, stoop to his level? Once Alexander made such a decision, without thinking about the New Yorkers, with 99.9% of whom he never communicated in his life, he did not even think to empathize with them. During the skirmish at the station, he did not even remember that among all these innocent people was his sister, too. Never again in his life would Dr. Mercer want to make such a decision. Abyss, I don't want to!

“Gi-i-irls... leave... go away,” Alex croaked in stiff vocal chords. His bluff was completely failed. What the hell do you do if Mercer just recently threatened to take the whole world with him?

“Ru-u-u-n... Run, I said!” gathering his last strength, the human barked. It became more and more difficult for him to remain conscious.

“We will not leave again, do not even think! You are our friend, and friends are not abandoned!” Scootaloo stamped her foot. “What's going on here, Your Highnesses?” apparently, realizing that the energy cell around the alien did not appear by itself, Scooti looked demandingly at the princesses:

“I don’t know what the guards and Bon Bon told you, but Xander is good! Can we get him and go? We were going to take him to the cafe at all!”

“Oh, heavens!” Sweetie was horrified, finally seeing what was left of Alex, let's say, a little, and the alien looked like a puddle of toxic mucus was about to spread.

“Ale-e-ex!” Apple Bloom shouted, clasping her hooves like a megaphone. “If you need this help, now is the time to ask! My sister, over there, the desire to do everything herself did not lead to good!”

“Princess Celestia, something is happening to Alex!” with trembling lips turned to the senior diarch Sweetie Belle. “Please, you must help him!”

“Yes, please! And remove this... this light show, here!” Scootaloo waved her hoof vaguely towards Mercer, struggling to free herself from the telekinesis matrix of the dark blue alicorn.

“I would be glad, my little pony, but your...” Celestia shook her head, looking inquisitively at the developed, as if trying to calculate how much time she has left before the explosion, “your friend is not going to listen to me and Luna. And my magic here will be practically powerless.”

“Sandy, quickly listen to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna!” the little pegasus immediately began to scream. “No, really, they are good! Whatever you are doing there!”

“Alex, please! We don't want anything to happen to you!” tears flashed in the eyes of the unicorn. As the most astute of the trio, she clearly grasped that things were taking a turn that was not good and dangerous to the health of those involved. “If you quarreled with the princesses, you can still fix it! True-true!”

“Alex, we told you!” Apple Bloom tried again. “You have no need to run from every shadow in Ponyville, here everyone wants to be your friend, just like us! And princesses too, let them live on the mountain, and not in our Ponyville! Their Highnesses are good and very kind! How did you manage to quarrel with them?!”

“Ple-e-ease!” in chorus stretched the Crusaders.

Making sure that Alex responded to the calls of the trinity with restrained silence, and the swarm of cells around him did not think to calm down, Celestia said shortly:

“Luna, take them and leave.”

“Are you sure, sister?” the younger mare squinted at her.

“Sure. Wait for me... I'll be there soon.”

Luna vanished in a flash of blue light, taking the foals with it, ignoring their shrieks of protest and Sweetie Belle's whimpers. She did remove them, Alex thought distantly. Voluntarily deprived herself of her advantage. Goal? Now the main thing is to break through the shields with the ejection of virions, and even if Celestia gets the reaction to teleport away, she will be briefly touched by the ejection. Then imminent death will follow - phagocytes will be inside, penetrate into the bloodstream, devour her mucous and vital organs, multiplying at the expense of the supply of building materials that Alex has integrated into the culture from his body. Mercer could initiate detonation as soon as phagocytes took over his lung. But he was just waiting... not knowing what he was waiting for.

“I understand, Alexander, it's not easy for you to trust our people after what happened,” Celestia concluded with regret in her voice. “But I believe that the magic of friendship is familiar to you. We were all just very unlucky...” she shook her horned head in rue. “Don’t pretend you’re not at all familiar with kindness and compassion, Alex. In the first days of your stay in Equestria, you established friendly relations with the girls and miss Heartstrings, did not push four-legged aliens away from you. And if you are unable to trust me, please trust your new friends. Do not hurt them spiritually with your death.”

Did not pushed away, you say? It will be needed for business - I will greet giant intelligent insects by the paw, not like some kind of fluffy cuties that can distort reality, muttered to himself I'm Mercer. Nevertheless, he could not help but admit that Celestia's words found their purpose, and the prospect of upsetting his new acquaintances worries him, truly worries. That damn bitch knows how to hit the sickest one! You might think you can't beat off in front of the kids that you sent the alien home, or something like that! Alex thought angrily, desperately trying not to pass out before he sets off an explosion.

Inability to maintain higher nervous activity. Preparing to shutdown the main systems.

The contradictory feelings and aspirations that Alex experienced at that moment tormented his exhausted mind. A brood of chimeras, who took a liking to their head, bared their teeth, suppressing the hope that had arisen in the depths of his soul with a merciless machine logic. Hope is the worst helper, they said. Hope for a coincidence of circumstances is stupid - you can only rely on yourself. All the rest are either enemies, or a completely replaceable temporary resource. If you don't listen to the molecular murmur, the situation resembled...

Well, let's say, one of those situations in the life of Alexander Mercer, when emotions repeated that everything was bad, that there would be no more happy day. Alex had enough willpower and intelligence to reasonably understand: there will be better days. The sun will certainly rise and things will get better if he works hard and puts in a little more effort. And even more so, Dr. Mercer considered himself too rational a creature to even seriously think about suicide. But that was how Marser felt now - like putting Mr Smith to his chin and Mr Wesson to his temple.

And suddenly this unforeseen factor, a combination of circumstances, comes into play.

Just as Mercer is determined to pull both triggers, his sister calls him. Mercer lowers his revolvers and picks up the phone. Dana invites him to see some stupid science fiction film, saying that they have not seen each other for a long time except by video link... And Mercer, instead of making extra holes in his skull, will go, although modern science fiction seems to him to be inventive and stupid - he will not go because, that he wants to go to the movies, but to spend time with his sister. Because he will remember how people are arranged - the news of his death will hurt his sister, which Alex would never want to achieve.

Sister was one of the constants on which the equation of his human history was based. In his homeworld, Alexander almost lost Dana... again. In Equestria, Alex did not think about the fact that there was an opportunity to get other constants, although he did think about the likelihood of a new life - until he had a chance to get home. Mercer did not want to acquire vulnerabilities again.

Obviously vulnerabilities... that is, attachments did not ask Dr. Mercer if he wanted to acquire them or not. Last time, a man hurt others in order to hit the government harder, to prevent him from using the virus against the whole world. He warned people with the first ever act of biological terrorism and, as Alex believed, took dangerous secrets with him to his grave... How much is a new life worth it if he is going to do exactly the same here? If Alexander, as before, wants to hurt others, hiding behind some lofty goals?

Some of the writers, these eternal theorists, declared that the happiness of the whole world is not worth a single tear of a child. (13) At least if Alex is really dismantled for parts, the diarchy will lie to the girls, that Xander is okay, sent home or something, and little Sweetie needn't be sad. So... I guess Dr. Mercer was willing to take the risk today. The alternative to self-destruction is eternal torture and the service of a visual aid for pony sorcerers, so what? Dr. Mercer will find a way to get out with such an outcome. He always found that even if avoiding death meant conspiring with Green, albeit unwittingly. On the other hand, surrender is the only opportunity in which Mercer got a ghostly chance to stay free.

And it seems that he has enough stupidity to entrust his fate to this chance. Or is it to dispose of it wisely?

What if Alex stops acting according to the directives he drew up in Manhattan? Equestria has already changed Zeus, although the mechanical part of him was still reaching for the former structure of consciousness, imprisoned under the postulate "there are enemies around!" Or maybe, with Mercer's spell, he transferred into the world of colored xenos not entirely, only partially, creating an alternative version? Something wrong collecting at the place of arrival?

Be that as it may, Dr. Mercer was aware of the need for changes. Survival for some time now is not his only goal, otherwise he would be smaller than a beast - he would become a walking incarnation of the virus, as Cross tried to convince him of. So what if Alexander now acts humanly? merit and not by kinship, but simply by the fact of sincere sympathy? Take for granted the impression of foals about their rulers, for example. If Celestia had sped them away so easily, as if worried about civilian casualties, missing out on an extra opportunity to get Mercer's head unharmed...

Alex absentmindedly wiggled the stubs of his fingers, scraping the melted earth. The chemical storm around him slowed down, and then spilled to the ground altogether, turning the crowd of miniature killers into a mush of plasma and molecular debris. The glow that accompanied their work was extinguished; the growing humming and grunting died down. What remained of Mercer's body, with an emphasis on the elbow and on the first two pairs of ribs, nestled in the midst of the disgusting slurry, smeared from feet (justified assumption) to head in it and sluggishly bleeding with whitish blood. It seemed to Alex that Yan was about to turn away with a face of disgust, but her horn suddenly lit up, and the energy cell around the mutant scattered. With a creak of bones, Alexander listlessly raised his hand in order to somehow show the alicorn that he was surrendering. Celestia's face, apparently satisfied with this gesture, was touched by a smile:

“I am glad that you had a chance to make just such a decision.”

Alex shook, sinking into cold detachment. The pause that followed these words seemed unbearable to him - he had nothing to answer, for Mercer had neither his heart nor an air bag of his lungs. Probably, he should not have left silently, screwed in at last something like "I'll be back"(14) - well, no, and there is no trial. Plus, in such a state, nothing came to mind except the thoroughly ironic "Not bad for a human"(15).

Alex Mercer really held out well, even with a discount on the fact that they did not try to finish him off, only incapacitate him. But if he wants to survive in more serious clashes with the diarchy, whether they will be or not... He had to get better. Faster, stronger, more inventive to seriously confront the inhabitants of this world. Or at least one of its inhabitants.

Somebody named Chrysalis. Whoever she was, the queen of the changelings really set up Mercer, playing him against the diarchy... It is unlikely that an ordinary drone has enough brains for such an unobvious move. Only now, in the light of all that had happened, in the tide of calm orderliness of thinking born of entrusting his fate to Celestia's hoof, did Dr. Mercer realize the irony of what had happened. Just think, he was used again, this time setting on someone who was not even his enemy! Even in the world of bloody, colorful Equiids, doctors cheated, twisted them for their own purposes.

Alex was damn angry with McMullen. He reacted with tired doom to Karen's betrayal and was perhaps a little angry with Cross, since their goals coincided (as Alexander thought). But all the negative that Mercer in total experienced in relation to these persons was nothing compared to the fury, the fierce anger that awakened in Alex's fading consciousness from the understanding that it was another setup. Which one is there?

I’ll see her - I will destroy her without hesitation. I'll burn out all the hives, or where these Heinline bugs(16) have settled, decided Alex. No, though... I won't rush. I will enjoy every moment. At the same time, I will check if they have purple tripe due to a local analogue of hemocyanin.

Mercer knew how to intrigue and independently recognize intrigues, although he was not a fan of this business. He had to realize even earlier - no matter how Alex tried to convince himself otherwise, it was the work of "unidentified third parties", and not the initiative of the sisters. Luna suspected developed and jumped off, because the changelings did something to the older sister, took her out of the game for a while! And if it comes to that, if Celestia were "empathizing exclusively with her" scum, she could bluff without risking the girls, having received the thoughts of the foals from Luna, that Mercer is not indifferent to this trinity, that he would not use his weapon for fear of catching them... However, the eldest did not even think to do so. She did not press with authority, but continued to ask, hoping that Mercer would be smart enough to drop prejudices.

Now, abstracting from the question of survival, Alex saw the problem. As you know, the scientific method is based on the identification of facts, and if the observer's assessment of reality differs from these reliable facts, then he should make adjustments to his assessment.

Mercer didn't. He again allowed emotions to take over... only this time - negative with an eye on the experience of his home world, without making allowance for local realities. Here, the warm season could be late with the melting of snows, because the locals did not have time to prepare for it. Here, a lover of anthropology could climb into the window of demigod at night, and she would get nothing for it. Here a group of provincial women could inadvertently crush the most prestigious evening party among the aristocracy, and this did not entail dire political consequences for the country. Here t A swarm of restless girls could have infiltrated the war zone... although Alex would be much less willing to write off the latter as a coincidence, rather believing that this is a performance arranged by Celestia. All this chaotic life by the standards of an Earthling, all their stories... could not all this have been invented just to convince the suspicious Mercer of the integrity of the sisters? On human, all Equestria did not converge like a wedge!

In fact, from his current position, Alex was even a little surprised at how painfully he reacted. It would seem that he already has a lot of experience in the fact that "Mercer was betrayed and shot again," so that he should not have gushed with anger and sarcasm in his thoughts, but with stingy actions to give detention. A slight fool of radiation poisoning also played a role, but after getting rid of it, Mercer did not even think to reconsider his actions, to get out of the intended rut. Perhaps the contrast was to blame, all the same disappointed expectations... Only Alexander with cautious hope suggested that everything was over, that the ponies were friendly paws and that he could take a breath, as life immediately introduced him to another shock dose of negativity. Such a contrast prevented him from reasoning sensibly, without prejudice... It's a shame, but in retrospect it was expected.

Well, what can you do... Maybe Alex is now an artificial person, but among all this jumble of molecular drives and gears, quite human features are hiding for themselves, and not just pure logic. Mercer runs on all fours, but at any opportunity he stands on two legs, because walking upright sounds and looks proudly. The triumph of form over content, that's it. Mercer tries to be rational, to curb both his impulses of violent disordered emotions and cold detachment, but he is far from lacking in both. He slashes steel with the sharpest claws, but in the end he returns to his hands and himself the familiar look - the way he was during all these long years, in those forms that served him faithfully...

Critically low mass level. Impossibility to recreate life support organs and redundant systems. Inability to recreate higher motor skills.

...the kind that Dr. Mercer won't be able to support any time soon. Alex dropped his hand and began to slowly swallow it with the base of his neck. Obeying his will, the advanced helmet also began to change shape. It seemed to soften, and then froze in new forms, more and more adhering to the brain, forming a cocoon around this true value. Mercer convulsively sucked the remains of an arm and a pair of ribs into his neck until the vertebrae were the only bone outside the skull. Immediately after, using conservation protocols, he soldered two newly formed plates along the jaw line, bending them, creating one continuous chitinous membrane.

I always knew what I was, what place I was in the relationships built with my world, a thought arose and immediately disappeared in Alex's head. But in this world... I guess I'm confused.

Alexander could not say that he was better in Equestria than at home. Better than the last couple of months - of course, but this does not take into account the previous years of life. Mercer did not want to stay here forever - but he can relax at least a little in this place, get rid of negative impressions. He can gain new knowledge. He may feel the cool breeze on his skin again. He can make those around him look at Dr. Mercer with a smile, and not ready to stab him in the back. He can get him to have a friend like Lyra, but he crippled her best friend. She will probably hate him. He can…

He will face difficulties and overcome them, as always. Everything that happens to Dr. Mercer will become only a natural and predictable outcome of events, and no crazy surprises of this new world will not lead Alex astray. But right now, at a specific moment... Alexander Mercer just wanted to escape from all this horror that had accumulated in his mind. Then, having refreshed your filter of perception, rework the latest experience into something more digestible, put it on the shelves. Become more prepared for future successes, as he always did. And if he just made a fatal mistake and Celestia is going to gut him - spit. It is unlikely to be worse than the fate that went to Green: fifty years in a cage to serve as an inexhaustible donor of genetic material.

But if Alex was wrong, he will not meet again her... Dana, his sister. Flint, after all, girl! Alexander would be so confident in his own rightness and, um, human rights, whatever that means. A scientist always doubts everything, subjects it to reliability checks. This is his strength, but this is also his weakness. Will Dr. Mercer be able to live a little "small life" in nature, without fuss and all kinds of torment, pretending that he does not have the opportunities that Zeus now had? No. No - at least not and will not find out why Luna declared that the emissions of the responsible for the transfer of energy after that night stopped. After all, it could not have been that since then nuclear tests have not been carried out on Earth! Wasn't the world satisfied with general nuclear disarmament in connection with the situation in Manhattan?

I have to figure this out to find out how to get home, lying motionless on the ground with a skull-helmet, Alex thought. I'll be back, Dana, just wait for me. Just a little rest and move on. Tired... incredibly tired, the human noted the fact more than complained to himself. I'm going, sister. Just... just for a second I'll close my eyes.

The last photocell turned off, having exhausted its resource, the thermal imager too, and darkness fell. For some reason, Alex guessed that sentient bodies of Celestia were about to appear around his container, but the armored walls no longer absorbed any information.

The darkness around Dr. Mercer thickened, but the darkness in his thoughts receded for good. The abyss, into which he had almost collapsed even after McMullen's revelations, collapsed. Was it not the retribution that Alex deserved at least for the number of his victims, but another chance? Could it be that he did not lose, but has already acquired in this world something new, unique, which did not cause rejection from his beautifully crafted shell of figured human flesh?

Maybe oblivion is not what the path of human with an outstanding destiny should certainly end with?

Maybe what he's faced with is... the magic of friendship?

Maybe I'm just getting old. Middle age crisis. Against the backdrop of hostilities. I'm losing my grip. Getting sentimental.

In my head, of all the thoughts, the shortest remained, while the brain activity rapidly went to zero. Fragmented by conflicting thoughts, restructured by energy deficits, the consciousness was unable to provide the information density that usually took place in the brain of Dr. Mercer. Molecular processes, however, were not affected, and the chimeras continued their sluggish work on something the doctor knew much of himself, but by that time preferred to forget.

Mercer was surprised to find himself falling asleep. Really? Is this really happening? Alex admired on the last crumbs of consciousness. Will he really fall asleep now, go into a calm and long sleep? Until suddenly, in a panic, he jumps up in a hospital bed and discovers that he is wrapped in healing bandages with compassionate ponies, and Celestia and Luna are located next to Mercer, ready to decide the fate of the alien who has given them so much trouble?

The machines did not respond this time, hiding in his hemispheres, sinking into the gooey substance of a slumber, and severing the connection. They carefully monitored, memorized, cleaned up unnecessary and added new on a suddenly empty medium. The machines were working - and Dr. Mercer, who somehow managed to go without sleep for far not the easiest three weeks and did not go crazy, it was time to take a nap.

General shutdown of the systems of the leading person.

Switch to standby mode.

Alex Mercer resigned his post.

Alex Mercer did not laugh at the shock and confusion of the pony doctors when, with all the precautions of Celestia, the head of the alien was presented to them. When asked to do at least something for emergency resuscitation, regimental doctors only lit up with their hooves - how can you reanimate someone's head, which has nowhere to be sewn, and compounds to maintain it in stasis do not yet exist in nature?

Alex Mercer did not hear Celestia told Luna that she had never seen such a thing that everyone survived solely because of such a strong desire to kill another sentient. The younger sister reluctantly and a little guiltily agreed that there was a certain amount of irony here.

Alex Mercer didn’t see how sincerely the Cutie Mark Crusaders were happy that their friend was fine and would be on the mend soon. The mare was even more delighted when, after Celestia's words that Alexander's making a difficult but correct decision was entirely their merit, after this heart-to-heart conversation, the whole trinity was illuminated with a single magical aura, and the long-awaited Marks took the same places on fluffy flanks of foals.

Alex Mercer didn’t feel the ancient magic in the north flare up in a thousand flames, warming up the cold and stagnant blood of the Crystal Empire. Four days later, the Guardians returned to Ponyville - tired but satisfied, who were immediately swallowed up by celebrations, fraternization with relatives, big and small friends, joy for the former Crusaders, accumulated during their absence, in the end.

Alex Mercer just continued to function in a world alien to him, immersed in a dreamless sleep. For the first time in more than three months, he was not thinking about anything.

It was wonderful.

Author's Note

Yep, in this alternate universe, the Cutie Mark Crusaders get, oddly enough, Marks earlier than they should. Not that they had any choice - dissuading a new friend from suicide and realizing responsibility for someone's fate brings them closer together. Nuff said.

The story's rating has been increased, and a "violence" warning has been added due to some of the toughness contained in the last two chapters. However, this is end of "bloody" stage of conflict... for the time being. The emphasis of the story is still not on the action and dismemberment, although Chrysalis is better not to be getting caught by Alexander...

Explanations for chapter

(6) Ultraviolence - from A Clockwork Orange. In general, it means the same violence, except in a more negative way. Substitution ter mine, figly - I'm doing the same to emphasize that the action takes place in a xenos society.

(7) The Noon Universe is the literary universe of the Strugatsky brothers. Delivers, but with the release of "Inhabited Island" there was flooded with some sur. In general, the same II is almost like the Prototype - it seems to deliver, the plot is complete and does not cause any complaints, but it is worth digging a little deeper, thinking about causal relationships for more than a couple of minutes - and the plot will fall apart... if not replenished spaces with fanon and justify. Also, Mercer, a couple of chapters ago, recalled "Roadside Picnic" for their own authorship.

(8) “What have I become” - this is the question Mercer asks in the final cinematics of the Prototype after he got out of the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, dust himself off and ate a crow. He fully answers this question in the "Meeting of the Minds", however, along the way, he corrects his opinion. This is fine!

(9) Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab - children's set of the 50s in the spirit of "young chemist", only involving experiments with radioactive (sic!) particles. Despite the fact that the functionality is rather modest - the main function is observing the trajectories of particles in a foggy chamber - it looks like a wunderwaffe quite epic, when folded it resembles the GECK from all yours fallouts.

(10) According to the MM fanon, Karen Parker and the girl running away from the zombies in the intro are the same face. This version has the right to life at the behest of my left heel and the concept art of the developers, as well as the suspicious similarity of the ladies.

(11) Marketing, kids! Warming up the client with two questions, to which he is guaranteed to answer "yes", the chances of getting a third similar answer are significantly increased.

(12) In the original Prototype, the sent spy was Cross. According to the Fanon of the MM and the original concepts of the developers - Pariah, the son of Elizabeth Green, according to the canon - a repetition of the boss in the person of the Supreme Hunter.

(13) More precisely, this is Mr. Dostoevsky, widely known to Western readers as well. In the MM, Mercer also remembers him, but in a completely different way, because the alternative universe is such an alternative...

(14) It's funny that after getting rid of the Parasite, Mercer in the original Prototype said exactly "I am back" by Schwartz.

(15) And here we again have references to Aliens - specifically to the state of Bishop, from which, after a collision with the Queen, only the upper part remained.

(16) "Starship Troopers", and the original work is not a funny action movie about the destruction of bugs, but Heinlein's novel about the role of a citizen in society.