Alloy Cog Lifting: Redresseance

Chapters

Thy flesh metalized
Sinister devices
Mustang
The weather factory
The sun as our witness
Crossed paths, crossed blades

Thy flesh metalized

An infinite void surrounded Bon Bon in every direction, or at least every direction directly ahead of her since she couldn’t move her head or eyes. Somehow she knew she wasn’t dead, death couldn’t be… this emptiness. A low murmuring sound reached her ears and made them twitch in response, confirming to her that she was, in fact, still among the living.

But if not dead, then where was she? The darkness ahead seemed absolute despite her eyes being wide open… were they even open? At least her right eye should be working, right? The murmurs around her grew louder, melding together into something that almost resembled voices.

A sharp pain erupted in her neck, just under the skull, and made its way down her back. She tried to scream but discovered that her mouth refused to open. Two more deep shocks of pain appeared in her shoulders as if a red hot rod was being forced into her agonizing joints.

When the pain in her shoulders subsided, the murmurs around her grew more defined. She could recognize voices among the background noise.

“-All limbs connected, start up the link,” One of the voices said from somewhere on her left.

“Will it hurt?” Another questioned, a yak, judging by the accent… Yona?

“I hope not,” The first voice answered.

It did. A lot. Her limbs exploded with searing agony as if each of her bones had been shattered like glass. Her eye shot open, blinded by a bright light that hung above her. And she screamed, she screamed until her vocal cords gave out and then she kept making a horrid sound until her lungs couldn’t provide any more air.

“You said it wouldn’t hurt!” The yak shouted.

“I said I hoped it wouldn’t” The other voice replied, Bon Bon was starting to feel like having a chat with its owner.

She noticed how after the pain had diminished she could… feel her limbs. But the sensation was wrong, the way your hoof feels after you hold onto something frozen for too long. The only eye she had left started to focus on the world around her, the face of Yona came into view above her.

“Bon Bon? Are you there?” She asked.

She opened her voice to reply but no words came out.

“She’s there, she just did a number on her voice with that screeching,” The other voice said, she rolled her eye to meet the buglike face of a changeling, “Let’s help her sit up”

The bed she was lying in started to move slowly, lifting her upper half to a sitting position. Bon Bon closed her eye for a moment to fend off a horrible headache. She lifted a hoof to her brow to hold her head… and felt metal.

Her eye shot wide and looked at her hoof, her pupil a small black pinprick. A hoof-shaped block of steel stood where her hoof once had, the leg beneath appeared to be made with gray wires and struts. She shook, and the clatter of metal pieces coming from her forehooves only made her shake harder.

“Bring me a mirror” She ordered, trying to keep her voice from quivering.

“A- Are you sure?” The changeling asked.

“Bring me the damn mirror”

The changeling left the room, leaving her alone with Yona. Bon Bon turned to face the yak before speaking.

“A changeling?”

“Yes, Ocellus, she’s a defector, and a good surgeon” Yona responded.

The changeling returned carrying a mirror, and nestled it nicely in her new metal hooves. She steeled herself and took a deep breath before looking in the mirror.

“We had to rebuild your jaw, orange pony hit you hard. But you survived! You strong like yak!” Yona boomed.

“Not strong, lucky, we barely got there in time to stop her from bleeding out” Ocellus replied.

But Bon Bon wasn’t listening, her view was focused on the long scar over her left eye socket and the steel jaw that replaced the one she had lost. This wasn’t her face, this was somepony else, it had to be.

“What is this?” She asked, not bothering to hide the despair in her voice.

“It’s the best we could do to put you back together” The changeling tried to comfort her.

“I look like a monster…”

“I think you look strong, like yak!” Yona said, but she lowered her head when Bon Bon looked at her with a pained expression.

She lifted the mattress that covered her lower body and almost let out a cry. Her chest was now a series of steel plates covering cables like the ones in her hooves, even her rear legs were different.

“How bad is it?” She asked the changeling.

“Broken spine, missing eye, missing front legs, and severe internal organ damage. All we could save was some organs and most of your head”

So that’s it then, she was hardly a pony anymore. It seemed her days of undercover work were gone. Bon Bon tried to get up, rolling off the bed.

“Wait, wait! You still need to adjust!” Ocellus shouted as she rose to stand up.

The sensation was dull and sluggish, and the legs were missing the familiar pull and push of musculature, but Bon Bon managed to straighten herself out. A trembling hoof went forward to take a step, but she fell facefirst into the floor as the metal hoof slid away.

“I need to find those bastards!” She shouted.

“We are trying to track them down, but you are in no shape to leave this room, let alone fight these… desperado ponies,” Yona said.

Bon Bon dragged herself back onto the bed before looking back at the yak.

“Desperado? What do we know about them?”

“They are an independent guard group with very high-end weapons and armor, that’s all we could gather from the bodies. But we have our best unicorns at work on tracking anything they can find,” Ocellus explained, “For now, you need to rest”

They were right, her new joints were aching almost as much as her head. Turning to face the wall of the hospital room, Bon Bon tried to drift into sleep.

Days had passed now, and the cold wind blowing through her mane brought Bon Bon back to the present. The cold bit into her face as the balloon rose over the mountains of Yakyakistan, but she didn’t mind, the sensation of frost reminded her that at least some part of her body was still real.

“Bonny, can you hear me?” Said Sandbar, the ghostly projection of the pale Earth pony’s face in front of her startling the beige mare.

“Loud and clear, Sandbar” She replied.

“Can you see us? Is the crystal eye working?” Ocellus asked, poking her black head from behind Sandbar.

“I see you. I have to say, this thing is pretty neat,” The enchanted crystal in her right eye socket did wonders to increase her awareness, especially considering her left eye was missing.

“Great!” Chirped the Earth pony, “So, did you get a briefing before miss yak here threw you into a balloon?”

Bon Bon let out a small laugh.

“I read it on the way to the crystal empire. We tracked the armor and weapons of the desperado ponies to this yak factory, I need to go find out what they know, right?”

“Not just that,” Yona said, pushing Sandbar out of the way and filling the small square of Bon Bon’s view, “There seemed to be a city next to factory that was ‘abandoned’, but yaks don’t abandon cities! You need to investigate,”

“Yeah, yeah, get off!” Sandbar shoved the yak to the side and sat back down in his chair, “Listen, the factory is owned by a yak named Grimhorn, if you want to know what is going on in there you better keep your eye out for him”

Bon Bon rolled her eye at the dumb pun, but took a good look at the image of a yak that had appeared in her view. She could get used to the crystal eye.

“Bon Bon, it’s me,” Ocellus appeared in a separate window, apparently in some sort of lab, “Do you remember how to keep yourself going?”

“Yeah, yeah doc, cut up magical armor and weapons to absorb the magical remnant, I was already planning on slicing those bastards up anyway”

“Try and preserve their left forehooves as well,” The changeling said.

“What? Why?” Bon Bon said, confused.

“I need them for… my work, your eye should point out the ones you need to acquire. I’ll be able to enhance you further if you get me those hooves,”

“Oooookay?” She asked, confused at the bizarre request.

A yellow message flashed in her view, she was coming up on the factory.

“Good luck, Bon Bon we are here in case you need help,” Yona said from behind Sandbar before all the windows vanished from her sight.

The beige mare jumped out of the balloon as it passed over a snow-covered mountain, at the mountain’s base she could see the buildings of the city as well as the large spires of the factory. Despite the town looking abandoned, the factory was teeming with life, smoke columns rising from every chimney. Bon Bon curled into a ball to fall faster, preparing to test exactly how good her new body was at absorbing kinetic energy.

A large wall of snow flew into the air as the metal pony rolled down the side of the mountain. She jumped, her internal gyroscope helping her align with the ground, and started to slide down the mountain face. If their plans were correct, any pony or yak in the area would think it was just an avalanche.

Yona had asked her father about this place. The factory had been set up a few years ago to manufacture mining equipment, a town grew next to it as the workers looked for closer places to live. Due to the position of the factory, the only way to get to it was through the town itself.

Bon Bon came to a stop just a little distance from the edge of the town, none of the buildings had any lights on. For all intents and purposes, it was a ghost town. Still, she trotted over to the side of one of the huts, peeking her head around to look at the central street.

Two black-armored ponies stood at attention, each looking in a different direction down the street.

“You guys there?” She asked, her view immediately lighting up with a window showing Sandbar, “We were right, desperado is here. And I think something bad happened to the townsfolk,”

“Good job Bon Bon, that should be enough to get the yak army involved. As soon as you’re done with the investigation give us the signal and we’ll send you some reinforcements,” The earth pony spoke, receiving a nod from Yona.

The beige mare closed the windows in her sight and turned again to look at the guards, they had moved along their patrol routes. One of the guards was approaching the entrance to the town, just next to where she was hiding.

Bon Bon waited, listening carefully for the pony’s hooves on the snow as they approached. She didn’t even think, the second the tip of the desperado pony’s snout appeared next to the wall she drew her white blade and jumped forward, the crystal eye helping her align the edge perfectly to sever the pony’s neck. She watched the body fall into the snow with a cushioned sound.

The other guards would sound the alarm as soon as they found this body, even with the snow she had covered it with. She snuck around the huts of the town, trying her best to avoid any other guards along the way. She made it to an open plaza in the middle of town, the only hut around being the large one where the chief probably lived… or used to live anyway.

“Guys! I don’t think I can get past this area without being spotted,” She told her team, Sandbar thought for a bit before replying.

“We need to find a way to sneak through, if you get spotted in the middle of the town you’ll have everypony there on you in no time! You need to- WHAT IN TARTARUS WAS THAT?!” Sandbar said before a booming sound interrupted him.

Bon Bon blinked to clear her view and looked back in the direction from where she had hearth the loud sound. In the middle of the plaza stood a massive figure among the dry trees. If she had been told to describe what she saw, Bon Bon would have to say it was a yak. A great metal yak, the stringy artificial muscle identical to that in her legs. The ground vibrated hard every time the beast took a step even through the thick layer of snow.

“What is that thing?” Asked Yona, popping back into her view.

“I think it’s some kind of yak automaton,” Replied Bon Bon.

“A yak?! That thing is insult to yak!” Yona boomed, furious, “Bon Bon! New directive! Destroy that thing and any other like it!”

“But what happened to a stealthy approach?” Sandbar asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“Crush the fake yak, Bon Bon, rip it to shreds!” The yak continued, ignoring the Earth pony entirely.

She was conflicted over the mixed orders, but decided to draw her sword anyway. It’s not like she had any other way of getting through the plaza. Bon Bon ran out from between the huts, facing the giant metal yak.

The beast turned to face her, the blue spotlight eyes turning red as it located its enemy. With a booming… moo? The yak launched itself into the air at Bon Bon. She rolled to the side, barely avoiding the metal monster as it threw snow in every direction.

A white slash crossed the yak’s side, but the artificial hide was too tough. Bon Bon was forced to dodge again as a hoof the size of her head flew out. She flipped backward, trying to gain some distance to think about her next move.

But underestimating the yak’s speed was a big mistake, by the time she lifted her head again her eye was full of yak. Two heavy hooves slammed into her head, if her skull hadn’t been reinforced with steel she was sure the impact alone would’ve killed her. She slammed into the snow below, rolling desperately to avoid the follow-up hit.

Her head was spinning, but she still managed to parry the yak’s horn. The magical field enveloping the metal weapon clashed against her sword’s edge, triggering the new talisman that was nestled in its pommel. The magic draining gem lit up slightly, reinvigorating Bon Bon as she used the horn’s hit to catapult herself out of reach.

“I got it! Listen, Bon Bon!” Ocellus said while the yak charged, “I think I can make your eye detect where the yak’s central talisman is!”

“Make it quick, doc, I don’t think I can fight this thing for much longer,” She said as she cartwheeled out of the way of another horn.

The yak tried to stomp on her again, the steel hoof deflecting off the white blade that Bon Bon had redrawn. She spun on the ground and jumped back up, giving the yak’s metal face a good kick as she flew.

“There! I got it!” Ocellus said as her crystal eye flashed rapidly.

Once more the yak jumped at her, but this time she was ready. Instead of her old hoof-catch, the hilt of her blade magically attached to her hoof. Bon Bon’s eye lit up, pointing out a triangle of light within the yak’s chest. With the incredible speed of her brand new legs, she sliced up the metal creature faster and faster, each slice giving her more and more power. She started to laugh as she ravenously slashed at the yak, her eye counting every cut… fifty, one hundred, two hundred… eventually the pieces grew too small to keep going and Bon Bon fell to her hooves again.

“Ummm, you okay there, Bon? That was…” Sandbar said before being thrown to the side by Yona.

“That was fantastic! Rip them all apart! Two more of those things are coming for you!” The yak said, shouting excitedly.

“Yes, chop it all up, chop, chop, chop,” Somepony said behind her, she turned with a quick sword slice… but hit empty air.

She took a deep breath to calm herself down, clearly, she was becoming paranoid. She focused on the thumping that came from behind the large hut. Two more yak automatons, as well as half a dozen desperado ponies, turned the corner of the hut to rush at her. This may have not been such a good idea after all.

The yaks attacked first, jumping at her at alarming speeds. She tried dodging by rolling forwards, but she was quickly blown aside by a magical explosion. The guard ponies would be more annoying than she thought. Her white blade danced around in a flurry of cuts and slashes as she ran through the assembled desperado ponies.

Swords, lances, and ponies fell around her like the snow coming from the sky. Sparks flew as metal met metal, the enchanted steel powering the next swing as it absorbed the magical energy of the guardsponies.

One of the guards made Bon Bon stop for an instant as her eye highlighted it’s left forehoof with a red haze. The green mare had no helmet, a captain, probably. The green pony rushed forward with her lance, but Bon Bon jumped to the side, throwing her sword into her forehoof.

The mare’s blue eyes went wide as the sword in Bon Bon’s hoof sliced cleanly through her left foreleg, the severed limb flying to the side. She focused on her shocked enemy and lifted her blade to start chopping, but something stopped her in her place.

Something being a magically reinforced steel yak horn. Her eyes filled with error messages as the tip of the weapon pierced her side and sent her flying into the large hut. To be fair, if her body hadn’t been made of steel she wouldn’t have survived slamming through a stone wall.

Bon Bon tried to get back on her hooves, desperately searching for where her sword had fallen. The searing pain in her side started to make her dizzy, a blurry screen popped into her view as somepony mumbled something unintelligible to her. A white shine caught her eye and she turned to grab the gemstone pommel of the blade, ripping it out of the stone brick it had gotten stuck in.

The wall next to her exploded as one of the yak automatons charged the wounded mare. A weak parry sent Bon Bon flying into another wall. More windows and red alerts flashed in her eye, but they were too blurry to make out any details.

Once more the yak charged, her strength was waning and all she could do was turn her head to rest the sword’s pommel against the wall behind her. The yak’s thick forehead slammed directly against the white tip of her sword, impaling itself.

Like a lightning bolt, a surge of energy coursed through Bon Bon’s body. The edges of her gaping wound closed slightly as something in her chest filled her with warmth. Her view sharpened to show a mass of warnings for blood loss and trauma as well as a desperate-looking Sandbar shouting at her.

“Bon? Are you there? Bon Bon!”

“I’m back, got pretty roughed up there,” She responded, spitting the hilt out.

“Sweet Celestia! I thought you were gone! What happened?” Sandbar asked.

“I think I got lucky and cut this thing’s central talisman, the magical surge must’ve made my own regeneration talismans kick in,”

Sandbar said something else, but the synthesized moo of the other yak drowned the Earth pony’s voice out. Bon Bon climbed out from behind the disabled automaton, grabbing the sword with her mouth and facing the large hole in the wall.

The large shape of the yak covered the entrance, blocking out the sun and filling the hut with darkness only punctuated by the monster’s shining red eyes. Bon Bon jumped onto the wall on the other side of the yak as it charged straight at her, jumping off the wall and onto the roof.

She watched the yak slam into the wall before jumping at its back, wincing as her wound was pulled on by her body. Bon Bon got to work on slicing up the yak’s armor, feeling blood gush out of her side every time she made a cut in the metal hide of the beast. As she cut deeper and deeper, the talisman in her chest warmed up again once the enchanted crystal in the being’s chest died out.

Finally free of the horde, she resheathed her blade carefully on her side before collapsing into the snow outside the hut.

“Yes! Good job Bon Bon!” Yona shouted into her already-ringing ears.

“The signal is getting stronger,” Ocellus said, popping into another window, “You still seem to be heavily wounded. Take some time to rest while we find you a power source”

Bon Bon nodded, not that her team could see her do it anyway. She cringed as the snow around her felt… wrong, like a mild tickling sensation instead of the cold she expected. Her steel hoof dragged through the snow in front of her head while she tried to remember what snow felt like, it definitely shouldn’t feel like sand.

“Bon, one of our unicorns found something,” Sandbar said, interrupting her thoughts.

“What is it?” She asked, rising to her trembling hooves.

“A large magical signature to the east of where you are, it’s not moving so we suppose it’s some sort of magic artifact,”

Bon Bon turned to face east, seeing nothing more than the rows of huts. The snowfall had thickened, bothering her view as it started to erase the evidence of the carnage. Dragging her rear hoof, she slowly made her way to where the signal was coming from, picking up the severed left hoof along the way.

A trail of bloodied snow followed along her dragging hoof as she crouched between the huts, scanning her surroundings for the amulet she needed. The blood loss was starting to make her dizzy again.

“Magically enhanced pony, halt!” A heavily modulated voice said from somewhere.

Bon Bon drew her sword and tried to get into a fighting stance, but decided against it when her wound gushed a stream of crimson onto the snow. Her eye darted around, searching for the origin of the voice.

A horrible screeching sound came from the hut on her side, and she turned in time to see a chainsaw rip through the wall heading straight for her neck. She crouched under the saw and jumped away from the crumbling wall, reading her blade for combat even if her body complained about the abuse.

A pony stood in the crumbled debris of the hut, the chainsaw that had nearly decapitated her rested on a thin metal arm attached to the its back. Black and gray armor plates covered her opponent from hoof to tail, a strange helmet covering the pony’s face. A cyan mane was the only part that wasn’t covered in armor, as well as its matching tail. Bon Bon sat on her haunches and dropped her sword to her hooves to free her mouth.

“And you are?” Bon Bon asked the strange pony.

“I am FS prototype LH-84i” The modulated voice replied, each word making the strange helmet pulse with red light.

“FS prototype?” She inquired.

“FriendShip prototype, my purpose was to infiltrate Ponyville and befriend the inhabitants,”

Bon Bon took a long look at the pony she was facing, the large frame of interlocking steel plates and shining lights didn’t exactly scream ‘infiltration!’, but perhaps it had some sort of camouflage device. Though a part of the pony’s words stuck out to her as strange… befriend the inhabitants? That would imply interacting with everypony.

“You’re from ponyville? Have we met before?” She asked cautiously.

“You don’t recognize me?” The pony replied, if its voice hadn’t been a robotic monotone Bon Bon would’ve been sure that they sounded… disappointed?

“I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen you around,” She said, lifting her blade slightly.

“Bon Bon! are you serious? Is the armor really so jarring?” The pony cocked her head to the side.

The pony’s body… shifted. The plates around the face slid to the sides, revealing a pair of yellow eyes. A large helmet piece lifted off the pony’s face, with a mint green horn sliding out from a compartment in the mare’s forehead. If the white sword in Bon Bon’s hoof hadn’t been magnetically attached to her, she would’ve dropped it; for before her eyes stood none other than Lyra Heartstrings.

“Hey there!” Lyra said in her normal voice.

“W- what?” The blade shook in Bon Bon’s hooves.

“I am the FS prototype Lyra Heartstrings 84i. I’m… I’m here to kill you, Bon,”

The chainsaw on Lyra’s back revved up. Her expression was completely blank, stuck in a fake smile.

“But Lyra, we’re friends!” She pleaded with the green mare.

“I know, but desperado ordered me to kill you, please don’t resist,” Her friend’s eyes looked genuinely pained.

“You don’t have to listen to them! We’re best friends! Aren’t we?”

Lyra seemed to consider her words for a moment before replying.

“Our friendship was simulated for the purpose of infiltration. If I were to disobey my orders I would initiate my self destruct sequence,”

“But-” Bon Bon started, but couldn’t finish.

The chainsaw that flew at her head from above forced her to lift her blade and deflect to the side. She rolled to avoid another attack, grabbing the white sword in her mouth to fight her best friend.

Lyra stood on her hind legs, standing tall over her. She had done similar movements hundreds of times before, but Bon Bon never could’ve imagined that the reason why she could move like that was because she wasn’t a real pony.

The armored mare jumped at her, the chainsaw-arm flying at her midsection. Blade met blade, but instead of the catching she had grown used to, the spinning edge of the chainsaw threw her blade upwards. The saw, having broken Bon Bon’s guard, bit into her right foreleg and sent sparks flying into the snow.

Bon Bon was starting to hate the distant, almost muffled, sensation that her new body tried to convince her was pain. She dodged away from another swipe of the chainsaw, trying to gauge the best way of disarming her friend. Her weapon could deal a lot of damage, but Bon Bon’s body could withstand it for a while… an idea sparked in her head as she watched the metal arm swing again.

In a single movement, she dropped onto her back and threw the sword into her forehoof. The chainsaw fell, and Bon Bon flipped into the air, catching the spinning blade with her rear hoof as she continued the spin with her blade ready. With three quick cuts, the arm fell onto the ground, severed from Lyra’s back.

“Good one, Bon,” The green mare replied as Bon Bon threw the chainsaw away from her ruined steel hoof.

Before she could reply, steel claws extended from Lyra’s forehooves before the green pony threw herself at Bon Bon. A flurry of hits came from every direction as the beige mare desperately tried to defend herself. Fortunately, the claws didn’t do much damage, but if the blows continued for long the small hits would start to add up.

But something seemed off about Lyra’s attacks, it seemed like every blow that she couldn’t block in time hit her thickest armor plates. And every time Bon Bon dodged a sweep she noticed how Lyra took a second too long to recover, leaving herself wide open… What was she doing?

A roundhouse kick landed on her steel jaw, sending her flying into the hut wall behind her. A claw swung at her from above, Bon Bon barely catching it with her left forehoof. Once more, Lyra took a full second to recover from the block, leaving her chest wide open for the blade in Bon Bon’s right forehoof, but she couldn’t take the chance! Why was she…?

That’s it! It all made sense now! The hits on her armor plates, the encouragement when she disarmed her… the glaring openings in her defense whenever she attacked… Lyra was trying to let her win.

“I don’t want to kill you, Lyra! You’re my friend!” She shouted at the green mare.

“You can’t kill me, Bon Bon, I’m not alive,” Came her reply before Lyra jumped away.

There was a pause in the fight as her friend patiently waited for her to stand back up and grab her sword with her mouth. She may be right, but the fact still stood that the pony before her was her best friend. A thick tear rolled down her cheek.

“I am not alive,” Lyra repeated, “But in your state you won't be alive for much longer,”

As if the mare’s words had been laced with lead, Bon Bon’s body immediately seemed to triple in weight. She fell to her knees, coughing a large red stain onto the snow. Her side was slick with blood from her still-open wound, and her legs were growing weaker and weaker as her brain lost its grasp on them.

“I've been watching you, I know your body will heal if you cut up my talisman-” The green mare tried to say before Bon Bon cut her off.

“And I won’t do it!” She managed to say before another coughing fit took her over. Had the wind always been so… cold?

“Please, Bon, do not resist,” Even though the words had already been spoken, Bon Bon understood their double meaning now.

Tears and blood fell onto the floor like snowflakes, a harmony of pain, despair, and beauty. Lyra’s face was emotionless, but those yellow eyes were full of grief as the friends stared at each other.

“I… I’ll put you back together L- Lyra, I p- promise,” She said, struggling to stay calm.

Lyra gave her a wide smile before jumping to attack again. She lifted both her forehooves, claws ready to slam onto Bon Bon’s head… and froze. The green mare took a second to wind up her attack beyond the bounds of reason, basically offering her armored underside to the blender that was her white blade.

Tears fell down her cheeks as the sword flew upward, starting the cut just over Lyra’s left rear leg and ending as it split her features down the middle. The two halves of her friend’s face locked into a sincere smile, eyes closed in peace.

The talisman within the green mare’s body cracked open, filling Bon Bon with an incredible surge of energy. Her wound closed completely as her healing talismans got to work, pumping her body full of warmth once more.

“Oh Celestia, Bon Bon! We thought you were dead!” Sandbar shouted at her, apparently, she had gotten so engrossed in the fighting that she had ignored the windows at the edge of her view.

“I’m fine,” She replied.

“We can see that your vitals are rising, but are you certain you’re okay?” Ocellus asked her.

“I’m. fine.”

None of the ponies spoke as she took the blade back into her mouth and resheathed it.

“Your bloodlust didn’t even spare your friend, good,” Somepony said.

“Shut up! Who was that?!” She boomed.

“We didn’t say anything, Bon,” Sandbar replied, “Are you sure you want to-”

“Yes!” She shouted back, silencing the Earth pony, “I’m headed for the factory now, keep the yaks on standby and send someone to get Lyra, we have to fix her,”

“Are you-” Started Ocellus, but the changeling defector was silenced as well when Bon Bon exploded.

“Yes! I am fine! Send somepony to pick her up and tell the yaks to get ready or the next time I see you I’ll turn you into bug paste!”

A thick veil of silence fell over the communication spell. Satisfied, Bon Bon turned to face the factory where the bastards were hiding. The bastards that had taken her body… and now, they had taken her best friend as well. As the snow fell onto the mountain face, so did the steel hooves of the beige pony.

Despite being made of magical metal, Bon Bon’s hooves hadn’t stopped shaking as she stood at the entrance to the factory’s yard. Why couldn’t she calm down? It’s not like she hadn’t killed anypony before. She shook her head hard to dispel the ghastly images of her best friend, dead by her sword.

She didn’t see anypony guarding the factory, but surely there were cameras and guards waiting for her to get careless.

“You should be able to cut through that fence, be careful,” Yona said, popping into her view for an instant.

She took in the factory, a series of large cement rectangles dotted with chimneys that filled the air above with colorful smoke. Bon Bon trotted up to the fence, taking a good look to ensure that there were no guards.

“Here I go,” She said before drawing her sword. The buzzing of her magical blade filled the air in the silence of the mountain.

She worked quickly and precisely, two cuts in an X shape appeared on the fence, allowing her to push the bottom triangle down and climb into the factory yard. What she didn’t know, however, was that the fence had vibration detectors attached to the posts. The yard filled with the sound of steps, forcing Bon Bon to throw herself behind a container.

The steps sounded… strange. Too light to be a pony, but too heavy to be any kind of guard animal. Bon Bon poked her head out from behind the edge of the container to see who, or what, had come to investigate.

“What the…” She couldn’t help but open her mouth, and she cursed herself for it. It was a rookie mistake, the kind that gets you killed… or brutally dismembered.

In this case, however, the things she saw seemed to be as clueless as the dragon they were based on. The creatures that had come out of the factory to investigate were some kind of mechanical drakes, and if the green and purple color palette were anything to go by, they were inspired by none other thanRarity's assistant from Ponyville, Spike the dragon.

And it seemed appearance wasn’t the only thing they had taken from their base, given how cluelessly they approached the fence and looked around quickly before returning and climbing back into the hatch they had come from. This sparked an idea within Bon Bon. After all, if she just went in through the front door she would surely have to fight.

“I have a plan, what do I do once I’m inside?” She asked, the cement walls of the factory would probably scramble her comms.

“You need to confirm that this place is a weapons factory so we can get the royal court involved. Try to find out what happened to the town too, if you can. We also have some bad news…” Sandbar looked concerned.

“What's wrong?” Bon Bon replied as she climbed next to the hatch where the Spikes had come from.

“We have intercepted magical communications to and from the factory,” Said Ocellus, “A mare codenamed ‘mistral’ is on-site. Judging by how they talk about her we believe her to be some sort of general,”

“And you think it might be Applejack?” Bon Bon finished, the changeling’s nod telling her that she was right, “Well, guess I’ll finally have my rematch”

“Even with your new body, I suggest you-” The changeling tried to say, but Bon Bon closed the window. If she found the orange mare that had done this to her… she was going to kill her.

She took a small piece of cement from the wall of the factory in her hooves, turning to face the fence once more. With a good throw, the small wall fragment flew into the closest post. Just as before, the hatch opened and let out a trio of metal Spikes. Bon Bon pressed herself flat against the wall to avoid being spotted.

“Bingo,” She whispered when she saw the automatons ignore her and head for the fence.

She dropped into the hatch and crawled quickly through the cramped tunnel, trying to orient herself. Her crystal eye sent out a magical pulse, highlighting the structure of the vent as far as it could. Fortunately, it seemed deserted.

After a while, Bon Bon reached what she could only describe as a storage silo. Hundreds… no, thousands of Spike automatons lined the walls inside small cubicles. Her idea of going through the hatch to avoid conflict hadn’t been her best.

But after a few seconds, she realized none of the Spikes were moving, they seemed to be on standby. Bon Bon let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and carefully turned around. That’s when she came face to face with the three that had gone to investigate the fence.

“Unautho-” The one in the middle started, but all three were quickly silenced by a wide sweep of her blade.

The clattering of metal pieces was deafening in the silence of the silo, but she could hear perfectly fine how the rows upon rows of Spikes activated behind her. Bon Bon launched herself through the vent, unsheathing her sword and spinning in the air to cut the edges of the cramped metal tunnel.

She fell onto the factory floor with a loud clang. Something heavy landed on her back and grabbed onto her neck, choking her. But after throwing herself into a wall the creature let go. More and more of them were coming out of the hole she had cut in the vent. This was bad.

“Unauthorized pony detected” they chanted as one.

Bon Bon spun in place and ran down the hallway to escape the purple and green horde. Her blind escape was swiftly interrupted by a desperado guard that had the misfortune of standing in her way. That guard now lay in several decent-sized chunks on the floor.

The factory’s alarms were blaring now, and the security doors of the hallway started closing one after the other. Not that they would do much to stop her anyway.

She rolled just in time to avoid being trapped by one of the steel doors. Just because they couldn’t stop her it didn’t mean that they were useless. The door ahead managed to close in time, but it opened right up after a quick sword cut.

“You guys there?” She asked, but received no reply.

The metal claws of the Spikes hammered on the door she had left closed, the constant clatter almost as deafening as the alarm itself. Bon Bon spun to try and find a hiding place, her eye resting on a storage room that opened into the hallway.

Her crystal eye, now calibrated to spot talismans, pulsed through the door, highlighting eight Spikes just outside… as well as the several dozen that were stuck behind the other security doors. This almost drew a chuckle from Bon Bon, almost.

Once the creatures finished scanning the segment she had been in they got to work on trying to open the hallway doors. Every time the door would rattle in place but remain locked. One of the figures walked up to Bon Bon’s door, and she sent a silent prayer to Celestia that it wouldn’t notice the cut on the lock.

The doorknob spun, and Bon Bon pressed her forehooves against the door, pushing back against the metal Spike on the other side. After a few agonizingly slow seconds, the automaton decided that the door was locked and turned to leave.

She let out a gasp as soon as the things were too far away to hear her. The alarm had stopped, which meant that the doors were probably open again. Poking her head out the door she confirmed her suspicions when she saw the security door were open.

“That’s some lousy security, they lost sight of me and now everything is back to normal?” Bon Bon said out loud.

But you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, she thought as she trotted down the hallway again. Her eye caught a shinging yellow sign that read ‘Main factory floor’ with an arrow pointed ahead, as if the glorious sun was shining directly into the building. She thanked Celestia for her divine gift before picking up the pace.

Eventually, she reached a fork in the hall, one of the exits led into a metal staircase from which metallic clanging sounds could be heard in the distance. The other exit was closed off by a door that read ‘authorized personnel only’.

“I wonder if my keycard can open this?” Bon Bon asked sarcastically before cutting the door in half.

As she suspected, the stairs led to an observation deck overseeing the factory floor, a single pony stood in the middle, watching attentively downwards. They never suspected a thing as Bon Bon walked up behind them and drove her sword directly through their heart.

She kicked the body aside and took a good look at the factory below. They had been right, dozens of unicorns swarmed around a central conveyor belt, layering and weaving magic into the armor and weapons that passed by. This was exactly what they suspected. Now all she had to do was get out of here…

The yaks! She still had to find out what happened to the town. Her eye danced over the floor below, scanning everypony in search of Grimhorn, but there was nothing. The factory was massive! there was no way she could-

“Sparky! Are you there?” Somepony asked. Bon Bon turned to look for the source but didn’t see anypony, her mind was playing tricks on her again!

“Sparky I swear if you left your communicator on your desk to go to the bathroom again I’m going to shove my hoof so far up-” The voice continued, this time, however, Bon Bon found the source.

She took the small magical device from the dead stallion’s ear and linked it with her own. The voice of a mare on the other side greeted her with more colorful language.

“I guess you did, well whatever, start recording!” The mare said, causing the communicator to let out a loud beep, “Hey there lazy head! When you’re done with whatever you’re doing you better get your ass up to the sky carriage area. The yak and miss Mistral are going to have a meeting in half an hour and you know how… uncivilized that Grimhorn is.”

Bingo! that was all Bon Bon needed to hear, now all she had to do was get to-

“Oh!” The mare continued, “And about what you said yesterday… sure! We can go out for dinner sometime, I heard there’s some great hayburgers at-”

Bon Bon couldn’t hear any more, she threw the communicator into the air and cut it in half. Then in half again, just for good measure. A single tear threatened to roll down her cheek when she passed the dead stallion as left the observation area.

Her hooves were shaking again, at this rate she was going to undo the screws holding her limbs together. Smacking her leg into the wall hadn’t done anything other than almost alert a metal Spike that was wandering the area. But at last, she had made it to the top of the factory without being spotted… well aside from that one camera she had to cut apart.

Now she was hidden, lying flat against the roof of a parked sky carriage. There were a few guards around the deck but she couldn’t bring herself to kill them. Especially after learning that one of them was waiting on a stallion that would never come. In the middle of the roof there stood a yak, Grimhoof.

“Where is Mistral?!” He bellowed at the closest guard.

“She’s on her way sir, please calm down,” The earth pony responded.

“Calm down!? First you desperado ponies send workers away and buy my factory, then you turn it into weapons factory! And now you ask me to stay calm?! No!” The yak boomed before slamming his horns into the earth pony.

The guard went flying into a carriage, and judging by the way nopony reacted, this was either a common occurrence or they knew the pony was dead. The yak slammed his hooves into the floor, leaving deep dents in the metal. Bon Bon hoped she wouldn’t have to fight him, the metal yaks in the town already gave her enough trouble even as predictable as they were. Grimhorn slammed the roof again, letting out a roar.

“Can you please stop that?” A voice said from the main stairway.

“Look who decided to show up! We need to talk, Mistral!” Grimhorn bellowed at the approaching mare.

The mare wasn’t Applejack, that was for sure. An intricately stylized purple mane curled over the mare’s blue eyes, A bone-white horn popping out from the pony’s forehead. The mare was wearing some kind of armor around her neck and chest, it was closer to a thick metal harness than an actual breastplate. Her hooves were encased in steel claw-like gauntlets, yet the polished armor made the entire getup look… fashionable.

“Oh please, do tell what was sooo important?” The fashionista asked the yak, rolling her eyes.

“I want my factory back! You promised me half of the bits, but somehow you haven’t sold anything in three months? This is a scam!”

Bon Bon’s eye alerted her of multiple talismans approaching the area. She looked to the side and saw dozens of Spikes climbing the walls of the building, just behind Grimhorn.

“Darling, we really haven’t sold anything! All the equipment has been going to our own troops,” Rarity said with a warm smile.

“That was not our deal!” The yak slammed the floor again.

“But it was, sweetheart! The contract said that you would get half of all our public sales, but we haven’t gone public yet,”

The yak turned visibly red, blowing smoke out of his nostrils.

“Yak shouldn’t deal with pony! Pony scammer!” Grimhorn bellowed.

But before the yak could charge he was attacked by the metal Spikes, jumping onto him from every direction. Their small steel jaws bit deeply into his flesh, making him scream. He desperately tried to stomp them or throw them off his back, but the mass of metal was too overwhelming.

With a roar, the yak charged at Rarity, his single remaining eye glowing with rage. But the mare simply dodged to the side, letting the yak rush past her and over the guardrail.

“So uncivilized,” The fashionista said, looking down at where Grimhorn had fallen.

The white unicorn turned around to look directly at Bon Bon’s carriage, an evil grin on her face.

“Darling, you really need to work on your stealth,”

Something heavy landed on Bon Bon’s back. She turned her head to see a Spike automaton, it had probably climbed up from behind and spotted her.

“Heh, wasn’t expecting to find so many of these annoying things,” She replied after kicking the metal dragon to the floor, breaking it.

She jumped to land in front of the unicorn and went for her sword when she saw the guards approaching. Five of them counting the red pegasus mare captain, if she could-

“Leave us,” Rarity ordered.

“B- but Mistral-“ The pegasus captain started, but she fell silent when Rarity shot her a glance.

Bon Bon also fell silent, the mare’s voice had stuck out to her… she was the voice on the communicator, she was… no, She had to focus on the mission.

“Yes ma’am,” The pegasus said, trotting away with the other guards.

Her hooves started shaking again, but she had more important things to worry about now. Taking a page from the late Grimhorn, she slammed both her hooves into the roof, hard. Unlike the last time she had tried it, this time the hit made her stop shaking.

“Well now, shall we parlay, my dearest Sweetie Drop?” The white mare said.

Her words hit Bon Bon like a bucket of freezing water, memories shot through her head faster than a bullet… faster than she could suppress them. Memories of her past that she had tried so hard to forget.

“How do you know that name?!” Bon Bon exploded, pure rage seeping into her voice.

“Oh please darling, I’m the queen of gossip, do you really think I wouldn’t be able to find out something as simple as that?” Rarity raised an eyebrow at her.

“That’s not me anymore! My name is Bon Bon!” Her anger was growing exponentially, like a pressure cooker starting to crack.

“Is that so? Because I’d say that horrid display of violence in the town just now was… Sweeter than Chocolate”

She knew exactly what she had said, the devilish grin confirmed it. A warning for high blood pressure flashed in Bon Bon’s sight as she grit her teeth.

“Why are you working with these ponies if you hate violence so much?” She asked the unicorn, injecting as much hatred into her words as she could muster.

Rarity lifted her hoof to her chin in a mock thinking gesture as she paced in front of BonBon.

“Well, I guess I started out looking for ways to get further into the fashion business. Before I knew it, Desperado sent me a contract to help them design magical armor… which I took, of course. I wanted the bits so I could open a new boutique in Canterlot, you see?”

“Oh? So that explains the army of automatons? Or how you just sent them to murder Grimhorn?” Bon Bon retorted snarkily.

“By all means, no! These adorable Spikies were created to help me make dresses!” The fashionista walked towards the Spike that Bon Bon had destroyed earlier, “But they lacked my… touch, so to speak,”

Rarity lowered her head and bit onto the destroyed metal arm, dislodging it from the shoulder joint. The severed limb came to life, attaching its shoulder end to a connector on the white unicorn’s harness. Her new arm lowered and ripped off the other limb from the broken Spike, attaching it on the other side of Rarity’s chest.

“Fortunately, I found a way to make them even more useful!” She said with glee as several Spike automatons ran towards her.

The metal dragons Started to disassemble themselves, attaching their arms onto all the connectors along Rarity’s back. Before long, multiple now-armless Spikes stood around their leader, a white unicorn wearing a crown of metallic limbs around her neck.

Several of the arms had been locked together, ripping off the sharp spikes that ran down the heads of the nearest automatons. The makeshift spear was slung behind Rarity, held firmly by two pairs of arms.

“Is the spear a dressmaking tool?” Bon Bon asked, lifting an eyebrow.

The white unicorn gave a mirthless laugh.

“Don’t get me wrong, I may remain a stranger to violence, but this armor is more than able to protect me… And get rid of anypony that might interfere with my work,”

“We’ll just have to see how good it is, then,” Bon Bon took a step back, readying herself for combat.

Rarity gave no reply, instead launching herself forward as the spear spun menacingly behind her. Bon Bon barely got her sword out in time to meet the sharpened steel head-on, slicing the tip of the spear clean off.

The cut was too clean, however, and the tip continued on its original path before slamming into Bon Bon’s right shoulder plate. It didn’t seem to have done much damage. She lifted her view to stare at the unicorn, had her mouth not been full of hilt, she would’ve given her a smile. There was no way for Rarity to win this, especially with only half a weapon.

But the moment of triumph didn’t last as she was forced to dodge out of the way of several armless Spikes. To her dismay, she saw a new automaton jump towards the white mare and disassemble itself to repair her spear. Several of the arms on the mare’s neck grabbed the metal dragon and threw it violently at Bon Bon.

She considered cutting it apart but decided to simply kick the thing aside. Yet the second her hoof connected with the dragon’s metal scales the entire automaton exploded, sending her spinning onto the ground.

A warning flashed in her eyes, her right forehoof wasn’t doing great after the explosion. She shook out of her momentary stupor just in time to see the unicorn flying through the air at her, spear lifted. A white slash came up to meet the mare, but was parried by… the spear?

Indeed, just as the blade rose the spear had bent along several of its elbows to strike her sword on the flat, shoving it to the side instead. Bon Bon had to backflip to get out of the way in time before being skewered. The arms on her opponent’s back took the spear and twirled it to face her again.

Something bit her rear leg, she turned to see an armless Spike busy with trying to bite her leg off. Her crystal eye kicked back in, highlighting the magical talisman within the automaton. That was it! She could outlast Rarity by using the Spikes as well! The white sword plunged into the small dragon, filling Bon Bon with a rush of power that straightened her forehoof out… mostly.

Rarity, however , had other plans, jumping once more at Bon Bon while the spear danced around her like a hypnotized snake. The white sword managed to clip the end of the spear once more as its user dodged to the side. As soon as the unicorn’s attack ended, Bon Bon threw her sword into her rear hoof, the magical metal attracting the hilt and keeping it in place.

Now it was her turn to jump, she rushed at Rarity, who had lifted her weapon once more, and jumped into the air. She spun, the blade humming as it flew towards the mare’s collar. The metal arms couldn’t block in time, and many fell onto the ground under the unrelenting edge of the white sword.

The two arms on the front, however, were still completely functional. The white unicorn turned to face Bon Bon with a grin as the two arms on her shoulders grabbed the spear tightly. The weapon shifted before her eyes, elongating into a long, flexible row of arms. It ditched the sharp spike at the end before bending like a tentacle and grabbing onto Bon Bon’s right forehoof.

In one swift motion the world disappeared from beneath her, she tumbled through the air before being slammed onto the roof. She was lifted again and thrown against the stairwell, going through the metal door like a battering ram… or a battering pony, in this case.

“You can’t win darling, just give up,” The unicorn suggested as several Spikes climbed onto her to replenish her lost arms.

A barrage of Spikes flew at Bon Bon, but she wouldn’t fall for that trick twice. Three backflips were more than enough to get out of the way and see the metal balls fly into a silo behind them.

The arm-whip flew at her again, but this time she was waiting. As soon as the hand grabbed her she threw her sword into her forehoof and focused on the metal limbs holding her aloft. Three quick cuts were enough to destroy the whip, but the momentum it had sent her flying towards the railing.

Not satisfied with sharing Grimhorn’s fate, Bon Bon bit onto the metal railing, thanking Celestia that her upper teeth had been replaced along with the bottom ones. Now with a point of leverage, her body slammed into the side of the building as her reinforced jaw struggled to hold onto the railing.

She kicked off the wall, rotating back up to the roof and directly at a very confused unicorn mare.

“How did-” Was all Rarity managed to say before Bon Bon slammed into her like a freight train, sending both mares flying over the other end of the building.

What arms remained attached to the unicorn’s collar reorganized themselves into two strands, clutching at everything and anything in their way to slow down the fall. Bon Bon, on her part, decided for a more… direct approach to slowing down. This approach being, of course, slamming into several small pipes like a makeshift cannonball.

She landed harshly onto the factory yard, bouncing several times despite the floor being made of concrete. Rarity, on the other hoof, landed with the grace of… well… Rarity. The white unicorn looked annoyed at her opponent as several Spikes swarmed around her to replace her missing arms.

“I can do this all day, darling,” She taunted.

“So can I,” Bon Bon lied, in reality, she was having trouble with even seeing the mare through all the warning signs her eye was being bombarded with.

Bon Bon got back to her hooves, picking up the sword that had fallen nearby before staring defiantly at Rarity. She had to appear strong, even if her legs felt like they were about to give out. The armless dragons charged at her, tailed by the elegant white unicorn.

The first group was taken out by a quick horizontal slice. Their talismans held some magic, but not nearly enough to heal her wounds. Bon Bon lifted her head just in time to block a whip-hit from Rarity. The extra reach on her opponent’s weapon was going to be an issue.

Rarity spun the whip around in her arms before uncurling it directly at Bon Bon. She tried to dodge aside, but found herself to be firmly locked in place by a pair of Spikes that held onto her legs. She whirled her blade around to cut at them, but it was already too late. The sharp metal on the end of the whip slammed deep into her right shoulder, the barbs on the spikes locking it in like a fishing hook.

The strand of arms lurched upward, sending Bon Bon into the air as the sharp metal ripped her shoulder apart. Judging by the amount of pain and blood that exploded in her side, the hook was now stuck in whatever little flesh she had. The metal fingers holding it let go of the blade, leaving Bon Bon to float for an instant. She was distracted by a new source of pain, and then another, and another. Her eye cracked open to see the motive, Rarity had whipped her several times along the belly causing multiple deep gashes to open along her midsection.

Bon Bon collapsed onto the floor in a bloody heap, her sword falling away from her grasp.

“I told you, darling, nopony interferes with my work,” The white mare walked elegantly towards her downed opponent.

“D- doc…” She whispered into her communicator.

“By the queen! Bon Bon, what are-” The changeling started, but Bon Bon cut her off quickly.

“Divert all my power to my rear legs, now!”

The changeling gave a nod, not bothering to ask for an explanation.

“What are you muttering about, Sweetie? Speak up,” Rarity said, giving her a kind smile.

The unicorn raised her spear once more, grabbing it with every single arm on her collar. A small shock went through Bon Bon’s body, like a static shock, focused on her rear legs. Praised be the sun!

She saw Rarity’s eyes widen in shock as Bon Bon used every last bit of energy in her body to jump at her with the only weapon she had available: the steel spike lodged in her shoulder. A horrid gurgling sound emanated from the white mare’s throat as it was pierced by the sharpened metal. The arms holding the spear spazzed out as the pearly horn in her forehead shot out a rain of blue sparks.

Both mares tumbled onto the floor, their blood mixing together as it pooled below them. A loud explosion echoed from somewhere around them, a column of fire rising from their left. The silo that the Spikes had hit was probably full of something flammable. The building shook again as another silo went up in flames. Bon Bon turned to the sky, losing herself in its infinity.

“Bon! That place is going to blow! Get out of there!” Sandbar shouted at her.

“I’m… coming…” She replied weakly as she dragged herself towards the main gate.

Author's Note

Second chapter is up, on time.

I will be making a separate chapter for each mission, so the two people that actually read this can more or less predict what is in store for the next one. Once more I encourage criticism and hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Next one should be done by next wednesday.

Sinister devices

Steel hooves echoed through the white halls of the Canterlot castle medical wing. Bon Bon made her way through the winding corridors whilst doing her best to ignore the confused glances of the guards around her.

A turn to the left, then to the right, and she found herself standing before the door where her friend was being repaired. She pushed the door aside, peeking into the operating room and seeing the black carapace of Ocellus hunched over a nearly-rebuilt Lyra.

“How is she doing?” She asked the changeling, walking up to examine her friend better.

“You sliced her main talisman in half, I’m amazed we were able to salvage as much as we did. Everything should be operational when we turn her back on. We also managed to salvage some intelligence-”

“You looked into her memories?!” Bon Bon asked, indignant, “Who gave you the right?”

“We were forced to do so when we tried to reassemble the talisman!”

She huffed at the changeling, but conceded; she didn’t know much about any of this talisman magic doohickey.

“If she isn’t a normal pony, how can she do magic?” Bon Bon intentionally avoided using the word ‘fake’ to describe her friend, but her heart still throbbed painfully at the thought.

“Some kind of artificial telekinesis, we are still trying to decipher the enchantment they used. I can’t imagine what kind of brains are behind such an incredibly complex automaton,”

A flare of anger lit in her chest, but she let it go with a deep exhale.

“What about the intel you found?” She asked, at last, making the changeling groan in frustration and drop her tool onto the table.

“Yona will give you a briefing in the office, can you let me work in peace now?”

Bon Bon left the room and turned left towards the main office. A green guard mare stood next to the door at the end of the hall, staring at her with a stern glare.

“State your business,” The guard ordered.

“Mission briefing,” She replied, bored. The guard took a step to the side and let her pass, but Bon Bon could easily hear the relieved sigh she let out when the door closed. Did she really look that scary?

The office was filled with desks oriented in a circle around a crystal table. Most of the chairs were occupied by unicorns, dressed in the light royal guard armor of the support units. Behind the table stood an elevated podium where the large figure of Yona stood overseeing the room.

Sandbar was sitting next to the yak, looking down at his own crystal desk and deep in thought. Bon Bon cleared her throat, causing both of them to turn their heads and face her.

“Ah, Bon Bon, are you here for briefing?” Yona asked her with a smile.

After a nod, the yak continued with her explanation.

“We couldn’t really decode much from her memories, but we did find a list of cities she visited. At first, we didn’t see anything important, after all, an infiltration unit would obviously visit important cities-”

“But!” Sandbar interjected, “One of the locations stood out from the rest; Burrango”

Bon Bon had heard about the city, it was in the donkey lands if she remembered correctly. It wasn’t a capital and she couldn’t recall a single important detail about it aside from the name… A perfect place to hide a base.

“Have you investigated the place?” She asked the earth pony.

“Yes, and we discovered that the locals are complaining about magical waste being dumped into their sewers. We believe there’s some kind of laboratory hidden there, and we need you to go and investigate,”

She gave the pony a long stare. What could they possibly be doing all the way out there? maybe Lyra could tell her once she got fixed… Lyra… She had to talk to her.

“I’ll do it,” She told the pair, “But only if I can take Lyra with me, as backup,”

“I don’t see why not,” Yona shrugged.

“We’ll just tell the doctor to remove anything that could let Desperado control her, we wouldn’t want our top agent to get backstabbed in a sewer,” Sandbar added.

Bon Bon nodded and turned to leave, she had to check on how Lyra was doing. When she reached the door she heard the yak clear her throat.

“And, Bon Bon, thank you for staying here. I’m certain you know that with how much you have gone through, Celestia wouldn’t object to you retiring,”

“What would I retire to?” She replied with a chuckle, “I look like a freak science project and my best friend ended up being a killing machine. I can’t exactly move back to Ponyville and open up my candy shop again,”

Bon Bon had thought that the desert roads of Saddle Arabia were tough, but she was wrong. The road she was currently on was more akin to driving on the surface of the moon. She looked over her shoulder to the back of the carriage, where Lyra was looking out the window, sitting in her usual strange position. Ocellus had been amazed at her artificial skin’s ability to flip between magical armor and incredibly realistic coat.

“Hey Lyra, you haven’t said much,” Bon Bon said, her friend had been completely silent for the entire trip.

“I am sorry, miss Bon Bon, I have been trying to reorder my memory,” She replied.

It was… surreal, the voice was Lyra’s, but she sounded so… distant.

“What can you remember?” She asked with a calm smile, “Anything to know about this place, for example?”

“I am sorry, miss Bon Bon, it appears that during my repairs the memories of this location were tampered with, I can’t remember,”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘miss Bon Bon’?” She lifted an eyebrow at the green mare.

“I could tell that you were… disturbed at the reveal that our friendship had been simulated,”

The cart entered Burrango, simple buildings rose around them as they made their way down the street. She was too distracted by Lyra to pay much attention to their surroundings anyway.

“Well… was it fake?” She asked.

“In a way, anything I do can be seen as artificial,”

That didn’t answer her question, but Lyra was probably still shaken by her recent unplanned disassembly. Ocellus had said that she should return to normal once the talisman reorganized itself.

Sandbar appeared in her view, bringing her back to the present. The new enchantments on her crystal eye should allow them to see her as well, not to mention the more user-friendly alert system. The earth pony opened his mouth to speak, but his eyes went wide when he looked at her.

“Umm, what are you wearing?” He asked, lifting an eyebrow so much that Bon Bon was convinced it was going to fly off his forehead.

“It’s my disguise,” She replied, adjusting the sombrero on her head.

“Okay…? Just get into the sewer as fast as you can,” The pony said, and facehoofed.

“Your destination is on the right,” Lyra added from the backseat.

The cart stopped on the side of the street, nopony was around aside from the two that were pulling the carriage. Lyra opened the left door and jumped outside, Bon Bon tried to follow her, but she couldn’t get past the door frame. She tried again, growing annoyed.

It seemed the two large basket saddlebags she had bought at the border were a bit more cumbersome than she thought. She ended up having to leave the cart sideways to avoid getting stuck on the door.

“Good luck ma’am!” The guards said before trotting off.

Once the cart passed Bon Bon saw two donkeys standing on the other side of the street, looking at her with concerned expressions. She waved nonchalantly at the pair before turning back to look at Lyra.

The donkeys said something in their language before running away, leaving a small dust cloud in their wake. Now out of sight, she took off her excellent disguise, discarding the tortilla-filled baskets and sombrero to the side of the sewer hatch. She jumped down the hole, followed closely by the green mare.

A spray of water went flying as the two mares landed in the stone tunnel. Bon Bon decided not to think too hard about the greenish liquid that flowed under their hooves, and instead started walking ahead.

“I will go first and scan the area, I’ll send you a message if I encounter anything noteworthy,” Lyra told her.

The green pony’s body seemed to grow larger, sections of her coat moving outwards and spinning to reveal the magically enhanced plates on their flipside. Before her very eyes, her friend transformed from the green unicorn she had always known to an armored pony wielding a chainsaw on her back.

“Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, Bon,” Sandbar said, popping into her view, “The locals have also been reporting ‘Angels of death’ lurking around the sewers,”

“Angels of death? What’s that? Some kind of local superstition?” She replied.

“Most likely, but not like anything short of an alicorn could stop you, am I right?” The earth pony gave her a wink.

She answered with a simple chuckle. Her hoofsteps echoed through the tunnel despite the sounds of water rushing along. A rusty gate separated two sections of the sewer, Lyra appeared to have sliced through the lock, however, since the door was hanging ajar. Bon Bon trotted ahead but stopped in her place when she picked up on the water dripping from the ceiling.

“Lyra, did you find anything here?” She asked her communicator, but she didn’t get to listen for a reply.

She turned to look at the origin of the water, and saw a black pegasus hanging from the gate. It looked almost as large as Big Mac, and judging by its red glowing eyes, it wasn’t a normal pony.

To prove her point, the pegasus’ eyes lit up and fired a beam of magic at her. She dodged out of its way and reached back to grab her sword. The pegasus jumped off the gate, flying towards her and into the light. Her enemy was some sort of automaton, but its body appeared to be constructed in the same manner as her own.

Bon Bon backflipped to avoid the pegasus before launching herself back towards it. Her blade flew through the air, aiming for the pony’s left wing, but it bounced off harmlessly. Of course, it was shielded.

A steel wing slammed into her face, sending her flying into the sewer wall. She shook her head to try and clear her vision, just in time to avoid being squashed by the bulky automaton. The white blade fell into the muck below them, its magical edge bringing the noxious concoction to a boil.

Bon Bon scrambled to the fallen sword but had to jump back to avoid another wing swipe. The pegasus launched itself at her again, slamming her into the cement walkway on the side of the sewer. Her crystal eye barely focused again before a steel hoof slammed into her face, cracking the floor beneath her.

A second hit landed, this time a beeping alarm started to blare in her ears. Her vision grew blurry as the pegasus lifted both forehooves. She thought about lifting her own hooves to try and block the attack, but there was no way for her to survive that much force.

Something metallic crashed into the pegasus, filling the air with the sound of a revving chainsaw.

“Bon Bon, are you alive?” Lyra asked her, standing between the automaton and her fallen friend.

Bon Bon replied with a gurgle. She got back up weakly and carefully walked to her sword, making her best effort to ignore the smell. She grabbed the white blade and turned to see how Lyra was doing.

The armored mare was busy chucking magical daggers at the pegasus. Dodging and rolling out of its way before trying to get a hit in with the chainsaw on her back. But no matter what she tried, the pegasus was still unscathed. That was some impressive magical armor.

“I can’t cut through,” Lyra said after a particularly close dodge.

Bon Bon tried to shake the disorientation away but only made it worse. The hilt in her mouth was slippery and nearly fell out as she trotted towards the pegasus’ metal back. Lyra wrapped her chainsaw in her magic and spun it around, the serrated edge biting into the automaton’s chest and showering the water with sparks.

A steel wing flew at Lyra’s head, but she managed to jump away while keeping the chainsaw firmly pressed against the pegasus. Bon Bon could see how the magic armor was starting to flicker rapidly. That was all she needed to see.

The white blade sparkled next to her as her legs fought to propel her through the water. Lyra dodged away from a hoof stomp just as her chainsaw broke through the pegasus’ armor. But the mare didn’t press the advantage, instead opting for flipping into the air and jumping away, using the automaton’s face as a launchpad.

“All yours,” Lyra said as she landed out of reach.

Bon Bon planted both of her rear hooves on the sewer walkway, standing upright on her hindquarters. The sword fell from her mouth into the catch on her forehoof and then carefully aimed at the pegasus. Her first cut went from over the left shoulder all the way down to the right knee, where the sword glanced off a plate of still-active magical armor.

A flurry of cuts fell onto the pegasus, each one letting Bon Bon get closer and closer to the automaton’s core talisman. Finally, after the twelfth slice, the crystal that controlled the metal abomination was pierced by her sword.

“That’s the stuff,” She said to herself while the substantial magical energy the crystal had been infused with started to repair her dented chest.

Lyra walked up to the metal wreckage and recovered her chainsaw, replacing it on the metal arm on her back. The visor covering her yellow eyes split open when she crouched next to the pegasus’ remains.

“You should continue on your own, I will analyze this automaton for any useful intelligence,” The green mare stated simply.

Bon Bon gave a simple nod and sheathed her sword, looking up at her companion again.

“Any trouble ahead?” She asked.

“Two talisman signatures in the tunnel to our left, I suspect they could be more metal pegasi,”

Stealth it was, then. Even the two of them working together were barely able to take down one, two at once would be suicide. As Bon Bon turned the corner she saw the two large talismans light up in her crystal eye, just beyond another metal gate.

She looked around, trying to find a way around the bars that wouldn’t require destroying them, maybe a rusty lock that she could break? An even better alternative appeared in the form of a catwalk just above the separator.

With a big jump, she landed on the elevated walkway, making sure to hit the wall first and slow down. She wasn’t sure if the platform would hold under her weight, but it didn’t seem to be an issue. Bon Bon crouched down and made her way carefully down the catwalk, keeping her eye firmly planted on the two talisman signatures.

Just as she suspected, two pegasi automatons were patrolling the tunnel below. Bon Bon winced every time she had to take a step forward, apparently, steel hooves on a steel walkway weren’t as stealthy as she thought. On several occasions, one of the pegasi below had looked up, but they hadn’t spotted her yet.

There was a problem. A problem in the shape of a missing platform segment ahead of her. One of the metal ponies was standing watch below the hole, just perfect. Of course, she could’ve just jumped to the next segment, it wasn’t so far, but the noise she would make on landing was sure to alert the pegasus.

“Stabilize volume, mark,” She whispered into her communicator, the magical device hummed slightly before giving a low beep of confirmation.

“Bon, are you there?” Sandbar asked, the volume was just barely enough for her to understand the words.

“I’m here, I have a problem,” she poked her head over the edge of the platform to give her team a better look.

“Wait up, I think the doctor and Lyra have something for you, I’ll patch them through,” Sandbar disappeared, replaced by two windows showing her companion and the changeling.

“Bon Bon, I apologize, the automaton we took down was too damaged to be of any use,” Lyra said.

“Nothing at all?” She insisted, there had to be something.

“Only a theory,” Responded Ocellus, “but I doubt your current situation is the place to test it,”

“Anything works, the alternative is trying to fight both of them at once,” Bon Bon answered, readying herself for combat.

“Very well, the pegasi appear to have high-power magical shielding. That kind of armor draws too much energy to keep it active all the time,” The changeling explained.

“So if they’re not alerted…” Bon Bon followed.

“They should be easy to cut,” Finished Lyra, “If you are going to test it out, try and disable one with as little damage as possible so we can examine it closely,”

“Will do,” Bon Bon said before closing the windows.

She drew her sword slowly and carefully, making sure to avoid making noise. The metal strands in her rear legs tightened as she prepared to launch herself into the air. The platform didn’t make any sound as the heavy pony jumped off, directly above the pegasus. In a single motion, she did a flip and threw the sword into her left rear leg catch, falling blade-first like a pony-shaped dart.

The automaton never suspected a thing. Bon Bon’s sword plunged into its chest, piercing just between the two wing joints. It seemed that Ocellus’ theory had been correct; the armor plate on the pegasus’ back was cut like paper under the white blade.

She ripped the sword out of the disabled automaton and turned to face the other one, weapon at the ready for an attack. But somehow the other pegasus hadn’t as much as turned their head to figure out the source of the noise. Not wanting to tempt fate, Bon Bon carefully dropped off her defeated opponent and started to approach the other pegasus with as much stealth as she could.

The fast-moving water masked her hoofsteps as she lifted the blade to aim at the automaton’s talisman. A single stab through the side was all it took.

“Lyra, I’ve got two more pegasi here, took them down with a single stab each,” Bon Bon said, remembering a little too late that the communicator was still set to whisper volume.

“Ouch…” Complained Sandbar, rubbing his ears.

“Good, I’ll be there soon, you keep going,” Lyra responded, her artificial hearing unaffected by the high volume.

Bon Bon turned to face the sewer tunnel, if there was a secret laboratory here its entrance would be heavily guarded. She walked through the tunnels, her sword drawn and ready for an attack from any direction. Yet as minutes went by she encountered a… suspicious lack of resistance, not even a single scout.

“Bon Bon, are you there?” Ocellus said, popping into a window.

“I am, did you find anything with Lyra?”

“Nothing on the laboratory, but we did find something… strange about the automatons you dispatched,” The changeling’s bug-like eyes were darting over something on the side of her screen.

“Strange how?”

“Well, they had some sort of life support system attached to the talisman chamber. It’s a strange thing to include in an automaton,”

“I see,” Responded Bon Bon, lifting her forehoof to her chin, “Maybe they are meant to be used as some kind of powered armor?”

“The talisman chamber is far too small to hold anypony,”

“That’s strange… Say, doc, I have some questions about Lyra“ She said.

The changeling blinked once before shaking her head and looking back at Bon Bon.

“Sorry, I was looking at the schematic, what do you want to know?”

“She’s not acting right, are you sure your unicorns repaired her correctly?”

The doctor let out a deep sigh, like a teacher who had just been asked the same question one too many times.

“The repair spell takes time to set, especially when cast on such a complex talisman,”

“But what happens when it sets?” Bon Bon asked, trying not to sound so desperate.

“Well, she should return to normal completely. The spell always works, Bon Bon, it will just… click,”

She started to speak again before being interrupted by an emergency transmission from Lyra.

“Bon Bon! There is a filly in the sewers!” The green mare said.

“A filly?! How? Where?” Bon Bon started running back to where Lyra was.

“I’m sending you her location, she ran away when she saw me”

That made sense, her friend was probably covered in robot bits, not to mention the armor and chainsaw. The poor filly must be terrified!

“That’s not all… I think I’ve seen her before”

The mare’s words made her stop in her tracks. Could her friend be regaining her memory?

“I’m not certain, but I believe this filly lives in Ponyville,” Lyra finished.

“Give me a description,” Bon Bon asked as she kept walking towards the point marked on her view.

“Pegasus filly, orange coat, and purple mane. I didn’t get to see her cutie mark,”

That description matched only one pony in Ponyville.

“Scootaloo is here?” Bon Bon was becoming more confused by the moment.

“That is her name? I will remember it,” Lyra said almost absentmindedly, “You must hurry, I believe she has gone deeper into the sewer,”

Indeed, the ‘last location’ indicator led into a tunnel whose only exit was a hole in the floor. It probably led to an even deeper section of the sewer, and judging by the still-swinging door, somepony had gone through here recently.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she heard a scream coming from within the hole. Bon Bon peeked into the opening and saw a small orange filly at the bottom cowering back from one of the metal spikes she had seen before.

“Help me!” Scootaloo cried.

Bon Bon bit hard into her sword hilt and unsheathed it, letting go and throwing the blade at the small automaton. She jumped into the hole just as the sword impaled the dragon into the sewer floor.

She landed on the floor with a great thump, ripping her sword out of the ruined automaton and resheathing it. The sewer appeared empty aside from herself and the filly.

“Whoah! Bon Bon? That was awesome!” Scootaloo chirped happily.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m escaping!” The filly puffed out her chest with pride.

“Escaping from who?” Bon Bon asked.

“Those big pegasi! And those things that look like Rarity’s assistant!” The filly looked down, pensively, “And if you came from up there I’m sure you at least saw that other metal pony with a chainsaw! I’m not making it up!”

“I believe you,”

“Well of course you don-“ The filly paused, “Wait, you do?”

Bon Bon gave her a nod. The filly launched at her and wrapped her little hooves around her foreleg in a hug.

“Thank you! I’ve been looking for a good adult since I got here!” Scootaloo said, her voice shaking slightly.

“Where exactly is here?”

“I escaped from a weird bunker thing full of crazy ponies. But I just got here with all those pegasus things!” The filly explained.

So there was some kind of base after all. With how lax the security had been, Bon Bon was starting to get convinced that this was nothing more than a minor equipment stash. Scootaloo probably knew some useful intel.

“Can you tell me where the bunker is?” She gave the orange filly a warm smile.

“It’s on this level, should be… a turn and then a long way right? I can’t remember too well, sorry. But I think I-“ The filly was interrupted by a loud screech coming from the other end of the tunnel.

Bon Bon turned to see not one, but three of the metal pegasi making their way towards them.

“Scootaloo, run!” She ordered.

“But-“

“Now!”

The filly turned tail and ran down the other end of the tunnel. Bon Bon drew her sword and turned to face her three opponents, sending a silent prayer up to her queen.

Three pegasi, one earth pony.

The first pegasus flew directly at her, she’d already dodged this attack before. A quick roll to the side with a buck for good measure and the automaton went flying away. The other two attacked her on either side with wing swipes.

The sound of magical steel clashing filled the tunnel as the wings closed over empty space. Bon Bon, having ducked beneath them, ran back in between the two automaton’s legs while giving some passing stabs to the one on her left.

Something became clear to Bon Bon, almost as if a lightning bolt had struck her. These were automatons, they had a limited set of moves. She could use their size and movements against them just like she had been trained to do all those years ago in the agency!

The sudden shift from aggressive to passive netted almost instant results. In the cramped confines of the tunnel, the pegasi wound up hitting each other every time she dodged an attack.

One of the trio lifted off the ground and charged at Bon Bon, but the cyan mare dropped to the floor and slid beneath the steel hooves of the pegasus. The automaton went tumbling down the tunnel in a mess of limbs and wings.

But it recovered fast, too fast. Soon Bon Bon found herself surrounded by two rapidly approaching pegasi. It was the same lunge they had done countless times before, forehooves outstretched and aiming for her chest.

Her legs tensed as she prepared for a big jump, she had to time it right. Just an instant before she was sandwiched between the automatons, she released the pressure in her legs and flew upward. The pegasi slammed into each other like two locomotives.

Their magical armor wasn’t designed for that kind of impact. Bon Bon smiled around her hilt when she saw the blue flickering of a spent magical shield. After a quick kick to the tunnel roof, she descended like a white tornado, slicing along the backs of the pegasi below and chopping them into ribbons.

One pegasus, one earth pony.

She jumped back and away from the last automaton, sword at the ready. The lone pegasus looked at her as if weighing its options. But before Bon Bon could make a move two bolts of magic flew at her, striking her dead-on in the chest.

She tumbled back, her thin magical armor was just barely enough to keep her from being fried. Fortunately, her sword hadn’t gone flying away this time. She kicked back up to her hooves, a low alarm sounding in her head informing the current state of her shielding: not great.

The pegasus’ eyes lit up again as it charged another beam. Bon Bon’s mind went back to when she had first encountered Applejack and how the farm pony had deflected a magic bolt with her blade. Without time to think her actions twice, she turned the hilt in her mouth to make the flat of the sword face ahead. Then she rested the magical steel against her shoulder and braced for impact. If she was right, the pegasus would be aiming for the exact same spot as before.

The twin beams flew at her and struck true, right in the middle of her sword. The magical field of the weapon forced the bolt to a stop before violently bouncing it back at its caster. Two destructive bolts slammed home into the automaton’s eyes and traveled back down into its power source: the talisman.

A jet of magical fire and sparks flew out of the pegasus’ chest before it collapsed onto the floor. Bon Bon waited for a few seconds to ensure no more enemies approached before placing her sword back into her scabbard.

She paid no mind to the wreckages around her as she darted down the tunnel Scootaloo had escaped through. It didn’t take long for her crystal eye to pick up on the small filly hiding in a hole.

“I’m here Scoots, you can come out,” She said with a calm voice.

The orange filly poked her head out and looked at Bon Bon, her eyes wide.

“Did you destroy those pegasi?!” She shouted, jumping out of the hole.

“Well… yes?”

“I didn’t know you were an awesome ninja mare!” The filly jumped in place, “And your armor looks so cool!”

Bon Bon let out a chuckle before hardening her glare.

“Scootaloo, what are you doing here?”

The young pegasus’ head drooped.

“I got tricked by a unicorn with a black suit, he said he had tickets to see Rainbow Dash’s next tour in the back of his carriage. But as soon as he was out of sight he put me to sleep with a spell, when I woke up I was surrounded by other foals in that awful bunker.” She said quickly, making a great job of keeping her composure.

So she had been foalnapped off the street? This wasn’t just any evil group, it seemed. One part of Scootaloo’s story had stood out to her.

“You said other foals?” She asked.

“Yeah, pegasus foals, at least ten of us,”

This wasn’t good.

“How did you get out of there?”

“I snuck out through a really small vent, I was the only one small enough to get through,” The filly looked up at Bon Bon, almost pleading, “You’re going to go save them, right?”

Bon Bon nodded, trying to convey calm.

“But first we need to get you out of here, do you remember that mare with a chainsaw you talked about?”

The filly gave her a nod.

“That’s Lyra, she is here to help you. I’ll call her down here,”

“That was LYRA?! How many other superponies were hiding in Ponyville?” Scootaloo squealed.

“You’d be surprised,” Bon Bon said, calling Lyra on her communicator, “I rescued Scootaloo, get here quickly,”

“I’m on my way,” Came the response.

“And we are sending a team to retrieve the foals, you need to make sure they’re safe until they arrive,” Sandbar interjected.

Not long after, the two ponies heard metallic hoofsteps coming from somewhere down the tunnel. Lyra came into view trotting directly at Bon Bon and Scootaloo, whose jaw remained firmly planted on the floor.

“You look so cool!” The filly said.

Lyra crouched next to the orange pony, her horn projecting a map of the sewer around them.

“Could you please tell us where the facility is?” Lyra asked, her tone was incredibly soothing, probably intended to calm Scootaloo down.

“Oh! Now I remember!” The filly responded, taking a moment to look at the map, “It should be riiiiight… here!”

A dot appeared where the small orange hoof was pointing at, right in the middle of a dead-end tunnel.

“Are you sure?” Bon Bon asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes! I’m sure! The wall is a door,”

“That makes sense,” Lyra commented, sending the information to Bon Bon’s crystal eye.

“All right, I’ll go find this place, you stay here with Lyra,” She told the filly.

Bon Bon bolted down the tunnel, headed directly towards the red dot in her view. Lyra could easily defend Scootaloo until the guard team arrived, all she had to do was make sure the other fillies were safe.

Another left turn and she came face to face with a Spike automaton. The small dragon jumped in surprise and started to run away, no doubt headed for an alarm of some sort. Bon Bon launched at the automaton, but a warning flash in her eye made her lift her gaze to the ceiling.

Just in time. The lone Spike was making her follow it into a trap, several more were waiting on the roof just ahead. Her quarrel stopped its escape and turned to wave at her, jumping around in the water.

“Get over here!” Bon Bon shouted while dashing towards the taunting automaton.

The Spikes on the roof dropped onto the floor, but they were too slow to save their comrade who now lay cut cleanly in half. Bon Bon turned to face the trio of metal dragons and gave a mirthless chuckle.

One good horizontal slash was all it took, and right when she was thinking security would increase as she approached the lab.

The end of the tunnel was as unassuming as any other, but when Bon Bon focused her crystal eye on it she detected some strange details. There were no talisman signatures, but those were probably masked, the most suspicious thing about the wall was how some of the bricks seemed much newer than the rest.

“Bullseye!” Bon Bon claimed victoriously after cutting the wall horizontally, causing the destroyed doors to fall apart.

Beyond the entrance was a long metal hallway, flanked by observation windows on the left side. She resheathed her sword, unsure as to whether or not she would have to fight anypony. Scientists weren’t really known for hoof-to-hoof combat, especially not those that placed dangerous automatons in front of their lab entrance.

“Bon Bon, I sent Scootaloo to the surface to wait for the guards. I will stay back to serve as a relay for your team,” Lyra said.

“Great thinking,” Commented Sandbar, popping next to Lyra in her view, “Remember Bon, we need to get as much intel as we can from these ponies. Especially on desperado itself so we can get the guard involved,”

Bon Bon walked up to the observation window and looked out onto the laboratory below. Many ponies draped in lab coats moved around one of the pegasus automatons that she had fought before. Given how they were running several strange-looking artifacts over it, Bon Bon assumed they were doing some sort of diagnostic.

“I doubt you’ll be able to just walk in and read through the records though,” Sandbar commented.

“Maybe if I ask very nicely?” Bon Bon quipped back, drawing a chuckle from the earth pony.

Something caught her attention. One of the scientists, a unicorn mare with her mane tied up above her head, rolled up a pile of scrolls and dropped them onto a Spike automaton that was waiting idly. The mare said something to the dragon, who responded with a mock salute before turning and leaving through a vent.

“Did you guys see that?” She asked her team.

“Yes, we’ll have the doc look for any way to control one of those things. You should try and stay out of sight until then,” The earth pony said.

“Will do, make it quick,” She answered before closing the communications.

The hallway she was standing in ended in a sliding metal door, the only other way to go was cutting the observation glass and jumping into the lab. Bon Bon walked up to the door and was pleasantly surprised when the door slid open on its own.

On the other side of the door, she saw a catwalk overlooking an open room. She looked over the guard rail and took in the floor below. a ramp connected the catwalk with the lower level, next to several hanging racks that held deactivated pegasi automatons.

Two guards were in the room. One of them, a pegasus, was patrolling the room slowly while the other guard stood at attention in front of a door. Bon Bon zoomed-in her crystal eye to try and read the plaque on the door.

The small metal sign hanging from it read ‘Storage room A’. Bon Bon didn’t see what was so important about a storage room that it would demand a designated guard within an already guarded facility.

“Bon Bon, I have found what you need,” Ocellus appeared in her view.

She turned and walked back into the hallway to avoid being heard before responding.

“Did you find a way to control the Spikes?”

“Yes, we have,” The changeling said, puffing out her chitinous chest in pride, “You’ll need to get one of those Spikes and perform a clop procedure,”

“I… WHAT?” Bon Bon nearly fell onto her haunches from the sheer shock.

“A clop procedure?” The changeling lifted an eyebrow, “Cortical Level Omnidirectional Piloting? Take over its mind, so to speak,”

“Oh, I see… How do I do this… procedure?” She asked the changeling.

“We will deactivate the limiter on your sword, that should allow you to pierce its talisman without destroying it. Once your sword connects to it, your eye should link itself to the automaton and allow you to control it,” Ocellus explained.

“I just need to find one of those Spikes,” Bon Bon commented.

“I bet there’s some of them in that storage room you saw, just try not to get spotted,” Sandbar interjected.

“All right, I’ll try,” She said before closing the link.

Bon Bon walked back into the large room and immediately dropped to the floor when she saw the patroling guard coming up the ramp to the catwalk. She unsheathed the white blade and waited for the guard to appear on the end of the ramp.

The guard’s heavy footsteps resonated against the metal floor before the guard’s helmet came into view, and range. A flash crossed the guard’s view before their head tumbled off their shoulders. Bon Bon stretched out and caught the head before the metal helmet could give her position away.

A quick glance over the railing confirmed that the other armored pony hadn’t moved from their post. Bon Bon walked down the catwalk to stand directly above the guard and placed her blade in her hoof catch. Just as she had done with the automaton before, she jumped into the air and dropped onto her opponent like a pony-sized dart.

When she was sure that no alarms had been triggered, she turned to face the rows of hanging metal pegasi. An idea crossed her mind, what if she tried to control one of those instead of a Spike? She doubted anypony in the facility could take one of those things out. Her crystal eye was quick to dispel her thoughts when it scanned the pegasi and revealed that they had no talismans inside.

Bon Bon turned to look at the wall that she couldn’t see from above the catwalk. A large observation window opened into a hallway beyond, where a large rack of deactivated Spikes sat in cubicles. That was odd, if the Spikes were there, then what was in the storage room?

At first, she thought that it was probably just that, storage, but she couldn’t help but feel like something sinister was afoot. Why else would they have posted a guard outside? And besides, she didn’t lose anything by giving a quick look.

The door of the storage room opened into an inky void. In the dim light that came in through the open door, Bon Bon could see several rows of cubicles like the ones that held the Spikes in the other corridor. Detecting her presence, the storage room’s lights flashed on, revealing its contents.

She wanted to scream, she wanted to scream and kick and rip her other eye out.

The storage room was full of brains. Rows upon rows of brains floated within jars full of some cyan liquid, each one connected to a pair of eyeballs that darted around to look at her. Each lid sported a large talisman, hooked into the organs within by tendrils of magic, almost like a monster wrapped around its prey.

“What in tartarus…” She started, but she couldn’t produce any words to describe what her eye was seeing.

“Oh… oh no,” Somepony said, but she was too shocked to make out who it was.

Her hooves started shaking. How could anypony do something like that to somepony else? It was vile!

“What the? Stop right there!” Somepony shouted from behind her, snapping her out of her trance.

A baton swung at her head, snapping her out of the trance she had entered. Another guard had come into the large room and seen her work, a unicorn mare with no helmet. Bon Bon’s eye, ignoring her uneasy state, immediately informed her that this mare had one of the forehooves she had been told to collect. Bon Bon managed to draw her sword and parry the attack in time.

The unicorn mare swing the baton at her again, but once more it was stopped by the white sword. Bon Bon gave the mare a roundhouse kick to push her back before jumping forward with her blade at the ready. The unicorn moved the baton to intercept the attack, but that was her greatest mistake.

Bon Bon turned her head away from the mare, making the blade miss the baton, before stabbing at her neck. A simple move, but an effective one. She turned to chop the hoof off her opponent before resheathing the sword.

“How far are the guards? We need to get those… those brains out of here,” She told her team.

“They’re… still an hour away, I… Don’t know what to say,” Sandbar said.

“At least we found the foals… or what’s left of them,” She answered, trying to will her hooves to stop shaking.

“I don’t think so,” Lyra interrupted, hers was the only voice that didn’t shake.

“What do you mean, Lyra?” Sandbar asked.

“We only found Scootaloo a few minutes ago. I doubt even the best unicorn surgeon could remove all those brains in such a short time,” The mare explained.

“But then that would mean that the foals are still in the facility!” Bon Bon exclaimed, reinvigorated.

“The guards will be able to help you rescue them,” Sandbar lifted his hoof to his chin to think for a moment, “You should use one of those Spikes to gather intel before the guards arrive,”

“Sounds like a plan, maybe I’ll even find out where they’re keeping the foals,” Bon Bon answered before closing the link.

She trotted up to the racks of Spikes, setting her eye on one near the end of the shelf. Working efficiently she unsheathed her sword and disabled the limiter, causing it to vibrate violently in her mouth. The heat coming off the blade almost singed her fur as she positioned the tip just over the automaton’s talisman.

the sword melted straight through the outer metal plates, just barely touching the talisman beneath as Bon Bon’s face started sweating from the heat. As soon as the connection clicked she reactivated the limiter on her sword, causing it to start cooling again.

A black window appeared in her view with multiple arcane symbols spinning around each other. She turned to look for a hiding spot and found a cardboard box on the floor near the wall, perfect. Neatly settled inside her undetectable hiding spot, she focused on the window in her eye.

Her eyes opened inside the cubicle, eyes, plural. The body felt wrong, as in she couldn’t feel it at all. Clearly, these automatons didn’t have any sort of sensory feedback aside from sight. Bon Bon dropped to all fours and jumped out of the cubicle, landing on the floor and turning to look at the box where her body was hidden.

“Most impressive!” Ocellus said, apparently, the Spike’s eyes weren’t complex enough to display the changeling’s face, “The automaton has a built-in map of the facility! I can locate the records for you… do you see the path?”

A series of blue arrows materialized on the floor with a small tag that read ‘unknown transmission’, pointing at a small vent on the wall.

“I see it,” She answered in a magical immitation of the real Spike’s voice.

“Try not to draw much attention, Bon, move like you belong there,” Sandbar added.

The vent opened inwards to let her through, following the arrows in her view. On the other side of the wall, she dropped into a hallway and prepared for the toughest challenge she had faced yet: bipedal movement.

She tried to stand on her new legs, the unnatural yet comfortable position feeling far too awkward to move around in. Yet the automaton she was piloting corrected itself to avoid falling when she took a few tentative steps forward. One step after the other, she made her way down the hallway towards the record room.

“Did you catch the hoofball game last night?” A pony said from an adjacent hallway, almost causing her to try and find a place to hide.

“I’m not buying you a beer, Lens, give it up,” Another pony replied.

The footsteps were coming towards her, they couldn’t be too far away. Her objective was just a little bit further, she could see the vent clearly in her augmented vision.

Using every last bit of self-control, she walked in a straight line towards the vent, trying her best to avoid looking at the two guards that walked into the hallway behind her. Just as she had suspected, neither pony paid her any mind as she made her way to the vent.

The room she came into was divided into two floors by a large metal catwalk hanging from the ceiling. A guard was patroling around but shouldn’t be a problem if she could avoid raising suspicions. Bon Bon did notice, to her dismay, that the final vent she had to go through was on the second level of the room.

“Here I go,” She said to herself before jumping onto a metal pillar that reached all the way up to the catwalk.

The steel claws on her new body were pretty efficient for climbing, letting her make her way up. She got halfway up the pillar before nearly falling off from shock when she heard somepony talk.

“Umm, what are you doing?” The guard that had been patroling asked her, tilting their head to the side.

“I… uh… Was trying to get to the records,” Bon Bon improvised, caught off guard.

“But why are you climbing up the pillar? The stairs are right there,” The pony pointed to the other end of the room. Surely enough, a staircase that led onto the catwalk stood proudly against the wall.

“I got lost, my map was upside down!” She lied.

“The map… inside your head?” The guard didn’t sound convinced, “It was upside down?”

“Yes!” She said.

The armored pony fell silent for a moment before giving a defeated sigh.

“I’m amazed you things can even walk without running into walls,” The pony turned and continued to patrol the room.

Saved by inept design, imagine that. If she could, she would’ve sighed in relief. Bon Bon made her way down the catwalk and reached the vent that led her into the records room. The large room had a beehive pattern on the walls, each hexagonal cell holding a rolled scroll with a bronze tag underneath. Bon Bon made her way to the wall and started to read the tags.

“These are all inventory lists, what am I looking for?” She asked her team.

“Maybe they’re alphabetical? Try… S for subjects?” Sandbar responded.

Bon Bon glanced over the tags looking for the letter S, but she stopped when she read one plaque reading ‘ICG investors’. The acronym didn’t ring any bells, but it probably had information on who was investing in this horrid place.

“Sandbar, check the records for ICG, apparently they’re the ones financing this thing, I’ll try to get the scroll to-” But she fell silent when she heard several heavy hoofsteps coming towards the room.

In a feat that was more luck than skill, she backflipped into the vent she had entered through just moments before the door swung open. Bon Bon turned and looked through the grate at the ponies that had come in.

The one in the front of the group was an agitated orange unicorn with a beard, dressed in a lab coat. Right behind him entered the massive figure of Big Mac, both blades sheathed at his sides. Bon Bon tensed at the sight of the large red earth pony, but she stood completely still to listen.

“We need this batch ready, now,” Macintosh boomed.

“W- we are doing everything we can to fill our q-quotas sir, we just need more time!” The unicorn explained.

“We don’t have more time, our scouts just said that we have a mighty big problem headin’ here!” The earth pony stomped the floor.

“What problem?” Asked the unicorn.

“Royal guards, so ah’ll ask again, when is this batch goin’ tah be done?”

The scientist adjusted their lab coat with a quick horn flash, large beads of sweat falling down the side of his head.

“We will need at the very least two days to get all the brains extracted, we need to get the foals out of here,” He said.

“No time for that!” Another voice boomed from just out of sight, “Just get the brains we have out of here and get rid of the foals!”

“B- but sir we can’t just-” The unicorn tried to respond, but he fell silent when a large figure walked up to him and looked into his eyes, almost touching his muzzle.

The large pony in question was a large white pegasus with a cropped yellow mane. He wore a business suit that was clearly made out of some sort of magically reinforced fabric; there was no way it didn’t rip under the clear strain of the muscles beneath.

“Yes sir,” The unicorn said, looking at the floor, “I’ll order them terminated right away,”

“Good, we will pay you the bits once you get to the new location,” The pegasus answered.

Bon Bon took a few steps back from the vent before opening her communication channel again.

“I need the location of the foals, is it on the map?” She asked, forgetting that the Spike she was piloting didn’t have any way of changing its voice volume.

“Yes, I’ll send it to-” She heard, but a booming voice drowned out the earth pony.

“Gotcha!” Big mac roared before slicing through the wall with one of his swords, cutting her body in half.

Bon Bon returned to herself screaming in agony. The world had distorted into a swarm of colors and shapes as she tried to get her bearings. She kicked the box off herself and got to her hooves, or at least she tried. Apparently being forcefully ripped out of a different body had messed up her own legs.

“Bon Bon, stay still for a moment while your body stabilizes,” Ocellus ordered, the window in her view was too distorted to make out the changeling’s face.

She remained on the floor, twitching slightly as the magic-infused into her body reordered itself. Before long she was back up on her hooves, still feeling a bit disoriented.

“Where are the foals?” She asked groggily.

“Bon, you’re not okay, take a little more time to-” Sandbar started.

“No!” She cut him off, “They’re going to kill them!”

The earth pony nodded and started to look over something on his desk. After a few moments, he looked back up and spoke to her again.

“Go down the hallway you took last time, but go left instead of straight. You should get to the holding cell just through another storage room,”

“Do you think that one is also full of brains?” She asked, shivering.

“I doubt it, it’s far too large,” The earth pony responded.

Bon Bon closed the communication and shuffled towards the door that led to the hallway. As soon as she started to walk through the door an alarm started blaring, adding to her already hurting head.

At last, she reached the door labeled ‘Storage room B’. The loud clanging of several armored hooves coming down the hallway behind her pushed her to open the door and jump through as fast as possible. They were probably being sent to distract the royal guards while they evacuated the facility.

Her head had stopped throbbing now, clearing her view to look at the storage room. Clearly, this was reserved for more heavy-duty equipment, as evidenced by the rows of armored carriages and boxes covered in warning labels. The room was divided in half by a tall tower of metal boxes, the only way through being blocked by a strange barricade. The blockage was made from several black plates that reminded Bon Bon of Ocellus, with a large black spike sticking out of the middle.

“What is that thing?” Sandbar asked in her head.

The spike lit up with an ominous green glow, slowly growing brighter and brighter. Something about the device made Bon Bon uneasy, the magical pulses that started at the base of the spike and culminated at the tip… almost like a unicorn’s horn…

Decades of combat training took over her body, causing her to roll out of the way just as the metal horn released a ray of green energy. The explosion singed the tip of her tail, but the brunt of the attack hit the wall, leaving a large scorch mark. The horn started to charge again.
Bon Bon unsheathed her sword and sprinted toward her enemy, making the most out of her window for action. As she suspected, the blade bounced off a magical armor plate. She backflipped out of the way of the magical beam. Part of the blast washed over the automaton, revealing that its entire front was composed of magically reinforced armor.

“It’s some kind of automaton,” She told her team.

She shouldn’t have any trouble with it, after all, that spike telegraphed its beams for easy dodging. On cue, the green glow returned, but this time it didn’t accumulate. A barrage of smaller beams flew out at her, pelting her steel coat with small scorch marks.

Bon Bon ran, swinging her sword wildly to try and block some of the beams. Despite her efforts, she could feel how many hits had slipped through her armor, damaging the artificial muscle beneath. Her eye caught sight of a metal box pile not too far away, surely that would offer some protection.

With a great leap, Bon Bon rolled behind the boxes and hid. The automaton continued its assault, covering the boxes with scorch marks, but they held.

“Any ideas, guys?” She asked, hopefully.

“We’ve got nothing! Hang in there until the guards arrive!” Sandbar responded.

She was about to say something when her ears picked up a charging sound coming from behind her. Bon Bon jumped out from behind the boxes just moments before a large beam hit them, causing a large fireball.

“Those red boxes appear to be filled with some kind of explosive! Maybe you can use that?” Ocellus said.

It was worth a shot. She took in the room, looking for the closest crate. The second she heard the charging sound again she bolted towards the small red box, sliding on the ground and giving the crate a hard kick.

The box flew through the air before slamming home exactly where she had aimed it, the spike. A fireball enveloped the automaton, causing it to slide backward as the flames died out. Unfortunately, it seemed to have not had any effect aside from pushing the thing back. But a thought occurred to her, if she pushed it back enough she could probably get around the reinforced plates and attack its side.

She turned and ran towards another red box while the spike sprayed bolts of magic towards her. Something seemed off as she approached the box, but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on it… then it hit her, the small beams had stopped.

Alarm flared up in her mind almost as fast as the focused beam the automaton fired in front of her. Her world went into slow motion as she crashed facefirst into the explosion caused by the box. She thanked that her eye was an enchanted crystal sphere, because she was certain the old one would’ve boiled in its socket.

The fireball made Bon Bon fall to the floor, desperately rolling to extinguish her burning mane. But the automaton didn’t let up, charging another beam and forcing her to roll out of the way. Her battered metal coat was pelted with pieces of the floor as she barely dodged the attack.

Bon Bon jumped back to her hooves and desperately tried to make a plan. She stared at her opponent, blinking rapidly to clear the multiple warning windows cluttering her view. An idea sparked, she could use its charge time against it.

She growled through the sword in her mouth and stomped the ground, making a big show of how she was going to stand her ground. Just as expected, the automaton took the bait and fired the charged beam at her.

With a smile, Bon Bon rolled out of the way and towards the last remaining red crate. If she had planned this correctly, the beam shouldn’t be strong enough to fire for a few seconds.

With a roundhouse kick, the box flew at the barricade. A direct hit made it shuffle back until it was no longer lodged in between the stacks. The opportunity she had been waiting for.

More alerts flashed in her sight, as well as a window with somepony trying to contact her. But this wasn’t the time to be distracted, she blinked and the messages disappeared.

She pursued the automaton now that she could hit its unarmored flanks. Sword at the ready, she barreled towards the metal wall. And of course, it didn’t work.

The automaton’s plates spread open as it reorganized itself into the shape of a pony, a very tall pony. The black plates gave her opponent a buglike feature, reinforced by the membrane wings on its back and the green slitted eyes.

“My word! It’s the queen!” Ocellus shouted through the communicator.

Bon Bon would’ve responded if her mouth hadn’t been busy holding the sword. The metal alicorn took to the air, hovering above the floor just out of reach, and started charging its beam again.

It would seem that her plan to make the fight easier had done little aside from escalating it further. She rolled out of the way of the magical blast and turned to see that… the automaton was gone?

Her eye went wide with alarm and darted around the room, could it turn invisible? Where was that thing? She spun around trying to locate her foe, becoming more and more desperate.

“Where did it go?” She shouted at her team.

“I don’t know!” Sandbar shouted back.

Then the automaton decided to make itself known. One of the large metal boxes shifted, opening up to reveal a black spike that buzzed with green energy.

The blast hit Bon Bon like a train, sending her flying into the wall as her armor plating was stripped of her damaged body. More warnings popped up, this time they refused to go away when she blinked.

She tried again to no avail; that’s when she noticed why it wasn’t working, her eyelid was missing. The blow had been monstrous, but still, she stood atop scorched hooves.

The automaton decided to press its advantage once more, charging a second beam. Bon Bon looked up at her impending doom and let out a defiant roar. She wasn’t going to fall here, not while she could still do something.

In a last, desperate attempt, she arched her neck to the side and threw her sword at the alicorn. The white blade spun through the air towards her opponent, making the automaton freeze for a second in confusion.

The sword struck home exactly where she had aimed it: the support pillar that held up one of the box walls. Loud metal clanging filled the room as the steel boxes collapsed onto the automaton, pinning it to the floor.

“Stay still,” She said groggily.

A small explosion came from within the pile of boxes, but the reinforced metal held. Bon Bon dragged herself to where her sword had fallen, picking it up and sheathing it.

“Are you there?” She asked her communicator.

“Bon! Oh, sweet Celestia what happened to you?” Sandbar shouted, apparently one of the hits had damaged her eye given how the window that should’ve held the earth pony was a black square.

“I’m fine, where are the fillies?” She growled.

“You are not fine! Look at yourself! You need to-”

“Bon Bon, Scootaloo is missing” Lyra interrupted.

“What? How?” She demanded.

“The guards couldn’t find her on the surface or in the sewer. I’m sorry, I should’ve taken better care of her,”

“It’s not your fault, we’ll go find her as soon as I free the fillies. Where are they, Sandbar?” She asked.

“They’re through the door on your right… please stay out of trouble I doubt you could take on a parasprite in your condition,”

Bon Bon turned to the door and kicked it open, revealing a simple maintenance hallway. As the battle adrenaline subsided she became increasingly aware of how badly she was hurt. Her face felt like she had been thrown into a vat of acid; her remaining internal organs felt inflamed and battered. And even though her new body was nearly incapable of feeling pain, the sluggishness with which she moved left no doubt as to whether or not it was faring as well as her organic parts.

A trail of blood and small parts of scorched artificial muscle followed her as she finally found the door she was looking for.

“Here goes nothing,” She said to no one in particular, trying to ignore the charred taste in her mouth.

The room beyond had a large observation window on the left side, with multiple consoles facing towards it. She made her way to the window and saw the foals, safe and sound, sitting around the small containment room. She had made it.

Bon Bon approached the window, unsheathing her sword to cut the glass, when one of the fillies spotted her. The purple pegasus’ eyes opened wide as she let out a blood curling scream. The other foals turned to look at her before having similar reactions and huddling up in the opposite corner to where she stood. Did she really look that scary?

“Y- you there!” Somepony said from the other end of the room.

She turned to see the same orange unicorn that had been with Big Mac earlier; and held in his hooves was none other than Scootaloo, with a scalpel aimed at her neck. The unicorn’s eyes went wide when she faced him.

“S- st- stay there!” He spat, clearly distressed.

“Put her down,” She ordered, sheathing her sword to try and negotiate.

“No! I have demands!”

Bon Bon took a step closer, causing the unicorn to fire a magic bolt into the containment room. She stared in horror as a green smoke started filling the room.

“Stay right there! You can save them or you can catch me, your move, hero!” The large bead of sweat gave away that he didn’t know if his plan was going to work.

Bon Bon took another step closer.

“N- no! Stay back you m- monster! I’m getting out of here!”

Bon Bon did not have the patience for this.

“The only way you are getting out of here is in a bag!” She shouted before unsheathing her sword.

It was a simple plan, she would jump at the unicorn with her sword next to her and cut his head off before he could hurt Scootaloo, then she would save the foals by cutting the glass apart. With how fast she could move, there was no way for the scientist to react in time.

But she had ignored one crucial detail, her body was badly damaged. When she reared back on her hind legs to jump, her right leg gave out halfway through the jump. A shower of metal parts and torn muscle rained on the ground as the enhanced mare flew forwards a bit too low, but still too fast for anypony to react… even herself.

Author's Note

Chapter three, cutting it close but still on-time.

I've had a busy week so I couldn't do as many re-reads as I usually do, let me know of any spelling mistakes or other errors in the chapter. As always, I hope my work at least gave you a smile.

Next part will come out next Wednesday and may be even longer than this one.

Mustang

Bon Bon sat alone in her castle room, her white sword resting on the bed in front of her. The blade had been magically cleaned until it was spotless, yet in her eyes, it still sported the long red stain of Scootaloo’s blood.

They told her it was an accident, that it wasn’t her fault; but Bon Bon knew better. She could’ve done things differently, she could’ve done things better. But here she was, another successful mission at the cost of another part of her equinity.

The coffee machine beeped, pulling her out of her brooding with the scent of glorious caffeine. She walked up to it and took the cup from its holder, taking a sip and savoring the hot liquid.

“I need to thank the doctor for letting me keep my stomach,” She muttered to herself. The inner workings of her body were a mystery to her, but it worked.

Bon Bon sheathed her sword and downed the rest of the cup before heading out of her room. The winding hallways of Canterlot castle were starting to become second nature to her after so many visits, allowing her to find the way into the medical pavilion easily.

“Ah, Bon Bon, good to see you again,” Ocellus said when she entered the lab.

“Hi doc,” She answered.

“Are you all right?”

The changeling was looking at her with concerned eyes. Bon Bon didn’t need her pity, she just needed her to make her stronger and faster so she wouldn’t make any more mistakes.

“I’m fine,” She groaned.

“You know that’s not true…” Somepony said.

Bon Bon grabbed Ocellus by the shoulders and shook her harshly. The chitinous plates cracked slightly under the inequine strength of Bon Bon’s steel hooves.

“I said I’m fine!” She shouted.

“I- I didn’t say anything,” Came the shaky reply.

She let go of the doctor, dropping her view to the floor apologetically. Her mind had been playing more tricks on her than usual, but at least it had the decency to quiet down when she was fighting.

“Sorry about that, I didn’t sleep well last night” She lied.

“Don’t worry about it,” The changeling’s voice was clearly concerned.

Ocellus turned and trotted up to a large metal box that stood on one of the lab tables.

“Anyway, this is why I called you here,” She said, floating up the box.

“What’s in there?” Bon Bon asked curiously.

The changeling smiled and opened the box. Inside it were several black armor plates of varying sizes, in the middle of the box stood a red talisman and four metal hooves.

“It’s my half of our agreement. The hooves you’ve been collecting have been very useful, so I put in some extra hours and made you this new armor,” The doctor explained.

Bon Bon took one of the plates out, turning it in her hooves. It didn’t feel any heavier than her current set, but it had considerably more arcane symbols on the back side.

“What does it do?”

The changeling’s eyes lit up with glee, she was clearly proud of her work.

“After analyzing that… thing you fought, we discovered that it’s armor was selective. Whenever you attacked, it would predict where the attack would hit and armor that specific area instead of having all its armor at once!”

“That explains why it was so difficult to destroy,” Bon Bon commented, “So does this armor do that?”

“Unfortunately, no, but you can trigger a much stronger shield at will. It's not as efficient as the automaton’s, but if you time it correctly you should be able to take some big hits,”

She nodded at the changeling, that did seem like a good tool to have at her disposal.

“And the hooves are enchanted for enhanced mobility, you should be able to walk on practically anything!” Ocellus finished, exitedly.

“That’s great, doc, can you put them on now?”

“Yes, it should only take a minute,”

After a confirming nod from Bon Bon, the changeling’s horn lit up, enveloping her with magic. She felt her hooves leave the ground… and then leave her. The four steel hooves were carefully placed on the desk before their replacements were attached to her body.

The magic field wrapped around the plates that encased her body, slowly peeling them off and replacing them with the new ones. Ocellus placed her back on the ground before wrapping her crystal eye in her magic, altering its enchantments. A series of warnings flashed in her view for an instant before disappearing.

“All set, let's test it out,” The doctor said.

“Sure, how do I activate it?” Bon Bon asked, tilting her head.

“Just think about shielding up, it should activate,”

Bon Bon focused on herself, on the armor she was wearing. Her body started to feel warm and let off a green glow, emanating from the plates. She looked down at the pieces covering her legs, a bright magical field was coming from them. A warning flashed in her view, low energy. The glow died down as the bar in her eye dwindled to near nothing.

“Is it supposed to use that much energy?” She asked, concerned.

“Yes, I’m afraid. You’ll have to use it sparingly,” The changeling dropped her gaze.

“We’ll just have to see on my next mission,”

The changeling nodded and froze for a moment before looking up at her.

“Wait, did Yona not tell you yet?”

“Tell me what?” Bon Bon asked suspiciously.

“The queen sent an order, we have been told to stand down,”

The words hit her like a brick wall. What was the queen thinking! They had evidence of desperado’s misdeeds and even several of their identities, how could they just be ordered to stop?

“Why?” She asked, not really bothering to contain her anger.

“Because of that pegasus you saw, senator Biceps of Cloudsdale. Celestia said that she cannot condone any aggressive approaches on a government official,” The changeling explained.

This had to be a joke, clearly, Ocellus was pulling a prank on her. But the changeling’s face didn’t show anything that could be taken as a joke. Bon Bon was angry, she was furious! How could the glorious queen just sit by and let fillies get foalnapped while evil ponies made automatons for war?

“This is ridiculous! I’ll go speak to her at once!” She shouted, slamming her new hooves into the floor.

“Bon Bon! This is a direct royal order!” Ocellus shouted at her, but Bon Bon was already storming out of the lab.
She stomped through the halls of the castle towards the throne room, dead set on getting an explanation out of her queen. A pair of royal guards stood in her way, a pegasus and a unicorn. The armored ponies crossed their weapons to block her way.

“Halt! The queen is not taking visitors at this time!” The unicorn said.

“Agent Bon Bon, special operations!” She barked, causing the guards’ eyes to go wide.

“I uhh yes, sorry ma’am,” The pegasus guard said before stepping out of the way.

She burst through the doorway into the throne room. A tall vaulted ceiling rose above her, decorated in a similar fashion as the stained glass windows on the walls; each one displaying one of the queen’s victories.

Bon Bon stormed down the carpet towards the tall solar throne, bathed by the light that came into the great hall. The queen was sitting comfortably ahead of her, her attention consumed by a large portion of cake.

Despite her anger, Bon Bon’s rage was extinguished by the glory of the sun. The queen’s fiery mane gave off so much heat that Bon Bon could feel it despite being far away.

“Your majesty,” She said with a respectful bow.

Celestia placed the cake back on the small table next to her throne before turning to face her. The queen’s yellow eyes held a mixture of kindness and intrigue.

“Ah, Bon Bon, what brings you here?” Celestia asked, just a slight hint of the royal Canterlot voice.

“I want an explanation, your highness,”

The queen arched an eyebrow.

“An explanation for what?”

Rage filled Bon Bon, but it quickly burned away in the presence of her queen.

“I want to know why we were ordered not to intervene, don’t you know what we found?” She asked, making a big effort to remain calm.

The queen sighed and rose from her throne, her fiery mane flowing in an ethereal breeze. Celestia opened her wings, her entire body glowing brighter as her horn charged with bright yellow magic. In a flash, they were gone.

The world flashed back into existence around her. Bon Bon took in her surroundings and saw… a wasteland. Endless fields of ash and fire stretched out in every direction, the scent of sulfur was thick in the air. The queen stood next to her with a solemn expression, looking out on the field.

“Sorry for not warning you, I simply thought the matter demanded a more secluded location,” Celestia said.

“I understand,” Bon Bon replied with a slight bow.

“Do you know what this place is?”

Bon Bon looked at the wasteland that surrounded them, she did know this place… everypony knew this place.

“The scorched fields,” She replied, “This is where you banished Nightmare Moon once and for all,”

“It wasn’t always like this, it used to be quite a beautiful countryside,” Celestia said, her face contorted into an expression of deep sadness.

Her horn lit up and started to spew bright flames into the air, painting two ponies, a large alicorn with a smaller unicorn in front of her.

“All those years ago, I sent my dearest student, Twillight, to find the elements of harmony. But she failed, and Nightmare Moon returned to bring forth night eternal,” The queen said, the fiery silhouettes illustrating the story, “Once I realized that the elements were not an option, I was forced to fight her myself,”

The silhouettes shifted to show the queen battling against Nightmare Moon. Bon Bon already knew this story, it was recent history after all, but she knew better than to interrupt the queen when she spoke.

“We fought for five days in this very field, the Nightmare was strong, terribly strong. And I just couldn’t bring myself to harm my sister,” The images showed the alicorn of the night standing over a battered Celestia, “But that’s when I realized I had to atone for my mistakes, for not trying to help when I had the chance,”

Bon Bon looked at the queen, lifting an eyebrow. She was talking as if she could’ve saved Nightmare Moon. She tried to wipe the confused expression off her face, but the queen had already seen it. She didn’t say anything, instead letting out a deep sigh.

“You see, the last time I had to fight my sister, I banished her to the moon for a thousand years. I thought she would take that time to reflect on herself and come back reformed, but I was wrong. All I really did was let her hatred simmer until there was no way of possibly getting through to her,”

The ghostly images shifted again, now showing the queen, in all her glory, standing tall over the Nightmare. Her fiery mane and solar battle armor ready to fight back against the eternal night. But Bon Bon now knew the whole picture, it hadn’t been the grand battle of good against evil that she had been taught.

“In the end, I took it upon myself to right my wrongs, and I shed any concern over my true power. I didn’t banish Nightmare Moon, Bon Bon, I killed Luna, my sister,” The illusion collapsed after showing Celestia and the Nightmare… no, Luna, crash into each other.

A single tear rolled down the queen’s face, but it evaporated just as quickly as it had appeared.

“That is when I returned to Canterlot as you see me now. And with a heavy heart I realized that my little ponies no longer loved me, they were terrified of me,” Celestia spoke, turning to face Bon Bon once more, “They all worked and followed my rule, not out of devotion, but out of fear, and I couldn’t take it,”

“And you created the senate?” Bon Bon asked.

Celestia nodded.

“Indeed, I gave my power to the ponies of Equestria. So they could feel like they truly had a say in how our nation is run. But now it has become clear that it was a double edged sword,”

“So that’s why we can’t go after a senator? But we have proof!” She said, a bit too loudly.

“That is precisely why I asked you to stand down, senator Biceps will be investigated by the Equestrian court and tried accordingly. I don’t want you to go to Cloudsdale and start spilling more Equestrian blood in one of your frenzies,” The queen’s tone had become more severe, like a mother scolding a foal.

“But a trial could take months! Years, even! I would gladly go find the culprits and dispense divine justice!” She stomped.

Bon Bon could’ve sworn that the queen’s hair flared up for an instant, but it simmered down too fast to notice.

“Don’t be so quick to brandish your weapons, my little pony,” Celestia said coldly, if she was even capable of such a tone, “Taking any life leaves a deep mark, no matter how justified,”

The alicorn’s words conjured up the image of a certain orange filly in Bon Bon’s mind. She shook her head to rid herself of the memory before responding, trying to watch her tone.

“So it’s all up to some judge to take down this whole organization, huh?”

“That is true, but you’d be amazed at the effect a single pony can have,” Celestia said, returning to her softer voice.

“You are right, your majesty,” She bowed.

The queen gave her a warm smile before wrapping them in flames once more as the world faded away.

A black sky carriage barreled through the sky towards Cloudsdale drawn by a pair of green pegasi. Their wings’ rhythmic flapping would’ve put anypony into a peaceful sleep, but neither of the carriage’s occupants could sleep.

“Cloudsdale is on high alert after the recent attacks, their private guard is holding the city on lockdown,” Lyra said from her seat.

“Is that going to be an issue?” Bon Bon asked while she examined her sword.

“I don’t know,”

The pegasi twins broke through a thick cloud, revealing the city in the distance. Cloudsdale had grown exponentially in the last few years; their weather infrastructure had proven vital for the war effort, both in delaying the enemy and helping equestrian farmers.

From the skyline rose the black tower of the weather factory, it’s faucets sending out storm clouds in large gray chunks. Pegasi flew around the factory, sending out the weather to its final destination.

The city itself, however, seemed deserted. The streets were void of life save for a few black dots, probably guards.

“Ma’am, are you sure we can fly here?” One of the pegasus twins pulling the carriage asked her.

“I didn’t know it was this bad, try to get me closer,” Bon Bon responded.

The carriage flew towards the city. Before long a group of guards noticed them and flew up to them. The Cloudsdale guard armor shone with a light blue aura of magical protection.

“Unauthorized carriage, this area is off limits, turn back now,” The leading guard said, the stallion’s voice was amplified by magic.

“Ask if you can land on the outsides,” Bon Bon offered.

The twins reduced their speed slightly, flying alongside the guard formation. Seven pegasi flew in a V formation, their leader, a pearly white stallion, flew up to the twins.

“You need to turn back!” The guard ordered.

“We’re tired officers, can’t we land to catch our breath?” One of the twins asked.

The guard seemed to consider it, looking back at the carriage where Bon Bon and Lyra were. Fortunately the windows were too dark for them to be seen clearly.

“All right, you can stop and rest at the station,” The white pegasus conceded, “Follow me,”

The guards formed ahead of the carriage, flying in formation towards the guard station. Bon Bon started to formulate a plan when a sudden call distracted her. It was Yona.

“Bon Bon!” The yak bellowed, “What in tartarus is this?”

The yak was holding up the letter Bon Bon had left on her desk just earlier today. It seemed her ruse hadn’t lasted as long as she would’ve expected.

“I thought the title was pretty self-explanatory, Yona, it’s my resignation letter,” She replied calmly.

“You can’t just resign out of the blue! Why did…” The Yak stopped for a moment before her eyes went wide with rage, “I can see you on map! We were told to stand down, Bon Bon!”

“No, the agency was told to stand down,” She replied with a grin, “But I’m not in the agency anymore, am I?”

The Yak’s face contorted into a scowl filled with so much rage that Bon Bon was sure she would burst an artery.

“You need to turn back, now!” The yak ordered.

“No, Yona, I need to do this,” She answered before cutting the communication.

They were over Cloudsdale proper now; the cloud-like buildings passed by underneath like great white spires. Lyra looked out the window with a concerned expression.

“We can’t fight all those guards,” She said, “And I doubt even you could take on their entire station at once”

“Do you have any ideas?” Bon Bon asked.

“We can jump off the carriage and make our way to the factory on the rooftops,” The unicorn pointed at the factory for emphasis.

“And you’re sure they’re in there?”

Lyra nodded.

“Well then, out we go,” Bon Bon said as she kicked open the rear door of the carriage.

She made sure to drop a large bag of golden bits for the twins; they had earned it. The two ponies stood side by side at the open door, waiting for the next rooftop to pass by.

“Now!” Marked Lyra, and they jumped.

The rooftop felt… strange. The cloud was solid yet fluffy at the same time, like a particularly sturdy mattress. Bon Bon rolled to absorb more of the fall, but she realized it wasn’t necessary when the cloud itself stopped her. Lyra slammed into the rooftop with all four hooves, denting the cloud deeply where she landed.

Bon Bon looked east, towards the weather factory, that was where these bastards were hiding. She looked at the buildings that connected them to their target and started to walk.

They made their way over the buildings of Cloudsdale. Despite the city's barrenness it still held a majestic beauty, as if it were carved directly out of the sky.

They jumped to an adjacent building, crouching behind the edge to avoid being spotted by a small patrol of pegasi. When they passed, the pair rose to their hooves and looked out onto the city.

Bon Bon noticed the old weather factory on the edge of the city, a simple white building that used to generate all of Equestria’s weather. Years back, a new factory had been constructed to keep up with the extra output needed for defense.

According to Lyra’s fragmented memory, that same new factory was where desperado’s checks came from. And of course, it was where senator Biceps was last seen. Bon Bon had a lot to talk about with that senator.

They jumped to the next building. This one was clearly older, and the stained cloud that made up its roof deformed dangerously under their weight. They walked to the edge again, looking around for any patrols.

“Just three more buildings,” Lyra stated, pointing at their path.

“Are you sure the rooftops can hold us up?” Bon Bon asked.

“Yes, but I think we shouldn’t stay too close,” Lyra said before jumping onto the next roof.

Bon Bon followed suit, the older clouds of this area felt even squishier than before. Lyra made her way to the end of the building and immediately jumped back.

“Two patrols are coming this way, hide!” She said, alarmed.

But a quick glance revealed that there was nowhere to hide; the edges of the roof weren’t tall enough, and there were no chimneys. They were effectively sitting ducks.

“We’ll have to fight!” She shouted back, unsheathing her sword.

Lyra nodded before shifting her body back into combat mode. The magical plating shone brightly as she revved up her chainsaw.

The first patrol spotted them and immediately altered their course to head directly at them. The second patrol soon followed behind them, but one of the pegasi turned back and went in the opposite direction.

“That one is probably going to get reinforcements, we need to move!” Lyra shouted.

But moving would have to wait, for the patrol had finally reached their rooftop. All the pegasi were armed in the same way, a full suit of light armor and twin wing-blades, razor-sharp and magically reinforced.

Bon Bon lifted her sword to meet her first opponent, a light gray pegasus mare. The white sword clashed against the mare’s left-wing, but it was quickly forced back to parry a swipe from the other wing.

The guard flapped her wings to avoid being cut in half and let one of her comrades take her place, Bon Bon hated fighting pegasi.

Lyra seemed to be faring much better, one badly mangled pegasus already lay at her hooves. She was focused on dodging while swinging the chainsaw around with her magic.

A stallion dived at Bon Bon, forcing her to jump out of the way. But she hadn’t noticed that there was another guard behind her, and her carelessness earned her a small cut on her right leg.

But the pegasus’ blade caught on her armor, grounding her opponent for just enough time. Bon Bon spun her head back, stabbing the wide-eyed mare in the shoulder before giving her a strong buck. Her wing, still stuck in Bon Bon’s leg, broke with an audible crunch as the mare went flying over the edge of the building.

A scream coming from her right confirmed that Lyra had caught another one of the guards, that left just two more. The pegasi flew out of their reach and held their ground.

“Lyra, we need to leave!” Bon Bon said when she saw a large group of pegasi headed their way, she quickly put the sword back into her mouth.

“I think we can escape into a cloud pipe, I’ll mark the spot!” Came her reply, joined by a waypoint lighting up in her view.

But whenever they tried to reach the edge of the building the two pegasi dove at them to drive them back. Another cut hit Bon Bon’s cheek when the gray mare from earlier cut her off.

The reinforcements were getting closer and closer, eight… no, ten dozens. Lyra swung her chainsaw in a wide arc, forcing both of the surviving guards to fly away.

“Let’s go!” Lyra said before jumping off the side of the building.

Bon Bon took a deep breath and dived behind the unicorn. The pegasi behind them closed their wings and followed them down the side of the building.

Lyra placed her weapon into the arm on her back before going into a vertical spin. Bon Bon watched as the saw bit into the street below, cutting a pony-sized gash into the sidewalk.

Her armored friend disappeared into the cloud bank, and Bon Bon had a moment of panic, thinking her friend was falling to her doom. But she didn’t have much time to worry before she herself slammed into the sidewalk.

The cut in the street gave way under her weight, weakening the cloud just enough for her to slip through the crack and into the dark depths of Cloudsdale. Judging by the two hard impacts she heard above them, the two pegasi hadn’t been heavy enough to force the cloud apart.

Bon Bon lifted her gaze to see a black void, apparently, nopony had thought about installing a light inside… wherever this was.

“What is this place?” She asked aloud.

“This is one of the old weather factory’s transport pipes, it should be abandoned,” Came the echoey reply from somewhere in front of her.

“Does it connect to the new factory?”

“Fortunately, no, if it did we would be swimming through condensed storm clouds” Lyra responded.

Bon Bon drew her sword again, the dim white glow was hardly enough to illuminate the general outline of Lyra, but it was better than fumbling about in the darkness. She dropped the sword to her hoof to illuminate the stained, dense clouds of the walls. Lyra pointed ahead into the inky depths of the pipe.

“We need to head that way, there should be an old monitoring station that we can use to get back to the surface,” She explained.

“That’s as close as we can get?” Bon Bon asked.

“Yes, we’ll have to walk the last three blocks on the surface,”

Bon Bon nodded, unsure as to whether or not Lyra could see her. But she shook the thoughts of her friend out of her head, she needed to keep her mind clear. By the time she regained her senses, she heard Lyra’s cushioned hoofsteps heading down the pipe; and she followed.

They walked in silence for some time, it was pretty hard to keep track of how much you’ve been walking when your legs don’t grow tired and you can’t see the sun. But just when she was considering sheathing her sword and asking Lyra how much further they had to walk, she was stopped by a hoof on her chest. She dropped her sword to her hooves so she could talk.

“Turn on your talisman scanning, there are automatons up ahead,” Lyra whispered in her ear.

“Are they in the station?” Bon Bon whispered back.

She saw the dimly-lit silhouette of the unicorn nod slightly.

“Should we fight?” She whispered to the green mare.

“We don’t know what they are, what if they’re those metal pegasi things?”

Lyra had a point, there was no way they could fight one of those without light. Her crystal eye activated and pulsed out, revealing three talisman signatures in the open room ahead. Two of them were far away, but one was alarmingly close to the tunnel they had to enter through.

“Where is the exit?” Bon Bon whispered at Lyra.

“It’s in the middle, to the left, right behind the second signature,”

This was a difficult situation, and they were missing a lot of information to make an actual plan. A semblance of an idea formed in her head, however, but it depended completely on how loud her sword was.

She took the white blade back in her mouth and positioned the tip against the compressed clouds of the pipeline. The sword poked the cloud and didn’t let out any sound, much to her relief. She dug the weapon deeper into the cloud, feeling the softer cloud on the other side of the pipe wall.

“I have a plan, let me know if I make too much noise,” She whispered to Lyra, leaving the hilt of her sword sticking out of the wall.

She grabbed the weapon again and got to work on cutting a round hole into the curved pipe. The round chunk of cloud popped out of the rest with a muted thump. Just in case, she stood completely still to see if the automaton had heard it. But since the talisman didn’t move towards them, she let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.

She turned back to see the softer cloud material that made up the underbelly of Cloudsdale. Leaving her sword on the side, she got to work on pulling out chunks of cloud from the hole to make it wider and deeper. Before long she had made a cavity large enough for two ponies, say what you want about buildings made of clouds, but they sure did allow for easy remodeling.

“Okay, here’s the plan, you go hide in there and I’ll kill the one next to the entrance. Then we’ll hide until they let their guard down again.

“Why would they simply forget they saw the destroyed automaton?” Lyra asked.

“Call it a hunch,” Bon Bon replied with a smile.

Lyra didn’t respond, instead, she turned and climbed into the hole, nodding at her.

Bon Bon nodded back and took her blade back into her mouth, walking slowly towards the closest talisman signature. Now that she was closer she could see that the talisman was small, just barely as high as her shoulder. Maybe it was one of those metal Spikes?

The room ahead was slightly lit up from two dim light bulbs, but it wasn’t enough for her to see her foe. Bon Bon lifted the sword until it was parallel to the talisman, and then she cut.

She found slight resistance right away, something had been standing just a short distance away from her head. The blade cut until it sliced the talisman in half, filling Bon Bon with a small power surge.

A horrid metallic scraping sound came from the automaton, the lights, which she now realized were actually the machine’s eyes, winked out as it fell. She didn’t have time to admire her handiwork, however, and she quickly jumped back into the pipeline to join Lyra.

After jumping into her makeshift hiding spot, she pulled the compressed cloud segment back to cover the entrance, entombing her and Lyra in the wall. Bon Bon looked through the wall at the two other talisman signatures that were standing where the one she had destroyed was.

The two shining triangles in her eyes stood completely still for a while, almost as if they were… thinking? One of the signatures then started moving back into the station, but it didn’t stop there, instead it started to go higher and higher, before finally disappearing from her eye.

“It went to get reinforcements,” Lyra stated.

“Damm it!” Bon Bon complained, “I was sure they would go back to their posts, maybe they’re a more advanced model?”

“Did you see what it was?” Lyra asked, adjusting herself in the cramped hiding space.

“No, but it was big. I don’t think it was a pegasus though, the talisman was too small,” Bon Bon said, but she fell quiet when she noticed the other talisman was standing right in front of the hiding spot entrance.

Lyra quietly picked up her chainsaw with her magic, not revving it, but holding it at the ready. Bon Bon held her sword up and pointed it towards the entrance, keeping her eye locked on the talisman.

In the dim white light, she saw the cover start to peel away slowly, pulled by a large steel hoof. A pair of glowing lights were hovering just behind the hoof, the automaton acted like a cat that just found a mouse.
Only this mouse had a magically enhanced sword in her mouth. Bon Bon lunged at the opening, stabbing directly through it and striking home. She heard the automaton collapse onto the floor of the pipe.

The two mares left the hiding spot, and when Bon Bon placed her sword near the pile of scrap on the floor, she saw that it was, in fact, a pegasus. Their increase in intelligence was alarming, especially since apparently Desperado had enough of them to make them guard an abandoned pipeline.

“We need to move before reinforcements arrive, the one that got away probably sounded an alarm,” Lyra said.

“You’re right, we should run to the factory as soon as we return to the surface, which way is it?” Bon Bon asked.

“It should be to the left once we climb up the stairs,” The green mare answered as she walked towards the station.

Bon Bon followed the mare until they reached the long stairwell that would take them back up. Already she could see the light seeping through the cloud hatch, but there was no clear sign of anypony waiting for them.

The sun hit Bon Bon’s eye without blinding her, one of the many perks of it being an enchanted crystal ball, and revealed the deserted streets of Cloudsdale. She jumped out with her sword at the ready and saw… nopony?

Lyra climbed out of the hatch and looked around for a bit before replacing her chainsaw onto the arm on her back. The unicorn closed her strange helmet and took a long look at her surroundings.

“There’s only one patrol between us and the factory, but I see several automatons in the city,” Lyra said, but when her gaze passed over Bon Bon, the helmet opened to reveal a concerned face, “Are you wounded?”

“W- what?” The question caught her off guard.

“You are bleeding,” The green mare pointed out, gesturing towards her with a hoof.

Bon Bon looked down at herself and saw that she was, in fact, covered in blood. Now that she had noticed, she realized how her face felt sticky, and when she touched it her hoof came away with a slick red coating.

She wasn’t wounded, it wasn’t her blood, but then whose? It couldn’t have been the guard from earlier, it wouldn’t have gotten on her face, but then how did-

Her train of thought was derailed when she heard a distinct charging sound, one she had heard not long ago.

“Lyra! Run!” She managed to shout before a green beam shot from somewhere downstreet.

With no time to dodge, Bon Bon did the only thing she could think of; she focused on protecting herself and triggered her specialized armor.

The shield flashed up just in time to stop the large green beam, but while the shield was remarkably good at stopping her from being incinerated, it did little to alleviate the force of the attack.

The world spun wildly as Bon Bon flew through the air before coming to a stop after slamming into a wall. Fortunately, the wall in question was made out of clouds and cushioned her hit.

She got back to her hooves and searched for the origin of the beam. Her eye darted over the scene until she picked out an overpass that was just ahead of them. On top of the cloud arches stood another changeling automaton flanked by several pegasi, both organic and metallic.

“Oh for Pete’s sake!” She cursed.

Lyra ran towards her and brandished her weapon, holding it with her magic.

“Our chances of getting out of here are slim,” The green mare said, making an ample display of her grasp over the obvious.

Bon Bon replied with a defiant growl. She launched herself forward to avoid a second green beam while she tried to formulate a plan. Her highest priority was disabling the changeling automaton, she just needed a way of pinning it down…

There it was! Her enemy was standing on an arch! All she had to do was slice the supports apart and it would come crashing down!

She ran faster towards the closest pillar. The pegasi and automatons started to dive at her, but she dodged and weaved through them with the grace of an acrobat jumping through hoops.

Behind her came the sounds of all the pegasi that missed their mark having a close encounter with Lyra’s chainsaw.

The white blade cut cleanly through the spupport pillar and… nothing happened. Of course nothing happened! It’s literally a cloud! Bon Bon had made a grave mistake.

But apparently fortune was on her side. The large automaton on top of the arch moved to peek over the railing, causing the severed pillar to give way and collapse the structure. Granted, it wasn’t the loud heavy crash she had envisioned, more like a gentle slide.

But it had fulfilled her objective, getting the alicorn on the ground level. She looked up to see that… the alicorn was in the exact same spot as it was before, flying over the place where the arch had been.

Why was she being so sloppy? She was supposed to be better than this! She was trained better than this! Then why couldn’t she stop messing up? Or… why couldn’t she shake the image of Scootalo from her head?

She was forced to snap out of her stupor when the automaton fired another heavy beam at her. She dodged and looked back to see Lyra struggling to stay out of the way of the three metal pegasi.

An idea popped into Bon Bon’s head. She ran to her friend quickly, dodging the smaller beams that the alicorn shot down at her.

She reached the first pegasus and stood still for a while, almost mockingly turning her back to the alicorn flying above. The pegasus threw a buck in her direction, but she slipped to the side and dodged almost without moving her hooves, she needed to stay as still as possible.

The sound of a magical discharge gave her the signal to jump as high as she could. A green beam hit the pegasus square in the side, immediately collapsing its magical shielding. Bon Bon spun in the air and angled her sword to cut her opponent in half, but she had an even better idea.

Making use of the new spell Ocellus had attached to her sword, she diabled the magical limiter and watched how her blade almost immediately went red hot. With a quick spin the white sword stabbed directly into the automaton’s chest, stabbing through its talisman.

Her plan was simple, she would take control of the pegasus and use it to crash into the changeling automaton. But her plans were wiped clean from her mind when a jet of warm blood spewed from the sides of her sword accompanied by the scent of burning flesh.

She couldn’t think about it for long, another beam was flying her way. Once more she was forced to raise her magical shield and block the attack, she saw how her power reserve dwindled to almost empty in a matter of seconds as she slammed into the ground.

One of the remaining pegasi dove at her, but she rolled out of the way and watched how it sunk both hooves into the spot her head had been an instant before. That was a new move.

These automatons weren’t upgraded versions, they were being piloted by somepony on the inside. To her great relief she noticed that the changeling automaton had stopped firing to avoid hitting the others.

Bon Bon focused on the pegasus in front of her, it wouldn’t be as predictable as they were before, but she still knew how to fight. She went into her fighting stance, preparing to attack.

The difference between this pegasus and the others became immediately apparent after the second strike hit its armor plates; they had nowhere near the same reaction time as their automated counterparts. The telegraphed attacks and complete lack of dodging evidenced that whoever was controlling the automaton was either not used to it or simply didn’t care about taking a few hits.

But they probably weren’t counting on fighting such a high quality weapon as her white sword. Bon Bon ducked under a wide wing swipe and cut upward, finally piercing the magical shielding and slicing the automaton in half.

The upper half of the pegasus slid onto the ground, revealing half of some strange mess of flesh inside it. It was far too small to be a pony… and Bon Bon had a suspicion that she knew exactly what it was.

“Bon Bon, move!” Lyra said, pushing her to the side.

The world seemed to enter slow motion. Her eye was locked on Lyra, who had apparently defeated her owh pegasus opponent judging by the red stains on her armor. But she could only look at her friend for an instant before she was encased in a green beam.

She watched in horror as Lyra flew down the street, pieces of armor flying off as she rolled through the clouds. Bon Bon turned to look at the changeling automaton with a furious glare.

Lyra’s chainsaw was at her feet, still revving despite not being in its owner’s grasp. Bon Bon kicked it up with fury and gave it a mighty buck before rolling out of the way of another beam.

The weapon spun wildly before hitting its mark, just below the alicorn’s wing joint. She had kicked it so violently that not even the automaton could react in time to shield its wing. Bon Bon smiled as she saw the wing and the rest of the changeling’s form drop from the sky.

Bon Bon sent a prayer of thank you to Celestia when the automaton slammed directly through the street, falling out of Cloudsdale onto the ground far below. She doubted it could survive that.

But she had more pressing matters to attend to. She turned and ran to where her friend had fallen, seeing the charred form of Lyra lying on the ground a little distance away.

She trotted over to the green mare and felt a wave of relief wash over her when she saw the unicorn was still moving. Bon Bon reached her friend and crouched beside her, trying to gauge the extent of her damag- wounds, her wounds.

The half that had taken the beam directly was badly scorched and warped, but her armor seemed to have absorbed a good portion of the attack. Lyra got up weakly and stood on three legs, her right rear leg wasn’t moving.

The green mare stood still a moment, her eyes lost in the distance, before speaking to Bon Bon.

“I can’t fight anymore, but I can still help you with scouting,”

“Are you sure you can keep going?” She asked her friend, concerned.

Lyra gave a weak nod.

“I’ll follow behind you, let’s go,”

Bon Bon looked at her friend as she dragged her wounded leg across the cloud street, limping towards the black tower of the weather factory.

They didn’t see anypony, but they were still alert. At any moment, they knew, a shielded automaton could dive and attack.

But the street was quiet, too quiet. This area was mainly filled with old houses and abandoned office buildings, the old heart of Cloudsdale. But through the boarded windows and dirty streets it seemed as if they had gone into a ruin rather than a city.

Eventually they reached their destination, the weather factory yard. The eerie sensation that they were being watched had only intensified as they walked.

The yard itself was beautiful, however, a central fountain dominated a roundabout, crowned with a statue of Celestia lifting the sun. Several trees stood in a circle around the central road in an impressive feat of pegasi engineering.

A large commemorative plaque stood proudly in front of the fountain reading ‘Cloudsdale advanced weather production plant, in Celestia we trust’.

“Here we are,” Bon Bon commented.

“Why are there no guards?” Lyra asked, looking around the plaza.

The green mare was right, this was wrong. All of the pegasi she had fought so far were wearing desperado armor, not to mention the automatons, but then… where were they now?

Her question was answered by four columns of thick green smoke rising out of the ground, forming a semicircle around the fountain.

Bon Bon reached back for her sword, but she hesitated when she realized the smoke wasn’t moving towards her, merely sitting on the cloud like a thick fog bank.

“Howdy there, Bon!” Said an accented voice from within the fog.

A giant applejack rose from the green mist, an illusion created by the warping smoke. She was wearing the same armor she had wore the last time they met.

“Don’t ya think yer bein’ a bit excessive? Ah would’ve quit after that little incident in Burrango,” The fog next to applejack warped and formed an illusion of Scootaloo.

“How dare you use her face?” She spat.

“Oh? Would y’all rather see one of the other fillies ya killed?” The large mare said, her expression inescrutable.

“What?” Bon Bon replied, shocked.

The ghastly figure of Scootaloo changed into four pegasus fillies, their expressions a mixture of pain and sadness.

“I’ve never seen those ponies before! What are you getting at?”

“Oh, mah bad!” Applejack replied, “Ya probably remember ‘em better like this,”

The fillies changed again, this time into four pegasi automatons. Two of them were cut in half, the long cut along their middle shining brighter than the smoke that made up the rest. Another one had a stab wound in the chest. But the most damning one of the group was the fourth, scorched plates and a stab in the back. They were the automatons she had fought.

Her suspicions were right, there had been somepony piloting them. And other pieces started to click in her mind, the life support system, the brains in the storage room…

“I’m going to kill every last one of you bastards,” Bon Bon growled at the apparition, “Every. Last. One!”

Applejack laughed.

“Then how are y’all any better?” The mare’s tone changed drastically from jovial to serious, “Yer just as bad as us, if not worse. You want to kill us all? Then why don’t ya start with her?”

The smoke parted to reveal a single pegasus mare, her coat was red and sported several burn scars. Bon Bon knew who she was. She was the pony she had encountered in Yakyakistan, the one whose friend she had killed.

“You!” The mare said, flaring out her bladed wings, her eyes were bloodshot and focused completely on Bon Bon.

“Go on then,” Continued Applejack, “Kill her like ya killed her best friend, like ya killed yours!”

The red mare flew at her with a roar, but Bon Bon couldn’t draw her sword, how could she?

A magically enhanced blade dug deep into her left foreleg. The mare turned and gave her a strong buck, sending her flying backward.

“Fight me!” She demanded, her mouth foaming, “Get up and fight me!”

Bon Bon refused to get back up, Applejack was right, she was just like the ponies she was fighting against. She turned over to face the sky, if only she had heeded the queen’s orders and stayed back. Maybe if she had done that her hooves wouldn’t be covered in the blood of foals.

“If you won’t fight then I’ll kill her!” The unstable pegasus said, pointing at the wounded Lyra with a wing.

She jumped to her feet as if she had been struck by lightning, drawing her sword to protect her friend. The red mare tried to lift her wing to block the white edge, but Bon Bon’s will to protect Lyra was stronger.

In one fell swoop, the pegasus lay decapitated next to a sobbing mare that was more metal than pony.

“Do ya see now?” Applejack asked, pacing around the smoke, “If there’s one thing ah hate, it’s liars… and you, Bon Bon, are lying to yerself,”

“I- I’m going to stop you,” She answered weakly.

The apparition threw her head back in laughter.

“Then be our guest, gate’s wide open,”

The smoke dissipated, leaving the ponies standing alone in the yard. As if to emphasize her misery, the factory started to spew black storm clouds that rained down onto the plaza.

“Bon Bon, are you…?” Lyra asked.

“I’m fine,” She lied.

“We should retreat, you aren’t well,”

A fiery rage lit in Bon Bon’s chest.

“I said I’m fine!” She shouted at her friend, “I need to get in there and kill the evil ponies!”

Her hooves trembled as she tried to sheathe her sword, causing her to miss the scabbard a couple of times. She tried to walk, but she felt as if her body had gained several tons.

A trembling hoof was forced forward, then another. And she slowly dragged herself towards the factory gates. She could see the orange farm pony standing at the door, waiting for her.

More steps. She ignored a call from Yona, probably trying to get her location.

More steps. The rain washed away the blood that covered her, but the slight red color clinged to her muzzle.

More steps. And she was almost in front of Applejack, her head full of so much noise that it became an unintelligible mess.

She fell to the ground, unable to stand anymore. And she watched the orange mare approach.

“Do ya see now?” She asked, “Is yer cause really the right one? Or is that just the lie ya tell yerself?”

Bon Bon wanted to reply, say something like ‘my cause doesn’t foalnap innocents!’ But she knew she couldn’t, that would just be hypocritical.

So she said nothing, earning a chuckle from Applejack. Then a booming voice filled her ears, coming from directly above.

“The monster hunter mare; facing a monster, too great to bear. How does it feel, pray tell; to look at the foals as they all fell?”

She shot her eye up to look for the voice’s owner. There she was, on one of the factory balconies stood proudly the last pony… or rather, zebra, she would’ve expected to find here. The terror of the evefree looked down on the yard, her strangely accented voice carried down by magical force.

“Despite your killing without a plan; I cannot say I’m not a fan,” The zebra said.

Bon Bon’s eyes went wide when she saw the zebra jump off the balcony. She fell limply through the air before slamming into the yard below.

But instead of a wet crunch, or even her going straight through the clouds, the zebra… shattered?

The impact scattered chunks all over the yard, but the pieces seemed too well-cut. Her suspicions were confirmed when a yellow haze wrapped around the segments, pulling them back together.

Before her eyes the zebra reassembled herself, the yellow magic joining all the pieces back together. Bon Bon noticed how the body separated at the black stripes that covered it, and the white segment in between looked like… birch bark?

Now that she thought about it, the yellow glow and the wood-like coat tugged at her memory. Something from her earliest years in the guard, back when she was a monster hunter… That’s it! A timberwolf! But how in Tartarus had this zebra managed to imitate one like that?

Bon Bon was still kneeling on the floor when the zebra started to approach her.

“Look at you now, the mighty paladin; wallowing in pity from slaying your pony kin. What did you expect when you picked up your sword? Or when you followed the orders of those to which you’re sworn?” She said in her strange tone.

“I expected to free Equestria from the enemies of harmony!” She spat back.

“There’s a pretty meme, exquisite indeed; but the innocents you’ve slain I’d hardly call freed,”

“I didn’t know who I was fighting, of course innocents get hurt when you set them up as your forced guards!” Bon Bon retorted.

The zebra walked around her, never taking her yellow glare off Bon Bon.

“That is the difference between you and me; your ideals keep you blind, but I can clearly see. The strong prey on the weak; in the same way a timberwolf gorges on meat,” Bon Bon’s face was pulled up by one of the zebra’s hooves, “You shouldn’t feel ashamed of the strength you possess; nor should you droop at your violent excess,”

The words were hitting Bon Bon harder than any blow could, they were hitting her spirit, her very essence. And the biggest impact came from one simple fact: the zebra was right. The strong did prey on the weak, that was why she stepped in to protect them… But did she?

Her mind filled with the images of the pegasus fillies, and the red mare, every single opponent she had defeated so far. Was there really no other choice? She was strong, very strong, but how could she protect the weak when she couldn’t even tell those she had to protect from those she was protecting them from?

That’s when it hit her, the solution to her anguish, it was so simple yet she hadn’t thought about it! All she had to do was embrace the truth.

“You know, I think you have a point,” She told the zebra, “Why keep fighting when I can’t tell who I’m fighting for from who I’m fighting against?”

“So you admit the flaws in your moral code? Or will you continue down this doomed road?” Her opponent asked, the condescension clear in her voice.

“No, I think you’ve shown me the real reason why I fight. I told myself it was to protect the weak, to defend harmony, but now I see the truth,” A burst of laughter cut off her words.

The zebra stepped back and signaled for a pair of guards that had been posted on the balcony above. The pegasi dove towards the ground and landed on either side of her. But despite their threatening presence, Bon Bon just couldn’t stop laughing.

“She’s gone mad,” Applejack commented from behind the Zebra, “Ah think ya broke her,”

Bon Bon howled with laughter, each chuckle sounding more and more deranged.

“Put her down, now!” The farm pony ordered.

The pegasi on her sides stabbed her through with their wing blades, each magical edge stabbing cleanly through her chest. Blood splashed onto the water below, the crimson mixing into the small puddles that accumulated on the compressed cloud.

“I fight…” Bon Bon continued as she concentrated on hery crystal eye, “For a cause…”

There it was, the deeper working of her artificial body, she focused on one specific spell, the one that inhibited how much pain her body was able to simulate. She turned it off and felt the world explode.

It was beautiful, the sheer agony that filled every last inch of her that wasn’t made of metal, finally a real sensation to counter the sheer nothingness she had felt until now.

The zebra and the orange earth pony stared at her, horrified. Bon Bon arched her head back and took out her sword, dropping it to her hoof and looking at her demented reflection.

“But that’s just the excuse… the excuse I use to hide the truth…” She said, her voice varying wildly in pitch.

The guards took out their wing blades and took a step back, looking amazed at the foe that refused to go down.

“And the truth is… I fight because I was born to kill!” Sweetie Drops concluded.

In a blur of beige and black accented by a white streak, Sweetie Drops bounced between the two pegasus guards, chopping them to bits before they got the chance to react.

The magic in their armor helped quell the blood loss, but she was too preoccupied enjoying the bliss of her artificial muscles pulling on her flesh and bones.

“Who’s next?” She asked, sitting on her haunches as she shook with laughter.

She pointed the blood soaked blade at Applejack as a challenge.

“Sure, ah beat y’all before, ah can do it again,” The orange mare said, but she was stopped by the zebra lifting a wooden hoof.

“Stay back; Applejack,” She commanded.

“Whut?” The farm pony tilted her head.

“The zebra wants to test out her ‘strong against weak’ theory, don’t you?” Sweetie Drops asked, her body buzzing with excitement.

“Makes sense tah me, should ah stay?” Applejack asked the zebra.

“Go check on the next stage; I’ll take care of this one’s rage,” Came the accented reply.

The orange mare simply nodded and turned back to head into the factory, leaving the pony and zebra standing outside under the warm rain.

“Guess you’re going to get chopped up first,” Sweetie Drops told her opponent, “Chop chop chop chop,”

“Although your insanity is clear to see; you still have no chance of defeating me!” The zebra shouted back, an ominous yellow glow flashing from her eyes.

Sweetie Drops laughed loudly before placing the sword back into her mouth. Her opponent charged at her with a battle cry, wooden claws extending from her hooves. She lurched forward with her sword, missing the zebra by just a bit and receiving a roundhouse kick to the face.

Another hoof slammed into her face when the zebra spun in the air, dazing her. She was forced to jump away to avoid a claw strike to the face, trying to swing her sword again but missing.

But her opponent didn’t let up, and she was very agile. A whirlwind of kicks rained on Sweetie Drops’ head and chest, this was getting annoying. A wooden claw sliced the side of her face, adding another small puddle of blood to the floor.

She sliced at the zebra, missing again… why did she keep missing? Another kick landed on her forehead, almost making her drop the white blade. Instead she tried to stab her rival, and… missed?

No, not missed, the sword went through the zebra, the stripes on her chest had parted with magic, avoiding her sword. So that was her secret.

Sweetie Drops switched tactics, doing a horizontal cut to bait the zebra into splitting, but intentionally following through on the miss to face the other way. A strong buck slammed into her opponent, sending her top half flying back in several chunks.

But the lower half apparently had a mind of its own, the two front legs flew back to join with the upper half, but the rear legs got to work on kicking Sweetie Drops again. Fortunately the legs didn’t have claws, allowing her to parry most of the attacks with her forelegs.

But the other half of the zebra wasn’t done, it flew at her, held up by magical force, and spun around to cut Sweetie apart. She was forced to roll out of the way to avoid more damage. Once more she repeated her tactic of throwing kicks instead of cuts, but no matter if she kicked the torso, or even kicked a whole leg off, the magic still held the zebra together.

An idea sparked in her mind, she dodged a spinning kick and stood on her rear legs, kicking out with her forelegs and striking the zebra in the head. Bullseye! Her theory had been correct, the head didn’t split into parts, it was all one piece. The impact seemed to stun her foe momentarily, leaving her wide open.
Sweetie Drops laughed around the hilt in her mouth as she sliced at the zebra’s chest. A direct hit, the scent of burned wood filled the air as her rival let out a scream. Before she could make a follow-up slice, however, a wooden hoof flew towards her chest, sending her flying backward.

“You are strong, that is true; but let’s see how you fare when I am out of view!” The zebra said, reattaching her foreleg before throwing out several glass vials from… somewhere.

Several explosions sounded around Sweetie Drops, flooding the yard with the same thick green smoke as before. She crouched into a fighting stance and waited.

A second passed, then another, and one more… where was she?

A hard hit slammed into her left side, she turned just in time to see the zebra rip her wooden claws out of her and jump back into the smoke. She turned to face where the attack had come from, but another hit struck her right side this time.

With a roar, Sweetie Drops slashed wildly at the smoke, hitting nothing. A wooden leg flew from somewhere to her left, kicking her legs out from under her. Her back slammed into the clouds below at the same time as the zebra jumped onto her chest, clawing wildly at her chest.

Her opponent jumped off her, planting a hard kick on her face as she did. Sweetie Drops jumped back, standing on her weak legs. She was heavily wounded and was losing blood fast, but she still felt booming with life, with the insatiable urge to cut this zebra apart.

The smoke had cleared, revealing her rival standing just a little distance away from her. She launched into a run, switching her sword’s limiter off in a flash of inspiration. The zebra separated her neck to avoid the first slash, but she wasn’t counting on Sweetie Drops letting the sword go and catching it in her forehoof.

She focused on her sword and on her target, moving the blade in a flurry of slashes. To her credit, the zebra did manage to split and move her segments out of the way, but there was one thing she couldn’t dodge: heat. After the flurry of cuts, Sweetie was forced back with a kick to the chest, but her opponent’s body had burst into flames.

The zebra howled and disassembled into a maelstrom, trying her best to extinguish the fire with the rain. She succeeded, but the attack had clearly done massive damage, her white segments were so charred that they looked almost as black as her stripes.

“Get back here!” Sweetie Drops shouted.

But her opponent had other plans, turning and running back towards the plaza.

“Coward!” She bellowed at the escaping zebra before placing the sword in her mouth and running after her.

She catched up just in front of the fountain, the charred zebra stood in the water, looking at Sweetie Drops with a wide grin.

“I will admit you know how to fight; but it will do you no good against nature’s might” She said.

Then the trees that surrounded them started to let off an ominous yellow glow before they started to creak and deform. Tentacles of wood shot out of the cloud around her, trapping her in place like a constrictor snake.

One of the trees wrapped around her muzzle, forcing her mouth to open and drop the white sword into the twisting wood. Her weakened body struggled against the wood, unable to make it yield. Her mind raced to form a plan, but nothing came, she was effectively trapped.

“Your recklessness had led you astray; but now we know I am strong, and you are the prey,” The zebra said, turning the blade in the wooden tentacle to aim at Sweetie Drops’ face.

The sword's heat was almost too much to bear, but one last idea came to her before the burning tip connected. Focusing as much as her rage allowed, she tried to trigger her magical shield.

The barrier activated just in time, deflecting the sword directly into the wooden tentacles holding her in place. The wood weakened enough to let her break free of her binds, throwing herself onto the tree that held her weapon.

Using her strong forelegs, she bent the tree until it snapped, grabbing the sword with her forehoof and slicing the last couple of trees apart. She fell to the floor, wounded and tired, but still turned to face the zebra again.

Her foe couldn’t hold her gaze for more than a moment and turned to flee once more, but Sweetie Drops was not going to stop until that zebra was dead. She arched her neck back and spun around violently, throwing the red-hot sword spinning through the air towards the fleeing enemy.

A direct hit, the sword cut horizontally through the desperate zebra, setting the segments it hit ablaze. A weak whine escaped from her as Sweetie Drops walked to retrieve her weapon.

The bloodshot eyes of the zebra focused on her, her pupils reduced to pinpricks.

“It seems the strong do prey on the weak,” She said as the sword transferred the magical energy it had absorbed into her, helping her wounds heal, “And you, are weak,”

“While I- I may fall here…” The zebra spoke weakly, “I’m glad I passed my ideals to you, my peer,”

Bon Bon looked down at her defeated foe, her last words resonating in her mind. Was she really like her? One of the ‘strong’ that hunted the ‘weak’? No… She wouldn’t allow herself to become just another killer. If she was going to be a killer, she would at least make sure to kill those who deserved it the most.

With renewed vigor, she turned to face the weather factory.

Author's Note

I am terribly sorry for the late upload, this last week had been very busy for me, leaving me with not enough tike to finish this chapter in a timely manner.

Anyhow, here it is, chapter four, let me know if I missed any errors during my admittedly rushed proofreading.

Next chapter should come out next Wednesday, this time around it should come out on-time.

Once more, sorry for the delay and I hope you enjoy (somehow).

The weather factory

Bon Bon stood before the double door of the new weather factory, looking out on the plaza where she had killed the zebra from Ponyville… What had her name been? Zecora? was it? In the end, she was just another opponent that fell under her blade.

A call was buzzing in her head, it had been buzzing for several minutes, but she couldn’t bring herself to answer it. And so, the small screen with Yona’s name kept flashing in her view.

“You need to answer,” Lyra said, the green mare standing weakly against the cloud wall.

“Why? They’ll just order me to stand down and get tried for heresy,” Bon Bon replied.

“You don’t know that,”

The unicorn had a point, for all she knew her team could be trying to help her, or maybe the queen decided to go back on her orders. But still, she let the call ring away. The window disappeared for an instant before reappearing, this time, it bore Sandbar’s name.

It was still raining in the yard, the heavy downpour had already washed away the blood that had been spilled, Leaving the whole yard as if nothing had happened. The only giveaways of the battle were the mangled trees… and the burnt zebra.

Another ring from Sandbar came accompanied by another disappointed look from Lyra. Bon Bon took a deep breath and let it out slowly before finally answering the call.

The window expanded to show a distraught-looking earth pony. Sandbar was sitting… somewhere, wherever it was, that wasn’t their office at Canterlot castle.

“Bon? About time you picked up!” He said, indignant, “Have you gone completely insane?”

“I… I think so,” She replied.

“What? What have you done?”

A tear would’ve rolled down her cheek if she hadn’t been standing in the rain.

“I found out what the foals were for… I killed three of them…” Bon Bon’s voice started quivering, “They put the brains in the automatons, Sandbar, that’s what the life support was for,”

Several emotions flashed through the communications officer’s face, confusion, shock, horror, and then settled on concern.

“Did you know?” The earth pony asked.

“No… not until they told me,” She responded.

“Why would they do this?” Sandbar said to nopony in particular, burying his head in his hooves.

“I’m standing outside their headquarters. I’m planning on getting an answer, even if I have to cut it out of them,”

Sandbar grimaced.

“I’ll let you know that the queen has officially deemed you a radical terrorist and kicked you out of the royal guard,”

Bon Bon lifted an eyebrow. That didn’t sound like the queen at all! If the Weather factory were under attack, even by a single pony, Celestia would come in the flesh to obliterate the threat with the full glory of the sun.

“But why haven’t the royal guards been dispatched? And why are you contacting me?” She asked, confused.

“Well, officially, you’re a terrorist. But the queen relocated us to a more… secluded location and gave us the instructions to assist you. I don’t know what you told her, but you’ve been given one more chance,” Sandbar replied with a mischievous smile.

“A chance to do what?” The confusion was clear in her voice.

“A chance to find out what Desperado is up to, and to stop to them. She said that you better be right, or all of us are never getting a job again,”

It seemed unfair that her team had to suffer for her actions, but she couldn’t complain too much, after all, it was better than getting thrown in a dungeon for treason.

“And I’m guessing that if I fail, I’ll get tried for heresy?” She asked.

“No, Bon,” Sandbar replied, his tone becoming serious, “If you don’t find anything that justifies your crimes, the queen has specifically stated that you will receive lunar banishment,”

The words hit Bon Bon like a hammer, that was the highest form of punishment that the queen could give. It was madness! Her legs gave out at the sheer thought of being frozen in time for a thousand years; forced to watch everyone she knew grow old and die, and their children as well. No mortal pony had ever been made to serve such a sentence; no mortal pony would remain sane after such a thing… not that she was feeling very sane to begin with.

“Good thing I’m sure, then,” She said, but she was feeling more and more like she had made a grave mistake.

“I hope so,” Sandbar replied, “Well, you better get going then,”

“Yeah, thanks,”

She turned to face the factory doors again but stopped before closing the communication link.

“Oh, is Yona angry?” She added quickly.

“She’s looking for another desk after smashing her old one… for the fifth time,”

Bon Bon and Sandbar shared a short laugh. Then she cut the communication and threw the double doors of the factory open.

If she were asked to describe the lobby, she would’ve only had one word to do so: grand. Everything showed the grandeur and splendor of peak pegasi craftsponyship, from the intricately chiseled chairs to the wood-cloud hybrid flooring, polished to perfection. Giant posters adorned the walls, commemorating the factory and the wonderbolts.

A front desk lied abandoned, whoever was supposed to attend it had probably fled when the fighting started outside. Bon Bon walked up to the desk to check for any kind of map, but she found nothing of value.

“Well well well, if it ain’t the candy mare,” The voice of Big Mac said, popping into a window tagged ‘unidentified’, “I see ya managed tah kill the zebra,”

“And I’m coming for you next,” Bon Bon replied to the air.

“Eyyyup, ah thought as much. Try not tah get too noisy though, the fillies are in class,” Stated the red stallion before cutting the communication.

Bon Bon stomped towards the large door that separated the lobby from the rest of the factory. What had Mac meant by ‘the fillies are in class’? Did they have more brains here?

“Sandbar, what tools do we have?” She asked her communicator as she walked down a hallway.

“Not much, we have communications and any books on Cloudsdale we could get out of the archives before leaving,” The earth pony responded, lowering his head.

“No unicorns for tracking or magical scouting?”

“Nothing, remember this whole thing is off the books, you’re on your own,” Sandbar said, concerned.

Lyra caught up with her just before she reached the door to the main factory floor, putting her hoof on Bon Bon’s shoulder.

“I can’t fight, but I can scout ahead. Let me go first,” The green mare said.

“Are you sure?” Bon Bon asked, concerned.

Lyra nodded.

“Stay safe, let me know what you find,” She said finally, letting her friend go ahead.

She watched as the unicorn dragged her damaged leg down the hallway and into some kind of maintenance hatch. Bon Bon turned and opened the door marked with a sign that read ‘civilian production’.

The first thing that caught her attention was the flashing red light that popped out of the dense cloud walls, most likely an evacuation alarm. Then she took in the rest of the room. Unlike a normal building, the floors of the weather factory were the height of several floors, organized into massive hangers full of weather machinery.

Of course, this was the civilian section, the machines were meant to produce average amounts of rain clouds, rainbows, snow and whatnot. But Bon Bon knew that the top half of the factory held the heavy-duty production, tornado generators and heavy lightning storms ready to wreak havoc on the changeling army.

But as of now, the abandoned halls of the factory were almost… creepy. The machines lay dormant, harnesses still swinging from what must’ve been a swift evacuation. But the only sound in the air was a low buzzing alarm.

“All right Bon, I have a…” Sandbar said, popping into her view with his face firmly planted on a piece of paper, “Weather factory tour pamphlet, but it only has the civilian section mapped. Maybe we can use it, where are you?”

Bon Bon looked around to try and find some sort of sign that marked this section of the factory. There it was, a sight hung over one of the machines reading ‘rainbow wing B’. She relayed the information back to Sandbar, who took a moment to stare at the map he had found.

“Here we go, is there a sign that says ‘cafeteria’ near you?” The earth pony said.

She looked around the empty atrium, she spotted the sign over a gateway, it was about four floors up. There was one problem though, Bon Bon didn’t have wings.

“I see it, but it's pretty high up,”

Sandbar stopped for a moment to think, but the communication link opened a new window containing Lyra instead.

“Bon Bon, remember this section of the factory is open for tours. There is probably some way for non-pegasi to move around,” She stated.

“I’ll look for it, how are you doing?” Bon Bon answered, trying to make out the background in the small window.

“I am climbing through the vents; I should reach the middle area soon. I don’t see any guards,”

That could only mean one that there was probably a large greeting party waiting for her. Bon Bon scanned the room, searching for any way of getting up. Her eye landed on a large fluffy cloud with a guard rail around it.

She walked towards the cloud and noticed it was some kind of mobile platform, perfect for her needs. A lever came up from within the cloud, probably connected to some kind of levitation talisman to adjust the cloud’s height. She gave it a pull to test its function and grinned when she felt the cloud rise beneath her.

Bon Bon took the lever in her hooves and turned the cloud until it faced the cafeteria entrance, then, with a small push, she was heading up.

The platform connected with a segment of softer cloud on the edge of the entrance, attaching itself into a single cloud. Bon Bon stepped onto the hard cloud of the cafeteria floor and immediately saw her welcoming committee.

Four armored pegasi charged at her, two were running along the cafeteria floor while their comrades flew above them. Bon Bon quickly surveyed her attackers, she didn’t stand a chance if she was cornered on the platform, she needed a way to outflank them.

Her opening came in the form of the pegasus mare charging at her from the left; she didn’t share the same determined expression of her fellows. With a great leap, Bon Bon launched at the mare, sword drawn. The pegasus mare’s eyes widened in fear before she threw herself onto the ground to dodge her.

Bon Bon rolled through the opening, avoiding the two flying pegasi as they spun to avoid crashing into each other. She landed in the middle of the cafeteria, the multiple rows of tables would make moving around harder for her, but maybe she could use them to fight the pegasi.

To test her theory, she kicked one of the tables into the air and then shattered it with a strong buck, sending the wooden shrapnel into one of the flying pegasi. Judging by the surprised scream, the wood had hit something soft. But Bon Bon couldn’t turn to see the effect after being forced to spin and parry a wing blade that had been aiming for her neck.

The other flying pegasus dove at her, twirling into a steel-bladed tornado. Bon Bon dropped to the floor and rolled under a row of tables, hearing the wood splinter as the wing-blades ripped into it.

The pegasus couldn't see her behind the table, and Bon Bon made use of this by launching herself into the air, the white sword twirling into the face of a shocked pegasus, cutting it cleanly in half. Yet another reminder on why helmets are so important.

A blade cut into Bon Bon’s left rear leg, she turned to see that the pegasus she had kicked a table into had gotten up and attacked her. The mare’s face was a bloody mess of wooden shrapnel, fragments of table sticking out of her features like a hedgehog’s quills.

Another one of the guards, the one she had parried earlier, charged at her with their wings spread. Thinking quickly, she jumped into the air, pulling the blade in her leg up with her and leaving the pegasus wide open to her companion’s sword.

But the pegasus’ sword wasn’t strong enough to cut through the other one’s armor. Instead, the pegasi slammed into each other, ripping the blade out of Bon Bon’s leg. She had to admit, she did start to reconsider her choice of deactivating her pain inhibitors.

She turned to see the two tangled pegasi; seeing her opening, Bon Bon launched forward with her sword at the ready. In one fell swoop, four pegasi halves fell onto the cafeteria floor. Two loud metallic clangs behind her caught her attention, and she looked back to see the last guard, the one she had dodged first.

She was young, very young. The mare had dropped her weapons and was shaking uncontrollably. Bon Bon sheathed her sword and walked up to the pegasus.

“You, where is the entrance to the military section?” She ordered the trembling pegasus.

“I- I- It’s up th- there,” She said, starting to cry. A shaky hoof pointed at a door that led out of the cafeteria, a sign above them read ‘meeting rooms’.

“Thank you,” She told the guard, turning to leave.

But as she walked, she couldn’t shake the thought of going back and killing the mare, after all, she couldn’t leave any witnesses. Shaking her head harshly, she kept walking towards the door.

Surprisingly, on the other side of the double doors Bon Bon saw a staircase, clearly meant for non-pegasi to reach the meeting area. She trotted up the stairs and quickly called Lyra over her communicator.

“Bon Bon, have you reached the security checkpoint?” The green unicorn asked.

“Checkpoint?” She responded.

“I guess not. The civilian and military sections are separated by a single gate protected by an external magical shield. I’m hiding in the vent next to the gate, there’s two guards and one of those automatons here.” Her companion explained.

“Is there any other way into the military section? Maybe a window?” Bon Bon queried as she kept skipping up the stairs.

Sandbar popped into her view, holding up several books.

“I’m afraid not, we’ve been looking at the factory blueprints, the only access point is that guarded gate,” The earth pony explained before being joined by Ocellus, the changeling’s black head appearing next to the communication officer.

“Indeed, no windows or maintenance shafts,” The changeling added.

“And the gate is magically shielded…” She followed, pensively, “Can’t I cut through the roof?”

Ocellus shook her head before replying.

“Those black clouds are grade four armor clouds, nothing short of Celestia can cut through them. If you want to access the upper area, you’ll have to destroy the shield generator, it should be in an adjacent room.”

“Why is the generator so close to the gate?” Bon Bon asked, it made no sense.

“It is hidden in the armored roof,” Responded Lyra, “Perhaps the distance is needed for operation,”

Bon Bon nodded, but didn’t respond, she had reached the top of the staircase and fallen silent. Her crystal eye didn’t light up the automaton, meaning this one was probably being piloted by a brain. She would need some way of disabling it without killing the brain inside.

The first thing that Caught her eye was the color of the roof. Instead of the grayish tint of the structural clouds that made up the factory, the military section was jet black and packed into something that looked more like steel than a cloud.

Bon Bon stood in a central hallway with four connected doors that led to the different meeting rooms. On the far end of the hall, she saw a double door guarded by a green magical shield, two guards stood there talking to each other, they hadn’t seen her yet.

“Where is the generator, Lyra?” She asked, crouching on the stairs to stay out of sight of the guards.

“It’s in the second door on your right, on the roof at the back of the room. I’ll distract the guards on your mark,” The green mare responded.

Bon Bon crouched and prepared to make a sprint for the door; she was thankful for the cloud floor that would muffle her heavy hoofsteps. Just a quick run and then she would have to destroy the generator.

“Mark,” She told Lyra.

From the vent next to the shielded door came a loud clanging sound, followed by several scraping noises. The two guards whirled around with their weapons ready and stared at the vent, approaching carefully.

Making use of the distraction, Bon Bon sprinted towards the open door. She charged into the room and stopped just as quickly as she had started running. To make sure she hadn’t been spotted, she pressed herself against the wall next to the door and listened closely for the guards. The pegasi were talking over the radio with an operator, but they didn’t seem to have spotted her.

Bon Bon turned to face the far wall and spotted her target, a bright orange triangle in the ceiling, through the black roof.

“How am I supposed to hit it from down here? I thought you said these clouds were basically indestructible?” Bon Bon asked her team.

“You won’t be able to cut a hole large enough for you to get through, but you should be able to pierce it with the tip of your sword with enough patience. Try deactivating the magic limiter,” Ocellus answered.

Bon Bon unsheathed her sword and did as she was told, bathing the clouds around her in the blade’s warmth. She jumped onto a meeting table and placed the sword into her forehoof, standing upright on her hind legs.

“Let’s try this. Lyra, let me know if I have incoming,” She said over the communicator before poking the roof with the white sword.

“Will do,” The green mare replied.

The clouds above were incredibly hard to cut, even though both of Bon Bon’s enhanced legs were pushing against it with all her might it still felt like she was trying to drive a stick through honey.

But the cloud still gave way, slowly at first, but as Bon Bon’s sword grew hotter and hotter it started to dig into the armored plate faster. Agonizingly long seconds passed as she stretched her rear legs until she was almost standing on her hooftips; but at last, the roof gave way and the white sword slammed itself up to the hilt.

A gargantuan energy discharge hit Bon Bon like she had been struck by a lightning bolt, her inner talismans saturated and started to discharge the excess energy into the table below her, scorching its surface. She couldn’t help but scream as the rippling current coursed through what little flesh she had remaining.

“Over here!” Somepony shouted from down the hallway, probably one of the guards.

Bon Bon dropped back onto her hooves, her entire body shaking vigorously as if she was being shocked. Magical energy arched between the artificial muscles in her legs, giving her the appearance of a pony on fire.

She had expected one of the guards to come rushing through the doorway, but instead she was surprised when the wall on her right exploded. The pegasi automaton that had been waiting outside had charged through the wall.

Bon Bon didn't want to kill the brain inside, so she had to make sure to aim her sword at the legs. The white blade had turned a pale yellow as its metal overheated, the sheer amount of energy coursing through it was causing the sword to shoot sparks in every direction.

Almost absentmindedly she slashed at the automaton, fully expecting the sword to bounce off its armor. But the blade was too powerful, instead of a bounce, the sword cut cleanly through the Automaton’s lower half with audible pops as the magical shielding was overpowered.

By some miracle she had managed to miss the brain inside. But she couldn’t take too much time to look before a pegasus charged at her from the hole in the wall. She lifted her sword to parry the wing-blade, but once more the overflowing magic in her white weapon cut cleanly through the entire limb.

Blood splashed onto her face like warm, soothing raindrops, drowning out the agonizing screech of the wounded pegasus. The world came to a halt as Sweetie Drop carefully placed her weapon in her forehoof. The pony she had been fighting lifted their head to face her with fearful eyes, but the white blade was already swinging.

A flurry of cuts fell on her helpless victim, chopping the pegasus into ribbons. Sweetie Drop looked up from the carnage to see the other guard charging at her. With a maniacal laugh, she launched herself forwards with her hind legs, stretching out her forehoof with the sword aimed at the approaching pony.

She slammed the white sword into the pegasus to the hilt, crashing into the guard like a bag of bricks. Both ponies flew into the far wall, effectively pinning the pegasus onto it like a giant butterfly on a corkboard. The guard was unmoving, most likely killed during the impaling, but Sweetie Drop didn’t hesitate to rip the blade out and rain down more cuts like an insane butcher.

“Bon Bon, there are heavy reinforcements coming your way, get through the door, now!” Lyra shouted over the communicator.

Sweetie Drop took the blade back into her mouth and ran to the door, kicking it open to reveal the military section.

Almost immediately she was forced to jump back by the sheer volume of magical beams that fire out of the doorway. The deadly lightshow burned holes through the walls around her, fired from at least eight pegasi automatons.

“You’ll have to push through; the reinforcements are almost on you!” Lyra said.

The double door swung back closed, seeing how the armored clouds stopped the beams, Sweetie Drop got an idea. She ran at full speed towards the door, jumping into the air before reaching it and connecting with all four hooves.

The door may have been armored, but the hinges clearly weren’t. Two black rectangles flew into the group of automatons like a battering ram, scattering them as they tried to dodge. Without wasting a single second, she ran into the military section of the factory, running up the wide ramp where the automatons were struggling to get up.

“Run, Bon! Run!” Sandbar shouted as she dashed between her foes.

A long hallway full of guards stood between her and the entrance to one of the hangars. For more mobility, she sheathed her swords and focused solely on running as fast as her metallic hooves could carry her. With her whole body still buzzing with the power from the shield generator, she became a black blur that darted down the hallway.

Sweetie Drop dodged and weaved through scores of armored guards and automatons, diving pegasi and magical beams flew around her as she kept running and running. The hangar came to an end, but she jumped onto the machinery and flipped into an open gate leading to… somewhere… up, she had to go up.

As she leaped from machine to machine, the excess energy her body was shedding arched onto the metal she touched, leaving electric hoof marks in her wake. Some of the beams hit her, but the talismans within her chest were quick to heal whatever damage she received. She had to go up, higher!

She rose, climbing up another hangar, the world blurred into blotches of color and deafening noise. Eventually she ran out of machines to jump to, but that wouldn’t stop her, Sweetie Drop ran into the wall, her legs moving so quickly that she was able to run straight up.

A large machine was hanging in the middle of the room, possibly a tornado generator, it didn’t matter, what mattered was the several magical beams that struck it as they missed Sweetie Drop. The large device exploded with a gust of compressed wind, thunder and magical discharge, sending her flying through the door she had been running towards.

She flew through the air and into the other hangar just as debris from the machine lodged itself into the opening. Sweetie drop kept going, however, slamming headfirst into the far wall.

Bon Bon shook her head, looking around the hangar. This one was deserted, could it be that she ran past everypony? Machinery buzzed around her, the glowing blue pipes coming out of them tipped her off to what the machines were: lightning bolt generators.

All the impacts and healing had reduced her energy supply back to normal levels, but it didn’t seem like she would be fighting anypony until they managed to get the remains of the machine out of the door.
“Lyra, is there any other way to get up here?” Bon Bon asked, begging that the communicator could reach her friend through the several floors of armored clouds.

“Bon Bon, the signal is pretty weak,” The green mare responded, her voice sounded like she was speaking in a sandstorm, and the video feed was too distorted to make anything out, “The hangars are connected by single doors for easier defense, you need to keep going up,”

“We’ll lose connection?” She asked, concerned.

“Yes, but you should reconnect to your team if you get close to the edge,” Lyra answered.

“Stay safe, Lyra” Bon Bon told her friend before cutting the connection.

The next door was, surprisingly, on ground level instead of high up. The sign above read ‘worker housing’. Bon Bon walked towards it carefully and pushed the door open, revealing another ramp leading upwards. Without a second thought she started walking up the ramp, her mouth already headed for her sword, just in case.

But when she came out of the ramp, she encountered what could only be described as a… town?

Around her rose several single-story houses made of light white clouds, all the doors were shut tight. Above her shone an artificial sun of sorts, bathing the whole area in warm light. Feeling the warmth of the light above felt… wrong… heretical, even, only Celestia should be able to create the warmth of life.

Bon Bon wandered through the fake town, looking confused at the closed houses and the empty market stalls. What was this doing here? The sign said, ‘worker housing’, but could it be…?

Sweetie Drop walked up to one of the houses and gave the door a strong buck, making it fly off its hinges. On the other side of the door, she saw a pegasus mare and a stallion cowering behind an overturned table. Both of them wore weather factory jumpsuits.

“What?” She asked aloud.

Bon Bon turned and walked out of the small house, walking back into the ‘plaza’. Was every house here inhabited? There had to be hundreds of them! She racked her memory for an explanation and remembered an important detail about the weather factory.

When the military section had been constructed, a small village was built inside to accommodate the workers and keep them secure within the armored walls of the upper factory. That meant that this entire area was full of civilians.

She had to get out of there, if the guards below caught up to her here…

No time to think, Bon Bon ran forwards to the door that led to the upper area of the town. She tried to wipe the memory of the pegasi’s scared faces from her mind, it hadn’t been the first time an enemy was scared by her. It almost made her feel like some kind of abomination, scratch that, she was an abomination. A horrid collage of metal and flesh armed with a blood-soaked sword.

“Bon? Do you hear me?” Sandbar said.

The voice shook her out of the trance she had fallen into, Sweetie Drop looked up and saw a double door. She turned and looked back into the bottom section of the town; she could see the pegasi poking their fearful eyes through their windows.

“I- I hear you, Sandbar,” She replied shakily.

“The connection is clearing up, you should be close to the top,” The earth pony said.

“Yeah… great,” Sweetie Drop answered.

Sandbar’s face was heavily distorted, but she could still make out his concerned expression.

“I’m fine, I’ll rescue the brains,” She said, almost in a whisper, before closing the window.

Yet another double door opened before Sweetie Drop, revealing yet another open room. However, unlike the first door she had opened today, there was considerably more blood on her hooves.

The room beyond held a single pony that stood proudly in the middle, surrounded by the Spike automatons she had fought so long ago. The pony in the middle was wearing the same collar that…

“Rarity?” Sweetie Drop exclaimed in shock.

The white unicorn didn’t respond. She looked… unnatural, her whole body twitching slightly. The mare’s mouth was shut, and Sweetie’s crystal eye picked out a metal string, sewing her mouth shut, as well as many other alarming details.

For starters, the desiccated lips and nose that looked as if she were severely dehydrated, and then the eyes, glowing with an unnatural purple tint. This wasn’t Rarity, this was her body.

The unicorn charged at her, spinning the spear that she had wielded in life around her multiple additional arms. She launched forward with her spear at the ready. Remembering the last time, they had fought, Sweetie Drop cached the sharp edge at the end with the flat of her sword.

The metal Spikes charged her, throwing themselves onto her legs to hold her in place. But this time she was ready for them, with a series of backflips and kicks, she managed to get out of the automaton swarm. Several of the spikes were bent out of shape from her powerful kicks.

But she didn’t have time to catch her breath before needing to jump out of the way of the spear. The arms that made it up bent upward to strike at Sweetie Drop, but the aim was just barely off, causing it to glance off one of her lower armor plates.

But the spear flying past her wasn’t satisfied with a miss, and it wrapped around her midsection like a metallic tentacle. Her body went limp as the spear sent her flying upwards.

Rarity whirled around as Sweetie Drop flew, aiming the spear-whip at her head. But with a spin of the head, she managed to parry the hit.

More metal Spikes ran at her when she landed, forcing her to roll out of the way. But she realized too late that she had rolled herself into a corner.

Her reanimated foe jumped at her once more, the deadly spear aimed directly for her heart. Sweetie Drop dodged almost by instinct, rolling to the side of the spear with her sword at the ready. The white blade danced through the air, connecting exactly where she had been aiming: the unicorn’s head.

A horrid, fleshy sound escaped from the cut as Sweetie Drop finished her riposte, the top half of her opponent’s head flying off into the middle of the room.

However, to her surprise, the fight was far from over. Despite missing the top half of her head, the resurrected Rarity turned and attacked once more, striking Sweetie Drop in the side with her whip.

The sudden impact sent her flying into a wall where several Spikes were waiting, she started to buck furiously to get them off her back before Rarity had another chance to attack.

Her undying, half-decapitated, enemy turned to ‘look’ at her. The reanimated flesh within her head started to ooze coagulated blood as the unicorn (was she still considered a unicorn?) attacked once more.

Sweetie Drop parried several spear strikes as she tried to formulate a plan. Clearly chopping her up wouldn’t work… or would it?

She dropped the sword into her hoof, parrying one last spear strike as she angled herself to attack. The first strike hit the arm collar, chopping a substantial number of the arms off. Another hit, this time on the right foreleg, cutting through the necromancy-infused flesh.

But Sweetie Drop was forced to let up when the remaining arms attacked with the spear again. She rolled back and looked up at her opponent.

The sight before her was, in one word, haunting. Dark black liquid dripped from the cut foreleg and the missing head; the sown jaw was the only remaining feature above the neck area. The arms around her collar twitched slightly like the rest of her reanimated body.

Rarity limped towards her once more, but without one of her legs she was painfully slow. No more Spikes were here, there was no way for her to regain the arms she had lost.
Bon Bon took a step back and stared at her foe, this was wrong, this was horrible. Rarity had made her choice to join these ponies, but that was no reason for them to not let her rest. Why? Why did they do this? Was it to make her turn back?

But she knew she couldn’t simply go back, she was in too deep now, and she was nearly at the finish. She swallowed down her thoughts and bit her sword harder, if desperado wasn’t going to let Rarity rest, she would have to do it herself.

Time slowed as she prepared once more to lay the fashionista to rest. A first slash cut the spear in half, sending the barbed spikes at the ends flying. The second attack cut the harness around her neck down the middle.

Then she started to slowly and methodically work her way through the reanimated body, cutting apart limbs, then the torso, making sure that no piece could move anymore. Bon Bon wiped the necromantic gunk from her blade and looked down at the gore pile she had just finished chopping up.

A purple haze emanated from the body as the last of the magic keeping it in the land of the living dissipated.

“Go back to the afterlife and rest…” Bon Bon whispered after resheathing her sword.

She took a moment to pay her respects before lifting her sight back to the only other door in the room, she was so close, just a little longer.

She got back up and found the room filling with… green smoke?

Bon Bon barely got her sword out in time before the charred remains of Zecore flew at her from the smoke, wooden claws ready to rip into her. Through the green mist she could barely make out what her opponent looked like, let alone where her next strike would come from.

Her question was answered when both claws dug into her left rear leg, ripping out several strands of artificial muscle. This time, however, she caught a quick glance at the blackened zebra. The charred coat and the missing rear legs made her opponent look like some kind of ghost.

Another attack came from directly above, but this time Bon Bon managed to roll out of the way. The smoke had started to dissipate by now, letting her take a good look at the zebra. Where Rarity had been mostly contained to her own body, the zebra was essentially several segments of burned wood floating in a purple necromantic field.

She jumped forward and slashed at the field, her sword passing cleanly through and absorbing a tiny bit of the energy that kept the pieces attached. But she couldn’t dwell on the result before receiving a hard hit in her chest, the hardened wooden claw pierced her front plate, stabbing the flesh beneath.

Bon Bon swiped her sword through the purple aura several times, never managing to hit any of the floating segments. Another hit made a gash across her right cheek, coming dangerously close to cutting her crystal eye.

She needed range, and she needed it quickly. She tried backflipping out of the way but found herself being attacked once more by the floating claws, but that’s when Bon Bon noticed something, the purple haze still connected the segments together. Whenever the zebra stretched its claws towards her, they were still linked to the general field that encompassed the rest of her body.

An idea formed in her mind, all she had to do was wait for the opportunity to test it. The zebra gave her the opening she needed with a claw attack, Bon Bon sidestepped and wrapped her forehooves around the wooden appendage, pinning it against her chest.

The unnatural necromantic energy pulled on the claw, but Bon Bon’s steel muscles held it firmly against her chest. And now for the next part of her test, her rear legs tensed, and she jumped backwards. A smile tried to force its way through the hilt in her mouth when she saw the rest of the field being pulled towards her.

An overhead swipe forced her to release the claw and jump back, but she already knew what she needed to do. Every part of her plan fell into place to assemble the full picture.

The zebra spun and flew at her in a tornado of purple and black, both claws headed directly for Bon Bon’s neck. Time slowed as she rose to her rear hooves, slipping just barely out of the attack’s reach. But before the zebra could try again, she slammed her forehooves hard into the two floating claws, pinning them to the floor below her.

The other fragments tried to pull back, but Bon Bon’s full weight crushed down on the claws and didn’t let up. However, the zebra, or the magic controlling her body, hadn’t realized that it wasn’t just the claws that were pinned in place.

Bon Bon craned her neck to the side and held her sword only by the pommel. With a great heave, she threw the white blade directly at the floating wood segments. The zebra tried to dodge but discovered too late that it couldn’t move.

With a low whistling sound, the sword flew towards her opponent and struck true, biting deeply into one of the zebra’s chest sections. The attack itself wouldn’t kill her, but the enchantment on the pommel would.

She was proven right when the zebra started to emit a horrible screech as the sword started to drain its magic. It spazzed around desperately, slamming itself into the ground several times to try and get the sword out of the field.

But Bon Bon held strong, keeping the claws down as they pulled to try and get away. Her opponent became more erratic, now taking to hitting the sword with its other fragments, but it was all in vain. Before long, the field lost its glow, dropping several fragments onto the floor.

“Gotcha,” She said when the last piece fell to the floor.
She trotted up to the zebra’s remains to retrieve her weapon, resheathing it quickly. The door that led further into the facility opened behind her; it seemed she was being expected.

The room beyond was dark until she stepped inside. As soon as her metallic hoof made contact with the floor, a series of large columns lit up around her, illuminating the entire open room. On the far end, standing proudly on an elevated platform, was Big Macintosh.

“Ah! The candy mare! Glad ya could join’ us!” He boomed, “The class is in session, ah believe ya know the royal guard code? We use a… revised version, simulate it directly into their brains, it's like a dream!”

“They’re foals, you bastard!” Bon Bon shot back.

“And foals, are cruel” Mac replied, walking up to one of the pillars, “They just lose touch with it when they get older! They start tah think they know better, harmony-this, war crime-that; but foals can be conditioned tha serve a greater purpose!”

“What are you talking about? What greater purpose?” Sweetie Drop was starting to get angry at the red stallion.

“Ah mean progress, Bon! Think!” Mac opened up the pillar he was standing next to, pulling out a jar with a brain inside, “With these super pegasi, we can crush those awful bugs! We just need an excuse to make ‘em! Get our ponies off tha front line n’ back in factories tah push Equestria forward! If we don’t do it, our enemies will,”

Sweetie drop walked slowly towards the platform; the sheer insanity of the stallion’s words made her feel like she was about to burst into flames.

“And what happens when you defeat the changelings? When the war is over?” She asked.

“Then we rebuild, we use this here factory to send rain tah farms! We use the pegasi to make great cities! Can’t ya see it, Bon?” The Stallion asked with a wide smile. He placed the jar back into the pillar before laughing and turning to face her again, “It won’t matter in three hours anyway. Demand for super soldiers is about tah skyrocket! Like the good ol’ days after Nightmare Moon’s return!”

The stallion’s words made her stop in place, three hours? What were they planning? She looked up angrily at Big Mac, arching her head back to draw her sword if needed.

“Three hours?” She asked, or rather, demanded.

“Not here, let’s go somewhere more… open,” The red earth pony responded before turning around and running.

“Get back here!” Sweetie Drop bellowed before launching towards the stairs.

She ran onto the platform and reached another open door with a staircase leading upward. Seeing a staircase after so long in the weather factory was… strange, but she still ran towards it.

“Bon! you’re back!” Sandbar said, excitedly, “Are you on the roof? What is going on?”

“I’m chasing down Mac… he said something is going to happen in three hours,” Sweetie Drop replied.

“Something like what?” Yona asked from behind the earth pony.

“That’s what I’m going to make him say,” She responded before cutting the channel.

The stairs ended in an armored double door with the words 'chariot landing area’ painted on it. Next to the door stood a disabled magical shield generator, clearly Mac wanted to fight, and Sweetie Drop was practically buzzing with the need to chop chop chop.

With a mighty buck, the door went flying out onto the open landing area. Big Mac stood in the rain, smiling at her as she walked towards him. The earth pony was wearing the same armor he had worn in Saddle Arabia, only this time he had a series of metallic limbs attached to his back, akin to Rarity’s collar. Each limb held a rectangular shield covered in smaller blocks.

“How's this? We can rassle up here without hurting those poor fillies!” The red pony said in a mocking tone,

“What happens in three hours, Mac?” Sweetie Drop asked, barely biting back the rage in her voice.

“It don’t matter, yer too late! Not even the wonderbolts could get there in time!” Her armored opponent said, clearly enjoying the words, “B’sides, why are ya so worked up about this? It’s just progress!”

She stopped her approach just a short distance away from the red pony, tensing her body for the approaching fight.

“Progress means nothing when your ideals are evil!” She pointed a hoof at Macintosh.

“Bah, ideals-this or ideals-that. Ideals are good and all, but ya can’t plow a field with ‘em,” He answered, “Enough talk! Ah’m gonna take mah sweet time killing you, slow and painful,”

The shields on his back extended to cover his sides and chest, revealing the twin magical machetes on his sides, the same ones he had killed Haakim with.

“Like ah said, foals are cruel, Bon; and ah’m very in touch with mah inner colt!” The stallion bellowed.

Sweetie Drops unsheathed her sword and fell into a fighting stance. Mac unsheathed one of his machetes and crouched down like a monster ready to pounce.

With a muffled ‘yee haw!’, the red stallion charged directly at Sweetie Drops with his massive magical blade aiming directly at her chest. She thought back to her combat training, Mac may be strong, but that made him slow and prone to leave openings in his defense.

The machete swung over her head as she dodged and angled her own sword to strike his unprotected throat. But one of the shields on his chest moved up to block her attack, intercepting the white blade and-

White light blinded her crystal eye as Sweetie Drops went flying backward and rolled on the roof. She got up, dazed, and barely managed to focus before seeing the machete headed for her face. By some miracle, she managed to place her sword between her face and the approaching weapon. While the sword stopped the deadly edge, it did little to limit the sensation of being struck by a sledgehammer that came with parrying the blow, sending her sliding across the roof again.

“Bon Bon!” Ocellus called over the communicator, “Those shields are covered in recharging reactive armor, keep your sword away from them!”

That explained the explosion, but how was she supposed to defeat him when she couldn’t hit him? Macintosh moved his shields to form a wall in front of him and charged at Sweetie Drops while screaming through the machete’s hilt.

She rolled out of the way of the charging stallion, just barely avoiding the explosive plates on its surface. Mac seemed to enjoy the game of cat and mouse, and he sheathed his machete before charging at her with the shield wall again.

“You can’t touch me, Bon!” She shouted as he charged again.

Sweetie Drops responded by charging at the red stallion herself. The two ponies crashed into each other, Mac’s immense strength and special armor beating Sweetie Drop’s artificial muscles and forcing her to slide back as she planted both her forehooves on the shield wall.

She screamed at the earth pony as she pulled on the wall with all her might, slowly forcing the shields apart. With one last gargantuan pull, she spread her forehooves out and split the shield wall down the middle.

The two bottom shields, the ones she had been holding, went flying wildly to the sides. She took her sword and focused, but the other four shields were still covering his body too much to cut through them. Yet another target caught her eye: the arms holding the shields she had spread apart.

Two vertical cuts slammed through the steel limbs that held the shields, causing them to fall onto the roof. Macintosh roared in anger, splitting the other four shields and giving her a massive headbutt. Sweetie Drops was too dazed to parry the shield that flew towards her head, but it was enough to trigger her shielding.

The magical covering absorbed the brunt of the explosion, but it didn't do anything to stop the rectangle of magical steel from slamming into her. She managed to flip in the air and land on her hooves, but her view was still blurry from the heavy impact.

Mac charged her with a machete again, forcing Sweetie Drops to backstep several times to avoid the flurry of blows. Every time she dodged, she took a few instants to try and find an opening, but was forced to fall back frustrated when the shields moved to intercept every angle.

As a last-ditch effort to force an opening, she ducked under a machete swipe and gave a strong buck to the closest shield, praying silently that her steel hooves weren’t enough to set the explosives off. To her great relief, the shield not only didn’t explode, but instead went flying into the air, barely held by the steel limb beneath.

She took the opportunity to spin and cut the arm. When she landed, she was met once again by Mac swinging another one of his shields at her, but instead of withstanding it, she threw herself back and out of the way, revealing the arm that had swung it. One cut, one less arm.

Sweetie Drops backflipped away from a machete swipe, but this time, Mac stood in place instead of pressing the offensive, he seemed furious.

“Ah’ll split you in two!” He shouted, throwing his machete into the air and unsheathing the second one.

With a massive jump, Macintosh launched himself into the air, throwing his machete into his forehoof and catching the one in the air with his free limb. Sweetie Drops rolled back to avoid the attack, seeing how the machetes stabbed into the clouds below.

Mac stood on his hind legs and started swinging both machetes wildly, forcing her to backstep repeatedly until she was almost at the edge of the building. The red stallion roared and placed his machetes on top of each other, forming the V shape he had made in Saddle Arabia.

Sweetie Drops rolled to the side to avoid being caught by the twin blades. Mac gave her a wide grin and closed the blades together, ripping out a section of the roof and throwing it at her. She managed to kick the reinforced cloud out of the way, but the cloud itself was a distraction for Macintosh to charge her.

The open scissor-blades were aiming for her neck. She barely ducked under them, losing part of her mane in the process. She tried to attack but found the last two shields to be blocking her every attempt.

But maybe she didn’t have to avoid the shields, what if…

With a defiant battle cry, she charged at Mac, holding her sword horizontally.

“Ah’m buckin’ invincible!” The stallion shouted back as he charged her with his shields.

Just before the blade met the explosive armor, Sweetie Drops let her neck go limp and sidestepped just a bit. When the shield detonated, it whipped her head around so fast that it would’ve popped her head clean off if her neck hadn’t been reinforced.

The sword sliced in a circle before stabbing directly into his unprotected shoulder on the opposite side of the shield. Macintosh let out a pained cry and jumped back, clearly dazed by the pain.

She pressed the advantage, jumping in circles around the red pony and raining down a flurry of cuts and stabs, Mac tried desperately to cover himself with the remaining shields, but he couldn’t focus enough to move them correctly.

Sweetie Drops pushed him back until he stood at the edge of the building, bleeding from a dozen wounds and breathing heavily. The blood that had splashed onto her only fueled her bloodlust.

“You… little… b-” Macintosh started, but Sweetie Drops interrupted him with a demented shout, jumping at the wounded stallion.

Mac lifted his machete to block, but she wasn’t planning on hitting him with her sword.

Like a bag of bricks, Sweetie Drops slammed into her opponent, kicking him as hard as she could. The red earth pony hadn’t been expecting a kick and wasn’t prepared to find himself falling into the void below.

Big Mac’s echoing shout died out as he fell further down the side of the factory. It was done, Bon Bon resheathed her sword, falling to her knees in exhaustion.

But she had to jump back to her hooves when a massive black figure flew up from the edge of the factory. One of the pegasi automatons, carrying Big Mac in its hooves. The red earth pony was practically foaming at the mouth.

“Enough fun, now die!” He shouted before throwing both of his remaining shields at her, or more specifically, under her.

The shockwave from the shields sent Bon Bon flying off the edge of the building and into the void. That’s when she saw all the small groups of automatons that were filling the air around the factory. Thinking desperately, she angled her body to slam into the factory wall and start slowing down, scanning the pegasi to see if any of them were autonomous.

A triangle lit up around one of the automatons, jackpot. She jumped off the factory wall and towards the flying pegasus, praying to Celestia that she hadn’t miscalculated the jump in her hurry.

But her fears were unwarranted, as proven by her slamming into the automaton with the sword at the ready. Thankfully, the pegasus was unshielded, allowing Bon Bon to disable her sword’s magic limiter and pierce the thing’s central talisman.

Her eye immediately came to life with a live feed of the automaton’s view, she could feel the wings on her back and the wind blowing in her face as if she were the one flying. She made the automaton pull up and fly back towards the top, nearly scraping the black wall of the weather factory as they climbed.

She reached the top to find a shocked Macintosh, wide-eyed in disbelief as Bon Bon reappeared from the void and flew directly at him. With a single thought, she forced the automaton to fire its eye-lasers at the pegasus carrying Big Mac.

“Sweet Celestia!” Mac shouted, shielding his face from the incoming attack.

The automaton exploded, sending the wounded earth pony flying towards Bon Bon. With a quick spin, she cut the red pony in half at the waist, the superheated edge of the sword cauterizing the wound instantly.

Both halves of Big Mac and Bon Bon landed back on the chariot landing zone. With one practiced movement she resheathed her sword and turned to face her defeated opponent.

“What happens in three hours Mac?” She demanded.

“He…” the wounded stallion replied weakly, “Will start… operation… Tecumseh,”

“What is that? Give me a clear answer, dammit!” Bon Bon shouted.

“Ah… said too much,” Macintosh replied, “Ah need tah… make a call,”

A window appeared in her sight; Mac must’ve been using an open frequency for the call. Another window opened with the name ‘Jetstream’ on it.

“Mac? Mac! What happened, Mac? Talk to me!” The voice of Applejack came over the communication link.

“She’s… good, sis… real good,” The red pony said, “Ah’m sorry ah failed… keep… keep the family safe for me,”

“What? No! Mac!” Applejack said, her voice breaking down, “Get up Mac! Macintosh!”

The mare started to sob, repeating her brother’s name almost like a prayer.

“Bye… sis,” The red pony said, cutting the link.

Even though the communication was cut, Bon Bon could’ve sworn she heard the voice of Applejack calling out her brother’s name.

She took a moment to stare out on the horizon, her battered body had seen better days, but she knew that there was one more problem to deal with.

“Yona? Sandbar?” She asked into her communicator.

“We’re here, Bon, we’ve been trying to figure out what they’re planning,” Sandbar answered.

“Find out anything?”

“Yes,” Yona interjected, “He said they needed excuse to push the metal pegasi, we think they’re trying to start another war!”

“What? Where? He talked as if it were far away,” She said, lifting a hoof to her chin.

“That’s what we’re worried about,” Sandbar said gravely, “The queen is going to arrive at Zebrica in two hours, if something were to happen to her…”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence, an attack on the princess would have the entire population up in arms and ready to receive any form of military technology. But Zebrica was too far, she would never make it there in time. What could she do?

An idea popped into her mind.

“Is the queen’s pupil in Ponyville?” She asked quickly.

“I’m… not sure?” Sandbar replied, “Why?”

“Last I heard she was working on long-range teleportation. It's a wild bet, but it's the best we have!”

Another window appeared, containing Ocellus.

“Good thing your transport is here! Heads up!” She said.

Bon Bon looked to the sky and saw the black figure of the changeling pulling a small chariot. Ocellus landed triumphantly on the small runway, spreading out her bug like wings.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting a changeling chariot,” Bon Bon said, jumping onto the vehicle.

“Ponyville isn’t far from here, we didn’t have time to get a pegasus,” The changeling replied, defensively.

“I’m not complaining, doc” She said with a small chuckle as the chariot took off.
The changeling pulled the wooden cart through the air at high speed, immediately making the factory shrink in the distance. But as they flew, Bon Bon saw that several of the automatons in the area had turned directly towards them.

“Uhhhh, doc? We have a little problem here,” She said, causing the changeling to arch her head back and look behind them.

“I see!” She replied before going into a dive.

The horde of automatons behind them opened fire, filling the air with lights. Ocellus went into a spin, forcing Bon Bon to grab onto the edge of the chariot. A barrage of lasers shot by them, some of them striking and burning holes in the wooden cart.

A hit struck Bon Bon’s foreleg, forcing it off the edge of the chariot and leaving her hanging by a single hoof. More beams struck the chariot, the sheer volume of fire started to rip parts of the cart off.

Ocellus started to fire back, her horn firing green beams into the swarm of pegasi behind them. She was clearly firing blindly, however, and most of the beams missed their target completely. Even when the beams did connect, all they did was deflect off the automaton’s shields, those things were built for combat after all.

Several pegasi surrounded the cart, flying closer and closer to aim better as they showered the chariot with bolts. Ocellus kept desperately performing evasive maneuvers to try and dodge as much of the incoming fire as possible.

But it wasn’t enough, half of the cart had been shot off, and the changeling hadn’t been hit by sheer luck. And their luck was about to run out. Bon Bon turned to see a pegasus diving directly towards them, its eyes charged and ready. A green beam from Ocellus bounced off its head just before the pegasus slammed into the chariot like a cannonball.

Bon Bon desperately tried to hold onto the edge of the cart, but it had disintegrated between her very hooves, slipping out in a rain of splinters. She looked up and saw Ocellus turning to watch her fall before being forced to dodge the rain of lasers. The changeling dived and wrapped herself in a green glow, taking the appearance of a pegasi automaton and mixing into the swarm.

She, on the other hoof, wasn’t lucky enough to have mimetic abilities… or wings.

“Get out of here doc!” She shouted into the communicator, hoping that the changeling could hear her over the roaring wind, “I’ll find another way to Ponyville!”

“I can’t do anything to help, Bon Bon, good luck,” Ocellus replied, the window in her view showing a pegasi automaton instead of the changeling’s black carapace.

The swarm closed in around her, filling her sight with lasers. In a last-ditch effort to avoid being fried, she triggered her shield and desperately tried to find a place to land and not die. Her eye locked on a group of fluffy clouds that somepony had left outside a building, with a simple flex of her legs she turned to dive towards it.

But one of the pegasi had other plans, slamming into her like a battering ram and sending her flying into a building. The last thing she saw was the cloud wall of the building as she slammed through it.

Author's Note

Hello again, as you may have noticed, this chapter is very late.

This one in particular has been difficult to finish due to a very long list of real life issues that no one really cares about, the biggest problem is that it set the publishing back almost two whole days.

In any case, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Next one should be ready in the next 7-10 days.

The sun as our witness

Bon Bon regained consciousness and found herself firmly lodged inside a cloud-wall. Her head was hanging out of a ceiling into some pegasus’ living room, she tried kicking back with her hind legs and felt… nothing?

It seemed her hindquarters were sticking out on the other side of the cloud. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since the pegasi hadn’t found her yet. Bon Bon placed her forehooves on either side of her body, pushing against the cloud and slowly climbing out of it.

Her reinforced hooves landed softly on the floor. She lifted her head to look out the window on the wall, where the light of Celestia’s glorious sun was shining into the building. Nothing seemed to be damaged, who would’ve said that a building made of clouds would be good at breaking falls?

Bon Bon jumped back from the window when a black shadow passed by it, one of the automatons, most likely. She would need to find a way to get out of this city and get to Ponyville before… how long had she been out?

“Bon! You’re back!” Sandbar blasted through her communicator, “What happened?”

“I got… sidetracked” She replied, “Is Ocellus okay?”

Sandbar went silent for a while before responding.

“She’s wounded, but she’s hiding as one of the pegasi, they’re circling the building you're in”

That was strange, Bon Bon would’ve thought the automatons would rip the building to shreds looking for her. But then again they were probably enchanted to avoid damaging the city too much, she was cornered after all.

“How can I get to Ponyville?” She asked the earth pony.

“I’m working on it, maybe-” Sandbar began answering before being cut off by Lyra.

“Bon Bon, I have made it out of the weather factory. I know a way for you to get to Ponyville.” The green unicorn said.

“How?”

“At the edge of the city there is a tourist spot equipped with gliders,” Her companion finished.

That could work, but it didn’t solve the more pressing issue… How was she supposed to get out of this building? Bon Bon took another glance out the window, spotting several armored pegasi accumulating in the streets below, forming a barricade.

“How will you get there, Bon?” Sandbar asked, “You are completely surrounded”

“Well my plan was to simply run very fast in a straight line” She answered with a smirk.

Sandbar gave her a concerned glare, clearly unsure as to whether or not she was being serious.

“Be careful, Bon,” He said before closing the link.

Now, back to the problem at hoof… how could she get through all the pegasi waiting for her outside? Maybe she could make a distraction to slip past the blockade. The department she was in was almost completely empty save for the couch and small table. It didn’t look like anypony lived here, or at least not yet, there were multiple cardboard boxes around the room.

An idea sparked in her head, maybe there was a way for her to sneak out of this mess. Bon Bon dug through the boxes looking for one that wasn’t too full before finally coming across her prize: a box full of nothing but a long golden cane with a unicorn’s head at the end.

She took out the weird object and left it on the couch before turning to look at the large box it had been stored in. As a test, she kicked the box into the air and let it fall onto her, making sure that the edge touched the floor when she crouched. Perfect.

Bon Bon walked over to the apartment door and opened it, looking out into the hallway to make sure nopony was there. Then she made her way down the stairs towards the street level, bringing the box along. Once at the base of the building, she considered going out the front door, but decided against it and walked towards the wall instead.

Her white sword flashed twice, making an X shape on the wall and opening a hole in the wall that led into an alley.

“What are you thinking, Bon?” Yona asked, popping into her view with a confused face.

“I’m improvising,” She answered, putting the infallible camouflage on.

The yak didn’t say anything, she just stared blankly at Bon Bon as she crawled out of the building. She gaited slowly onto the sidewalk, looking out through a small hole on the side of the box.

There were at least two dozen pegasi guarding this street; she would have to be very careful to sneak past them. She lifted the box ever so slightly and crawled down the street, heading directly for the nearest pegasus guard.

She saw how the pegasi had set up a series of metal barricades to cut off any chance of a land escape, but they clearly hadn’t been expecting her to attempt stealth from such a precarious position. The guard she was approaching turned in her general direction, forcing Bon Bon to stand completely still for a few moments as the gaze passed over her camouflage.

Bon Bon reached the nearest barricade, passing by the clueless guard that had their eyes firmly locked on the building she had just left. Thanking the pegasi for their cloud streets with excellent sound absorption, she crawled through the triple layer of barricades.

Another pegasus looked her way, but after a few instants of stillness the mare seemed to decide that the pony-sized cardboard box that wasn’t there before was no reason for alarm. She passed the second barricade layer, just one more and she would be one step closer to escaping this place.

She crawled to freedom and almost made it past the last barricade when a voice made her freeze in place.

“Umm is that box moving?” A stallion said from above her, Bon Bon had forgotten that most of the pegasi guards were, in fact, flying.

“What?” Another voice answered, somewhere to the left of the first.

“That box,” The first voice repeated, most likely pointing at Bon Bon, “I’m pretty sure it moved,”

A large bead of sweat rolled down Bon Bon’s reinforced spine as she heard flapping get closer.

“What? Are you seeing things again, Gust?” Came the reply.

“No I’m not seeing things! I know it moved!” The stallion sounded angry.

More flapping sounds joined the two above them; if more pegasi gathered around her, Bon Bon would have a hard time fighting them off.

“What’s going on here?” A gruff-sounding mare asked.

“Gust is seeing things again,”

“No I’m not!” The stallion, Gust, replied.

A drawn out sigh came from the direction of the mare.

“Gust, have you been drinking again? Be honest,” The gruff voice demanded.

“No! And I know that box moved!” The stallion exclaimed, exasperated.

Bon Bon heard one of the pegasi land next to her. She had to use every last bit of self-control she could to not spring into action right then and there.

“This box?” The gruff-voiced mare asked, giving Bon Bon’s camouflage a tap.

“That’s the one captain,” Gust said quickly.

Bon Bon heard hoofsteps go around her. Eventually, the captain came around to the side of the box that she was using to see. The mare had a deep blue coat and stared at her with a raised eyebrow.

“It doesn’t move a lot, does it?” The captain said, lifting her head to look at Gust again.

“B-but I swear I saw-” The stallion tried to say but the captain cut him off again.

“Gust, go drink some water and clear your head, you’re not well,” She said.

The stallion said nothing, and judging by the hurried flapping leading away from them, he had left to follow his orders.

“Okay everypony, back to your posts!” The captain barked.

A chorus of ‘yes ma’am’s erupted around them before the guards fell back into position. Bon Bon slowly let out the breath she had been holding, making extra sure that the alert had passed.

She gave a tentative step forward, trying to move as slowly as possible, but she picked up the pace when she realized nopony had been alerted. The cardboard box that covered her bobbed up and down as she crawled past the last barricade.

Bon Bon threw the box off her back as soon as she got a reasonable distance away from the guards. She stood in an alley just one block away from the building she had crashed into.

“I… I honestly can’t understand how that worked,” Sandbar said, holding his head with his hooves.

“I told you I was a master of stealth,” Bon Bon replied, “Now, where is the glider, Lyra?”

“Keep going down the street you are on, I’ll meet up with you when you’re closer,” The green mare responded.

“Will do,” Bon Bon said before closing the link.

She made her way down the street, sticking to the shadows to avoid being spotted by the automatons flying overhead. The going was painfully slow, and Bon Bon could feel how every second ticked away from her time to save the princess, but if she were forced to fight off guards she would only lose more time.

Fortunately it seemed the guards were all focused on the building she had escaped, the only ponies around were the automatons, and they were nowhere near as alert as living guards. She just had to focus on getting out of here as quickly as possible.

A door was kicked open next to her, immediately making her draw the white blade and crouch into a fighting stance. A pegasus guard walked out, his helmet held firmly under a wing to reveal the stallion’s gray head.

The whiskey bottle in the stallion’s mouth fell onto the compressed cloud of the street as he locked his wide eyes with Bon Bon’s. They stood in silence for several seconds before the stallion picked the half-empty bottle and placed it under his other wing.

“You’re seeing things again, Gust,” The stallion said in a mock imitation of the other pony that had been at the barricade.

Bon Bon stared wide eyed at the pegasus as he made his way back into the bar, muttering something under his breath.

But the dark shadow that loomed on the cloud next to her revealed that the little encounter had drawn unwanted attention. She turned her head to the sky and spotted an automaton high up in the sky looking down at her.

Several more automatons started to gather around the first one. Before long, Bon Bon was facing down over a dozen pegasi. Her brain raced to make a plan before opting for the tried and true tactic of running as fast as her hooves could carry her.

The pegasi didn’t hesitate for a second before raining lasers onto the street as Bon Bon zigzagged to try and get away from the swarm. More automatons started to join the flock behind her, some even diving to try and slam into her.

One of the pegasi almost caught her, but one of the lasers that were being fired from above hit its wing and threw it just barely off course. The result being the automaton slamming through the street and into the void below the city.

Another pegasus dove at her but again was thrown off course by a lost beam. Yet, something stood out to Bon Bon, the pegasus wasn’t that close to her when the beam hit it… and the beam had been green.

She peeked up behind her just in time to spot her. Ocellus, still disguised as an automaton, was firing beams at the others to throw them off course. Apparently they hadn’t noticed the impostor in the chaos of battle.

A beam went straight through her left rear leg, throwing her to the ground. She stopped rolling just in time to dodge an automaton, this was bad. A lightshow started above her as her opponents fired down.

Several hits bounced off her armor, but some bit deep into her augmented body causing her to become sluggish. One of the automatons took the chance to charge at the weakened Bon Bon, who lifted her sword weakly and sidestepped the hulking pegasus. She was quickly put on defense as she did all in her power to stay clear of the automatons. Fortunately, there were too many of them to give them free movement.

But she couldn’t dodge forever, especially not when she was being pelted with lasers. One of the pegasi finally struck true, dragging her down the street in its forehooves. But something was strange, she wasn’t being crushed or slammed into the street… She was being carried.

She arched her head to look at her attacker and received a conspiratory wink from a pair of glowing green eyes. Ocellus flew fow a few blocks, the other pegasi had been thrown off by her disguise and had fallen back.

“You’re wounded! Why didn’t you escape?” Bon Bon asked her disguised transport after noticing the green liquid oozing down her forelegs.

“Good thing I didn’t” The changeling responded, her voice a pained whisper, “You’re really heavy,”

“Put me down, and get out of here!” She ordered.

The changeling responded by going into a nosedive, losing the disguise and reverting back to her buglike appearance. Both mares rolled down the street before Bon Bon jumped to her hooves and ran to her fallen companion.

She was still breathing, but there was an awful wound on her left shoulder. Fortunately, it seemed that the beam had grazed her, a direct hit would’ve evaporated the changeling. But she was wounded, and there was probably a large horde of pegasi headed their way.

Bon Bon looked around to find somewhere to hide, but the cloud buildings that surrounded them gave no cover at all.

Her mind was working overtime to try and come up with a plan when a window popped in her view, containing Lyra

“Bon Bon, keep going, you’re almost here,” She said.

“How much further?” Bon Bon replied as she slung the changeling over her back.

“Turn right and then go two more blocks,” Answered the green unicorn.

Ocellus gave a low groan as Bon Bon trotted down the street, at least it was a sign that she was still alive. Just as Lyra had told her, there was a tourist attraction ahead with a large billboard showing a pony using a glider. Lyra was already standing outside with two gliders and gesturing for her to hurry.

“How do we take Ocellus?” Bon Bon asked the green mare.

“With this,” Lyra answered, levitating a harness, “I’ll tie her to me and glide to safety,”

A piercing screech came from above them, and Bon Bon looked up to see a pegasus automaton flying towards them. Could she go just five minutes without having to fight?!

“Go!” She told Lyra before unsheathing her sword.

The green mare got to work on carefully tying the wounded changeling to herself and the glider as Bon Bon faced down the automaton. The metal pegasus dove at her and forced her to dodge, her damaged body barely managing to roll out of the way.

But the pegasus didn’t stop, instead barreling towards Lyra and Ocellus. The unicorn mare responded with her unnaturally fast reaction time, launching her heavy frame at the charging automaton and stopping it in its tracks.

Lyra ducked under a wing swipe and responded with a barrage of knives that deflected off her opponent’s armored side. The green unicorn jumped over the pegasus to avoid a dive attack, her chainsaw sliding off its back plates. But the automaton changed targets once more to face the glider and the wounded Ocellus.

“No!” Bon Bon shouted, charging at the automaton, but she was too slow.

Lyra, however, wasn’t. A green blurr launched itself into the path of the laser, absorbing the full force of the attack to protect the fallen changeling. The green (Or rather, black) mare went flying backwards and fell next to the glider.

Bon Bon reached the automaton and gave it a furious buck on the side, throwing the metal pegasus into the air. But her foe spread its wings and stood still in the sky, its eyes glowing menacingly.

Like she had done in the sewers all that time ago, Bon Bon twisted the hilt in her mouth to make the flat of the blade face the automaton and braced it against her shoulder. The twin magical rays collided with the white blade, reflecting back at the pegasus who fired them, but the constant movement of flight threw her aim off.

The sound of magical shields collapsing filled the air as the beams flew straight through the automaton’s right foreleg and wing, blowing the machine apart at the shoulder joint. The pegasus fell to the clouds, stunned at the sudden loss of its mobility, leaving itself wide open for Bon Bon’s charge.

A single stab of the white blade aimed directly at the automaton’s talisman was all it took. The magical energy that coursed through Bon Bon was a welcome change to repair her battered body.

“Bon Bon, we must leave now” A badly damaged Lyra said, pointing at the sky behind them.

The sky above Cloudsdale looked like an enraged beehive, and it was all headed towards them.

“Great idea! Leaving now!” Bon Bon said as she trotted over to the other glider, “Are you sure you can carry her?”

She pointed her hoof at the unconscious changeling hanging to the unicorn mare by a harness.

“Don’t worry, now go!” Her friend answered before jumping off the edge of the cloud.

Bon Bon tied her forelegs to the other glider, making sure that the straps were firmly tightened, and took a deep breath. With a jump, she launched herself over the edge and felt the wind blowing into her face as she sped towards the ground.

She saw a dot in the distance, Lyra was speeding towards Ponyville even faster than her, at this rate she would make it in no time. Bon Bon took a glance back and grew alarmed when she saw the flock of automatons coming after her, they were catching up.

“Bon! Are you there?” Sandbar asked through the communicator.

“I’m here, but they're catching up, I’ll try to land quickly!” She said back, screaming over the roaring wind.

“No need Bon, look to the sky!” Sandbar responded with a wide smile.

Bon Bon eyed the skies around her, confused, before spotting a rare cloud formation coming from the direction of canterlot. A large V shape was closing in at breakneck speed, trailing black clouds of thunder and lightning. Sandbar had probably convinced the army to send out some of the wonderbolts reserves.

The pegasi flew directly towards the approaching horde of automatons, dodging and weaving through the incoming attacks. A clash of thunder clouds and lasers erupted below Cloudsdale as the ponies fought, leaving a window for Bon Bon to continue her escape.

Ponyville appeared on the horizon as she flew through the air, without anyone following them, Bon Bon could take the time to enjoy the flight and think about what would come next. She would need to teleport to Celestia and defend her from whatever Desperado’s plan was. And this was all assuming the queen’s pupil even had the spell.

“I have landed and left Ocellus in good hooves,” Lyra said, appearing in a small window.

“Good, I’m almost there,” She responded.

Bon Bon braced for impact as the ground approached, she was still some distance away from Ponyville, but she could make it in no time. Her reinforced legs absorbed the impact with no issue and immediately launched her forward in a sprint towards the town.

Her artificial hooves thumped heavily on the dirt path that led into Ponyville. But as Bon Bon approached she noticed two figures standing a short distance from the gate to… Sweet Apple Acres.

A small dust cloud kicked up when Bon Bon stopped in her tracks. Before her stood a peculiar pair, a green unicorn mare… and an orange earth pony. Lyra walked to Bon Bon’s side slowly, she was still badly damaged from the automaton attack she had received.

“You’re not fighting, I take it you got her on our side?” Bon Bon asked, hopeful.

“I couldn’t find out what she wants, but I can assume it relates to her brother,” Lyra replied, turning her head to look at Applejack.

The orange mare stood with a blank expression, but the fire in her eyes was visible even from this distance.

“Bon Bon! Fancy meeting ya here!” The farmpony said, speaking a cheery tone that was too obviously forced.

“Don’t play around, Applejack. You knew I was headed to Ponyville… I guess I should thank you for not killing my friends,” She responded.

The orange earth pony threw her head back with laughter before staring daggers at her once more.

“Not if ya say it like that! B’sides, the only pony I want to kill is you, Bon," She said.

“To avenge Big Mac?” Bon Bon asked, drawing a twitch from Applejack’s eye at the mention of her brother.

The orange mare let out a deep sigh before walking forward slowly.

“Listen Bon, ah don’t blame ya for what ya did to Mac…” The farmpony said, coming to a standstill a short distance away from Bon Bon.

“But…” Applejack continued, “Ah’d be lying if ah said ah won’t enjoy cutting you apart,”

“Is this really necessary?” Lyra asked from the side, looking at both mares as they prepared for the showdown.

“Don’t interfere, Lyra,” Bon Bon ordered, standing tall before the orange mare.

The two mares stood a short distance apart, arching their neck ever so slightly towards the hilts hanging at their side.

“Yee haw!” Applejack bellowed before launching herself at Bon Bon like an orange cannonball.

Orange and white clashed as the magical blades met, Bon Bon parrying the attack and withstanding the incredible strength behind it. She riposted with a stab aimed at the farmpony’s neck, but Applejack jumped out of the way to gain distance.

The orange blade disappeared from view for an instant as Applejack… sheathed it?

A shot of alarm flashed through Bon Bon’s mind when she recognized the move, a phantom pain coursed through her artificial limbs at the point where that same exact technique had severed them.

Applejack’s scabbard exploded, launching the orange blade in a wide arch. Bon Bon parried the attack, her legs digging into the ground from the extra strength, and barely managed to not let her sword go flying to the side.

The orange mare didn’t let up, throwing a flurry of cuts at her opponent. One of the strikes snuck through Bon Bon’s guard, leaving a deep gash in her right shoulder. The beige mare launched forward, keeping her sword horizontal to hit the farmpony’s legs.

But she had to stomp the ground to avoid falling when her attack failed to connect. Bon Bon turned just in time to block an overhead slash from an airborne Applejack; the orange mare had jumped into the air to avoid her white blade.

Applejack landed back on the ground and immediately launched at Bon Bon, screaming wildly as the orange sword left a magical trail in her wake. The beige mare considered blocking it but was unsure as to whether or not she could. Instead, she rolled under the attack and bounced back into her guard stance.

Bon Bon feinted, but Applejack saw through it and gave her a heabutt in response. The orange blade flew through the air towards Bon Bon’s face, but she managed to dodge it by throwing herself onto the ground.

The white blade locked into Bon Bon’s forehoof as she spun wildly on the ground, turning into a beige whirlwind of magical steel. Applejack interrupted her spin by parrying downwards, stopping her spin in its tracks.

But Bon Bon took the sudden stop to launch her rear legs upward, aiming for the orange mare’s head. The sudden attack caught Applejack off guard and forced her to crouch under the kick. She was fast, but not fast enough to completely avoid the hit.

A lull occurred as Bon Bon realized what she had hit. The hat went flying away from the pair, and, in the complete silence of the battlefield, landed with near deafening volume.

Applejack roared, throwing her sword at Bon Bon with a mighty heave. But the weapon was easily deflected aside when not backed by the strength of the farmpony. The orange blade flew back and stabbed itself into the ground behind them.

“Yer dead!” Applejack bellowed before launching herself forward.

Bon Bon was too shocked at the unarmed attack to respond with anything other than lifting her forehoof to block the attack.

The screaming orange missile slammed into her with incredible force, sending her spinning through the air. Bon Bon didn’t get the chance to reorient herself before receiving a brutal applebuck.

By some miracle, her sword remained in her mouth despite the gargantuan impact. The farmpony charged at her again, spewing some unintelligible battle cry. Bon Bon adjusted her position mid-fall to bring her sword back up to bear.

Applejack’s eyes went wide open at the sight of the approaching blade, but she quickly adjusted her charge to duck under the attack. The rush had left the orange mare’s guard down, leaving her side open to a follow-up from Bon Bon.

Yet before the white blade connected, Applejack dropped down to the floor and kicked Bon Bon’s legs out from under her with a spin. The orange mare delivered another strong kick to her side, sending her rolling on the ground.

Bon Bon tried to jump up, but her right shoulder was too weak from the kick. She struggled to get up and managed to make it just in time to see Applejack charging at her again, clearly trying to capitalize on her dazed state.

She was about to raise her sword once more to dissuade the orange mare, but then she decided on a different approach. Bon Bon shook her head and stumbled in place slightly, trying to appear as stunned as possible. Applejack kept running at her, screaming furiously.

Just an instant before the charging farmpony reached her, Bon Bon bit on her sword’s hilt hard and launched herself at her opponent head-on.

The impact was felt by both mares. Bon Bon’s right shoulder was completely popped out of place, sending a shot of searing agony through her. But Applejack wasn’t unharmed either; the white sword had hit her chest and drawn blood, the magical breastplate being the only thing that kept her from being cut in half.

Both mares stood apart, panting. Applejack looked at the cut on her chest before letting out a laugh.

“Mac was right!” She exclaimed, walking back to where she had left her sword, “Ya really are good!”

Bon Bon remained quiet, trying to read her opponent and find the best course of action. Applejack’s attacks were too strong to parry, but she was slow enough to dodge. Her guard was too good to win a direct duel, so the only option remaining was…

Sweetie Drops launched herself at the orange mare, cackling maniacally as she charged with reckless abandon. Her aching shoulder all but forgotten.

The sudden change in tempo from a careful duel into a crazed frenzy took Applejack completely off-guard, allowing Sweetie Drops to get two cuts on the Orange mare’s left leg and shoulder. Once again Applejack backflipped to try and gain distance, but Sweetie didn’t let up.

A beige missile flew at the farmpony, not giving her a moment’s respite. Sweetie Drops’ white blade glistened menacingly in the sun’s light as it came down over and over on the orange mare.

Applejack gave Sweetie Drops a kick in the chest to gain some distance before sitting on her hind legs and placing her blade in her hoof catch. Sweetie responded in kind, sitting a short distance in front of her, blade ready.

Sparks rained on the dirt path to Ponyville as orange and white clashed. Applejack’s incredible strength battling for dominance against Sweetie Drops’ speed and aggression. Both mares received small cuts as the blades found cracks in their opponent’s guard.

Applejack now sported several cuts along her legs and chest. But Sweetie Drops hadn’t been unharmed either, her forelegs were barely holding together.

The orange mare clenched her hind legs for a jump, and Sweetie Drops responded by doing the same. Both opponents jumped towards each other at once, swords aimed at the other’s heart.

As the swords flew past each other, Sweetie Drops angled hers in a way that would knock the orange blade away from her heart while not throwing her own blade too off-course.

The move paid off. Pain exploded in her chest as the orange magical blade went through the side of her chest, barely missing her heart. Applejack wasn’t so lucky, however, and staggered back while bleeding profusely.

“Heh, good-” She started, but was cut off by a coughing fit, splattering blood onto the soil.

The farm pony fell to her knees, panting heavily, before looking at Lyra and giving her a slight nod. Applejack then collapsed onto her side, letting out one last, drawn-out gasp.

Bon Bon sheathed her blade slowly, breathing heavily. The magical residue in Applejack’s armor had been barely enough to get her shoulder back in working shape and stop any major bleeding. Dust flew into the air as she walked closer to her defeated foe.

“She is dead,” Lyra said, walking up to the pair, “was this really necessary? I am certain that if you had talked to her you may have gained a powerful ally,”

“I killed her brother, you of all ponies should know that the apples always fight for each other above all else,” Bon Bon answered, but she had to admit that perhaps Lyra was right.

She took the orange blade out of Applejack’s hoof-catch, looking at it curiously. It was a beautiful weapon, heavier than her own, but just as razor sharp if not more. The hilt was beautifully crafted from fine applewood, emblazoned with the apple family sigil on the crossguard.

“Applejack told me that sword was a family heirloom, enchanted to increase its resistance and power,” Lyra added.

Bon Bon took the weapon respectfully and cleaned it of her own blood carefully before resheathing it in the fallen mare’s scabbard. As soon as the hilt touched the scabbard, a spell triggered and locked it in place, it was probably locked so that only the apple family could use it.

“What should we do?” Bon Bon asked Lyra, looking at the sheathed blade.

“I will take care of her, and I will keep the sword until it can be given back to her family,” Lyra said, “I’ll lay her to rest with her parents, go find the pupil,”

With a nod, Bon Bon continued trotting down the path, her wounded shoulder sending shots of pain with each impact. She was so close now, almost at the edge of town.

Returning to Ponyville after so long felt… strange, like she didn’t belong there anymore. It didn’t help that everypony was looking at her with concern, probably due to her being covered in military armor and wounds.

But there was no time to waste, she had already stalled long enough with her battle. The princess’ star pupil should be in the library.

Bon Bon tried her best to ignore the onlookers as she ran towards the massive Oak building; there would be time for fixing any problems after the princess was saved.

Her steel hoof slammed into the library’s door at least a dozen times before a dazed-looking lavender unicorn opened it.

“Welcome to Golden Oak Library, what can I help-“ The mare started automatically before her eyes shot wide open at the sight before her.

“Bon Bon?!” The mare exclaimed, “What happened to you? Do you need to get to the hospital? Why are you made of metal?”

“Miss Sparkle, I need your assistance, it’s about the queen!” Bon Bon blurted, cutting Twilight’s barrage of questions. The librarian looked as if she had just been dumped into a pool of freezing water.

“The queen? What’s wrong?!” She demanded.

“It’s… classified, actually,” Bon Bon admitted, her ears drooping slightly, “I came here searching for a unicorn that can cast long range teleportation,”

The unicorn muttered under her breath for a moment before looking back up with an understanding expression.

“I can cast the spell… but I need to know why,” She stated, putting her hoof down.

“The queen is in danger, I need to get to the Zebrica capital right now,” Bon Bon explained carefully, “Can you help me or not?”

The mere mention that her mentor could be in danger made the unicorn nod and dash into the library. Several books flew around the room as she dug for the notes she needed.

“Found it!” She exclaimed victoriously from atop a pile of scrolls.

“Great, give me a second,” She said before turning and activating her communicator, “Lyra, come here, she has the spell,”

“On my way,” The green unicorn replied.

“Did you say Lyra? Is she with you? Are-” Twilight started again but was cut off by Bon Bon raising her hoof.

“Don’t worry about it, ask the queen about it later. Just focus on the spell, please, we’re running out of time,”

The unicorn nodded and got to work on reading the scroll. Mere seconds later, they heard a chorus of screaming ponies outside accompanied by heavy stomps headed directly for the library.

Lyra busted into the room through the open door, her coat completely concealed by the armor plating on its underside.

“Is that-” Bon Bon glanced at Twilight, “Yeah, yeah, spell, sorry,”

Bon Bon noticed that Applejack’s sword was hanging from Lyra’s side.

“Are you bringing it with us?” She asked the green mare, pointing at the weapon.

“Yes, I didn’t have time to return it properly so I’ll do it when we get back,” Lyra responded.

That was, of course, assuming they did come back. Given the state they were in, and the fact that they were essentially walking into a trap designed for Celestia… better not think about that now.

“Okay, now the spell is very unstable, so you will most likely be separated from each other when you arrive,” The librarian said, her snout firmly planted in the scroll she had picked up, “Hopefully you won’t be too far away,”

“Thank you, miss Sparkle,” Lyra said, bowing to the queen’s pupil.

“Don’t thank me yet! Thank me when Celestia is safe,” Came her answer.

And with that, the unicorn charged up the spell, her horn glowing like a miniature sun for an instant before firing the beam at Bon Bon and Lyra.

The world went white as she vanished from Ponyville, ready to face whatever new threat was to come.

Author's Note

I’m finally back!

This chapter is MUCH shorter than the previous ones because the mission it’s based on is basically a retread of mission 03 and I didn’t want to add unnecessary padding.

I’m terribly sorry for the extremely long delay and hope you enjoy the chapter, even if it’s shorter than expected. The last one will also be relatively short, since the mission it is based on is not long enough to fit a large story into.

Anyhow, I apologize for any mistakes in the writing and hope you enjoy the penultimate chapter!

Crossed paths, crossed blades

If Bon Bon were asked to describe what the desert was like, she would’ve said that it was a land of extremes. Whether it was scorching under Celestia’s glorious sun or freezing under the blue haze of the nightmare moon; or simply the complete void of life contrasted against the bustling cities of Saddle Arabia. The carriage gave a little jump as they made their way along the road, causing a drop of sweat that had been hiding in her mane to drop down the side of her head.

“I don’t like the desert,” She muttered.

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it” Haakim replied, apparently Bon Bon had to work on keeping her mouth shut.

She looked up apologetically at the larger stallion, but there was no anger in his features. Bon Bon turned to look at the ponies pulling the carriage along the desert road, they were probably hating the desert a bit more than she was. Her thoughts went back to a few days ago when she had received a gorgeous white letter with the golden seal of the queen herself.

Bon Bon had thought that her days of sneaking around Equestria were over once the agency had disbanded, but it seemed that the records being burned hadn’t purged her reputation. Celestia herself had requested her assistance in protecting delegate Haakim on his trip to Canterlot.

And now here she was, miles away from her home in Ponyville, fully decked with her armor and weapons, under royal orders to protect the Saddle Arabia delegate. She did wonder, however, why Celestia would ask for her of all ponies… and why she had asked for “Maximum security”. Ever since they picked up the delegate, Bon Bon and the royal guard garrison had been on high alert, but nothing had happened.

“I must say, I had my doubts about letting the Equestrian guard take charge of my protection, but I see that you spared no expense… Are these…?” The delegate pointed at the golden scales that covered the carriage’s exterior.

“Genuine dragon scales,” Bon Bon replied with a smile, “Nothing short of another dragon can get through that,”

“Splendid,” The stallion smiled.

She eyed the desert landscape, not that there was much to look at aside from the endless dunes. But once more, the extreme dissonance of the desert revealed itself as the barren landscape changed to an urban backdrop. Ponies walked to and fro along the sidewalks, some giving glances at the royal caravan as it passed them.

Haakim cleared his throat, crossing his forehooves, “You don’t look as… rugged, as the royal guards” He pointed out the window at one of the armored ponies for emphasis.

“I’ve been off-duty for some time,” Bon Bon responded.

“I see, I suppose you were some kind of elite guard?” The delegate pointed at her specialized armor.

“Close, I started out with monster hunting… But after some time we realized that the worse kind of monsters wore pony skin,” The echoes of the past started to rear their ugly faces before the little pony in her head kicked them back down.

“Well, given how peaceful Equestria is now, it would seem you’ve done a good job”

Bon Bon gave the delegate a warm smile, it did feel pretty nice to be told something positive about her job in Equestria. She opened her mouth to speak again, but it closed when she felt the carriage stop abruptly. Something was wrong, they should have had half an hour left on their journey. Bon Bon opened the window that separated them from the driver.

“Silver, what was that?” She asked.

The hippogryph driving the carriage turned to look at Bon Bon before replying.

“Somepony is blocking the road ahead”

Bon Bon stretched her neck to look at the front of the caravan, two royal guards had circled around the ponies that were dragging the carriage and stood with weapons drawn in front of an approaching figure.

The pony in question wore an advanced suit of armor, the reinforced metal painted a dull green as opposed to the guard’s golden sheen. Her rear leg stood out due to the black plates covering it, streaked with orange details. But by far the most striking feature of the pony was the blonde mane... and the stetson that was firmly perched on the mare’s head.

“Is that?-" Silverstream started, but she was interrupted by the orange pony’s thickly accented voice.

“Howdy y’all!” There was no doubt about it, the mare standing before the convoy was none other than Ponyville’s very own apple farmer, Applejack.

Bon Bon lifted an eyebrow, what could she be doing all the way out here? The royal guards seemed to be experiencing similar doubts as they kept staring at the orange pony sternly.

“Ah’m under orders tah take mister Haakim off yer hooves” Applejack explained, giving a reassuring smile to the guards.

This was wrong, they hadn’t received any notice of reinforcements, let alone of a transfer. Not to mention Applejack was a civilian. But then a thought tugged on her mind as she focused on the orange pony, the princess had specifically ordered them to remain on high alert.

“Ummm, we’re going to need to see those orders,” One of the guards told the armored mare.

“Do ya? Have I ever lied to y’all?” Applejack responded with a pout.

Bon Bon saw the guard hesitate for an instant, but his years of training shone through as he planted his hoof on the ground and spoke.

“I’m afraid we do, transferring over such an important pony is a rather big deal”

Applejack clenched her jaw as her left eye gave a little twitch. The orange mare tensed her body, poised to attack.

“Well, ah can’t say ah didn’t try diplomacy,” She said.

With a great leap, Applejack launched herself forward towards the pair of guards. The closest one to her, a unicorn, fired a panicked blast of magic at the mare, but the bright bolt went flying to the side after crashing against a flash of orange. The magically enhanced blade in the mare’s mouth flew through the air once more towards the unicorn guard.

The pony tried to fire off another spell, but he was literally cut off as his horn clattered onto the street. He had no time to scream, the sword had struck again, this time across his chest. Two halves of the guard fell onto the floor, surrounded by the clattering of his destroyed armor. With an ease that denoted years of practice, Applejack resheathed the orange blade into the scabbard on her side.

“Ah guess now he’s half the stallion he used to,” She said, turning to give the other guards a wide grin.

“We need to get out of here! Run!” Silver shouted at the guards that were pulling the carriage.

The armored ponies didn’t even nod, they just launched into a full gallop, pulling the carriage behind them. The hippogryph guided the cart through the city at breakneck speed, just barely dodging anypony that happened to be in the way.

“Silver! What happened?” Yona asked through the magical communicator in their ears.

“We were attacked!” Silver shouted, tapping her earbud.

“Attacked?! By who? I bet it was changelings!” The yak said in her thick accent.

“I doubt any changeling would have that sort of gear,” Bon Bon responded into her own communicator.

“This is bad, Bon Bon, defend delegate until we can help”

“Yes ma’am”

The cart turned a hard corner, nearly tipping over, before coming to a stop. Bon Bon turned to look out front and saw several ponies encased in armor similar to Applejack’s. The royal guards that had been pulling the cart drew their weapons, but the harnesses that held them in place would surely spell their doom.

“I’ll hold them off, get Haakim to the closest guard outpost,” She shouted to Silverstream as she opened the carriage door.

“Take care, miss Bon Bon,” The stallion in question said before she closed the door.

The second her hooves touched the road she heard the carriage rushing back the way they had come. The armored ponies that had stopped them started to surround Bon Bon with their weapons drawn. One sword-wielding unicorn and two earth ponies armed with lances, not a problem at all.

“I’ll give you this one chance to run away,” She said, trying to convince the ponies that this wasn’t exactly an intelligent career choice. She gathered by their lack of response that her efforts had failed.

She turned her head to the side, wrapping her mouth around the handle of her magically enhanced weapon. The sword’s white blade slid out of the scabbard smoothly, pulsating with magical energy. Her gaze danced over her opponents, the unicorn was the most dangerous of the group, but if she ignored the other two she could put herself into an even worse situation.

“Stand down!” The unicorn shouted, brandishing his sword with telekinesis, he seemed to be the leader, given how his was the only face that wasn’t encased in a helmet.

No, no she wouldn’t stand down. Bon Bon jumped at the nearest earth pony, cutting the tip of his weapon off before cartwheeling and throwing a kick at the pony’s neck. Her rear hoof connected with the back of her opponent’s head, throwing the pony off balance before they had time to react. The unicorn swung his sword at her, but she turned to catch the blade in her own with a midair spin. The sword must’ve had some magic infused into it given how it only chipped under her white blade instead of being cut in half.

She was forced to backflip out of the way before the second earth pony skewered her. Adjusting the blade in her mouth to face the other way, Bon Bon deflected a second overhead swipe from the unicorn before giving him a roundhouse kick. The unicorn fell to the ground.

Bon Bon lifted her head to stare at the earth pony, it had grown smarter and refused to attack, instead standing a few paces away. Unfortunately for them, however, Bon Bon’s blade wouldn’t break if their weapons met. Determined to prove this, the beige mare launched herself forward making sure to keep the white sword perfectly horizontal. The blade met no resistance, just as intended. Her opponent’s front and rear right legs fell to the floor, the rest of the pony following suit shortly after.

A sound coming from behind her caught her attention, she turned her head to see that the first earth pony had gotten up and was charging at her. Remembering her training, she let herself go limp, letting the armor absorb the dazed buck and rolling to the side before jumping back to her hooves.

One down, one disarmed, and one is still dangerous.

The unicorn attacked first, he was clearly trained on how to fight earth ponies given how he knew the hardest angles to block. But he didn’t know how to deal with an elite fighter, Bon Bon managed to parry his assault with a series of acrobatic flips. There was no way that the unicorn’s sword could keep taking the abuse that meeting her own blade was dishing out for long.

And alas, with the telltale sound of magic expiring, the sword was cut in half by Bon Bon’s. The earth pony threw themselves forward, but a threatening swing of her weapon was enough to dissuade them. She bolted at the unicorn, seeing his eyes grow wide with fear as his body locked up in shock.

With practiced ease, Bon Bon rose onto her rear hooves and spat out her sword. The blade flew until it caught by a specially designed notch in her armor, just above her hoof. Time seemed to slow around her as she focused solely on the white blade that shone between her and her opponent… no, her target.

A flurry of cuts rained over the unicorn, severing horn, limbs, and dividing his torso into small chunks. The world returned to her as she placed her blade back into her mouth, looking away as the remains of the stallion fell to the street. The last pony seemed to consider attacking, but apparently had a change of heart after seeing his commander get chopped up.

“Bon Bon! Are you there?” The yak shouted in her ear.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, resheathing her blade.

“Silverstream is in trouble, they have some kind of dragon with them. Hurry! Bon Bon!”

A dragon? All the way out here? This day was just getting worse and worse. She sprinted towards the guard outpost, remembering its location from the mission briefing in case anything went wrong. Things had, in fact, gone very wrong.

Bon Bon turned a corner and came face to face with what could only be described as a warzone. Carriages were strewn about like a tornado had passed through, long scorch marks decorating the streets and buildings. She heard the sounds of combat somewhere between the piles of carts and darted towards it.

On the other side of the wreckages she spotted the royal carriage, overturned and scorched, but otherwise intact. Around the cart, stood two royal guards fighting off two ponies in black armor like the ones she had fought before. There was no sign of the other two guards that pulled the cart… or Silverstream. She rushed forward to help, but she stopped after noticing a massive black figure jumping off of a nearby roof.

“Look out!” One of the guards, a brown pegasus mare, shouted to her comrade.

The other guard turned his head up just in time to have it slashed in half by a blade at least twice as big as Bon Bon’s. A massive earth pony draped in black armor stood before the pegasus, an ominous blade held firmly in his mouth. The sword itself lacked any sort of decoration, it was a rectangle of magically enhanced steel, a tool for carnage, more than a weapon. A bright orange mane shining over a red coat gave her a clue as to who this new foe was.

With a scream, the pegasus guard took to the sky and charged at Big Mac, aiming at his neck with the blades attached to her wings. The earth pony gave her a big smile before deflecting the blades with the sword in his mouth, then he drew a second weapon from his side, attaching it to a notch in his armor. The pegasus mare tried to spin out of the way, but her wing was caught by the sharpened steel, cutting it clean off.

After losing her ability to fly, the pegasus spun to the ground, barely managing to land on her hooves. But she didn’t get to turn and face her opponent before receiving a gargantuan apple buck to the side. Bon Bon watched as the broken mare flew away, trailing blood from her gaping mouth.

The red earth pony replaced his swords into their respective scabbards before walking up to the overturned carriage. Shortly after he dragged himself out, an unconscious Haakim draped over his back. Even with the delegate’s considerable size he still looked small when contrasted against Macintosh.

“Stop right there! Put him down!” Bon Bon shouted, walking into view of the earth pony.

“Howdy, Bon Bon,” The baritone voice of Big Mac said.

“What are you doing Mac? What do you want with Haakim?”

The red pony took a moment to smile at her before giving his answer.

“Well ah need him dead, nothin’ personal, just orders,”

“Orders from whom?” Bon Bon demanded, “Why are you doing this?”

“Ah can’t tell you who, but ah can tell you the why. There’s only so much me an’ mah sister can do tah keep the family safe, we had tah… find some side jobs. How else is an honest pony s’posed to make a livin’?”

Bon Bon stared at the pony, confused. Who could’ve given an order to assassinate Haakim? Was it even possible to wield enough power to perform such an operation without the queen finding out?

“You don’t have to kill him, don’t do this, Mac,” She tried to reason with the large stallion.

“Oh ah won’t kill him yet, not while we can get somethin’ out of him!”

She weighed her options; she didn’t like her chances of taking down the earth pony in one on one combat, especially with those twin magic blades. but she had to at least try, no one else was available to help the delegate. She reluctantly drew her blade, the white glow bathing the side of her face as she stared down her opponent.

“Eeeenope, ah don’t have time tah kill you too,” The red pony said before pressing a button on his armor.

Bon Bon dropped into a fighting stance as she heard a metallic screeching sound from somewhere downstreet. Yona had said that they had a dragon in the area, but that didn’t sound like any dragon she had ever fought before. Before she could decide on whether or not to continue pressing Mac, a huge figure flew into the pile of destroyed carts next to her.

That thing wasn’t a dragon, it was some abomination of metal and stone, held together by magic unknown to her. It turned its armored head to face her, opening the hydraulic jaws that revealed a kiln of white-hot metal within.

“Oh for Pete’s sake” Bon Bon muttered as she looked at the creature.

Her magical armor propelled her just barely enough to jump out of the way, the beam of magical fire destroying a building on the opposite end of the street. She drew her blade once more, analyzing just how similar this… thing was to a real dragon.

“Have fun now!” Big Mac said before running away laughing.

She wouldn’t be having any of that. Bon Bon made a beeline to Mac, but was forced to jump back to avoid being crushed by a metallic claw. The chase would have to wait until the dragon was defeated.

She turned to get a better look at the creature, clearly, it was some sort of magical artifact. Its entire body seemed to be buzzing with an amber haze of magic, to confirm this, Bon Bon dashed under another sweep and tried cutting the dragon’s leg. As she had expected, the blade she had locked into her hoof bounced off the metal hide.

“I don’t know what pit in Tartarus that thing crawled out of, but you are on your own, Bon Bon, our reinforcements are chasing down Haakim,” Yena told her.

“Oh please, I’ve killed at least five dragons bigger than this one!” Bon Bon replied.

She rolled out of the way to avoid a claw stepping on her, the beast took to the skies for a moment, escaping her reach. She crouched, ready to jump out of the way of any attack as she replaced the sword in her mouth. The creature landed on top of a nearby building, charging up its fire once more, Bon Bon jumped behind a carriage just in time to avoid the scorching inferno.

The dragon flew down towards her, as she expected. Just before the jaws reached her, Bon Bon leaped towards the dragon’s face, launching herself higher by giving a kick to its upper jaw. She aligned her blade with a quick spin, aiming for the biggest weak point of any dragon: the wing membrane. The white edge of her sword bit deeply into the canvas-like wing, leaving a long cut that separated it from the dragon’s body.

The inertia of the jump carried her past the beast, but she had ignored one rather pressing fact… this wasn’t a real dragon. The metallic tail spun around in a way that would’ve broken any real one, catching Bon Bon in midair and sending her flying down the street.

She had to give props to her armor, it somehow prevented the metal tail from ripping her apart. She got up to continue fighting, still dazed from the impact, fortunately, the damage she had done to the dragon was enough to throw it off balance when it tried to fly at her. The metallic creature falling onto its side due to the damaged wing. Bon Bon shook her head to try and get the world to stop spinning.

The dragon recovered, realizing it was grounded, and charged towards Bon Bon in a shadow of sparks as its metal claws scraped off the street. She waited to the last moment to jump aside, spitting her blade into the notch on her right forehoof and aiming it at the creature. The white sword scraped off the dragon’s armor without leaving as much as a scratch. But when she turned to look at the beast she noticed how the amber field that surrounded it had dimmed noticeably where she had struck.

Just as the last time she had done the jumping technique, the dragon’s tail spun unnaturally to slam her into the ground. Only this time, she was ready.

“Gotcha!” She shouted.

She dropped onto her back, lifting her blade to meet the tail. The impact rocked her down to the core and she heard the reinforcements on her armor buckle and break under the incredible pressure of the tail, but it held. Planting both her rear hooves on the metal plate above her she launched upwards with a massive heave.

Pony and tail flew upward. Bon Bon backflipped in the air to face the tail once more and focused on her blade. The first slash glanced off the magically enhanced hide, then another, and another, the amber glow growing dimmer after each attack. After the tenth cut, the glow gave out completely. The white blade bit deeply into the metal beneath, slicing the armor apart with the ease of a hot knife through butter. And after a flurry of cuts, Pony and tail fell back down, only the tail was now falling away from its former body.

Bon Bon rolled along the street, grabbing the sword with her mouth again and lifting her head to look at the creature. It started to charge its fire breath, looking almost… angry.

“Ten cuts,” She murmured to herself.

She charged at the beast, running along the wrecked carts and lines of scorched street. A ray of flame shot out of the dragon’s maw and headed directly at the approaching pony. Bon Bon jumped to the left of the beam, singing her coat slightly under the fire. The dragon turned its head to aim at her, but thinking quickly she jumped off an overturned carriage and backflipped over the beam, landing on the other side.

The fire cut out as Bon Bon closed the last few steps, its white-hot teeth opening wide to grab her. Using her sword as a jumping pole, she dodged the snapping jaws and focused completely on the creature’s neck. Her sword firmly locked on her hoof, she stared at the armored plate that shone in front of her.

Slicing as fast as her body could allow, the beige mare chopped away at the magic covering the plate. As with the tail, after ten cuts the magical protection fizzled out and left a plate the size of two ponies unprotected. Bon Bon watched as her sword bit deeply into the dragon’s neck and smiled wide when she saw the white blade cut cleanly through the next plate, ignoring its magical field. With a shower of magical flashes, she kicked off the dragon’s head and flew towards the stump of its tail, never lifting her sword out from under the metallic hide.

She placed the sword once more in her mouth before her hooves met the street. Turning to see her work, she noticed how the dragon had collapsed onto itself. The large pieces of metal and stone indistinguishable from the debris around it. In the middle of where the creature’s chest used to be shone a large purple amulet, cut cleanly in half.

“Yona, are you there?” Bon Bon said into her communicator after resheathing her sword.

“Did- did you take it down?” The yak asked, incredulous.

“No time for that, where’s Macintosh?” She asked, exasperated.

“Eh… yes, he is making his way to train station, just out of town”

“On my way,” She said before bolting towards the train station.

Her mind was still trying to wrap itself around the fact that the two unassuming apple farmers from ponyville had openly and directly attacked a royal caravan. Going against the queen’s wishes… It was heresy!

If she recalled correctly, the train station should be on the western end of the city, with the sun on her back, she made her way down the deserted streets. It seemed that everypony in the city had hidden from the commotion. The echoes of her ironclad hooves were soon drowned out by the sounds of fighting, and as the sound grew louder she saw that she was just a little too late.

Macintosh stood tall over the slain bodies of at least ten guards, completely unscathed. The blood on his armor had given it a red tint that almost matched his coat. Three royal guards, one of which was gravely wounded, were the only remnant of their forces that stood before the red pony. The sound of an approaching train caused Mac to give the ponies a wide grin before jumping backward onto the moving vehicle.

“No you don’t!” Bon Bon shouted as she galloped towards the train.

Under normal circumstances, Bon Bon would advise against jumping into a moving train, but high treason and murder counted as an exception in her books. Her battered armor held together as she crashed into the wooden wall of the last train car, falling onto her hooves in the empty room. Thinking quickly she turned to the rear of the train, where the city was already shrinking in the distance.

With a kick, the door to the stairs that hung behind the train flew open. She climbed onto the roof, feeling the wind blow through her mane, she took a deep breath and headed for the engine at a gallop. Her hooves clattered against the metal roof of the train cars, pausing every couple of seconds as she jumped from one roof to the next.

Before long, she made it to the first four cars of the train, long, flat cargo cars covered in an assortment of boxes. Bon Bon saw three figures in the furthest car and dropped onto the metal floor. She walked calmly towards the three ponies, making sure to catch her breath in anticipation of the coming fight.

“Look sis, it’s the candy mare,” Big Mac said, looking up at Bon Bon.

Applejack lifted her hat slightly to look at her as she approached. She didn’t appear to be wounded at all, much like her brother. Both ponies stood at either side of a beaten Haakim, his forehooves tied to the sides of a large box.

“Release him,” Bon Bon said, pointing at the delegate.

“Eeeenope, ah told ya already, orders r’orders,” Big Mac said, crouching to meet the bound stallion face to face, “B’sides, a small war with Saddle Arabia would do wonders for us! Think ‘bout it Bon, wouldn’t everypony finally come together tah fight a common enemy?”

“What are you even talking about? We’ve been in harmony for centuries!” She inquired.

“And we’ve grown stale, if it weren’t for somepony that cares about the future ah would’ve lost everythin’. And that same pony has told me that he needs to die!” The red stallion said, pointing back at Haakim.

Big Mac unsheathed one of his swords, locking it into his forehoof, then he unsheathed the second one and placed it on top of his first blade. A magical field enveloped the handles, creating a V shape, which Mac promptly used to catch the head of the delegate. Before Bon Bon could react, the blades closed together, decapitating the unconscious stallion in a single swift motion.

“You bastard!” She bellowed before drawing her own sword and galloping at the stallion.

But her charge was forced to stop when an orange blade attached to an armored hoof crossed her path.

“Mind if ah cut in?” Applejack said, placing herself between Bon Bon and her brother.

Big Macintosh laughed and jumped onto the boxes where the headless body of Haakim was still bound. The scenery around them was starting to change as they approached a mountain range, Bon Bon couldn’t remember where this train was headed, but she was sure that Yona and the others were in hot pursuit.

“All yours sis, ah’ve got a train tah steal,” The red stallion said as he turned and walked towards the engine.

Applejack resheathed her sword and gave Macintosh a tip of her hat before turning to face Bon Bon.

“Well,” The orange mare spoke, “Let’s get this over with,”

Bon Bon said nothing, instead growling around the hilt of her sword. The world fell into darkness as they entered a tunnel, the stone walls interrupted by the occasional lantern.

Their blades met, white and orange sparks bathing the steel floor as the magically enhanced edges clashed. Applejack was clearly fighting defensively, relying on parries and shoves as she watched Bon Bon’s moves with the eye of a hawk stalking its prey.

Her white sword came down towards the mare’s head but was deflected to the side by the orange blade. The farmer pony backflipped onto a nearby box before dropping her sword into her hoof-catch.

“Ah’m gonna be honest, yer fightin’ is decent… but y’all are missin’ somethin’,” She said, rearing up on her haunches.

Applejack leaped towards Bon Bon, barely giving her enough time to place her sword in her own hoof. She dropped onto her back and outstretched her leg to block the orange blade as it came at her body again and again.

It became immediately apparent that Bon Bon was hopelessly outmatched. Not only did her opponent move so fast that she was struggling to follow, but every single attack had so much power behind it that the white sword in her hoof threatened to fly out of its catch.

The flurry of hits stopped as Applejack finished her pass above her. Both ponies got back to their hooves, weapons in mouth. A large bead of sweat fell down Bon Bon’s face, this day was getting too long.

Despite her knowing that this was a losing battle, she didn’t let up the attack. Sparks flew as their blades met, and the two mares danced around each other. A long cut appeared on Bon Bon’s left shoulder; she had been a moment too slow to parry an attack, or rather, she had parried it in such a way that the orange mare’s incredible strength had pushed the blade into her anyway.

Steel met steel again, another cut, this time on her left flank, just barely missing her cutie mark. The two ponies sat on their haunches in front of each other, readying their blades in their hooves. A maelstrom of white and orange danced between them as they engaged in their furious brawl, their blades eventually catching on each other and leaving the mares face to face.

“Ah think ah know what yer missin’!” Said Applejack, she didn’t even look winded, “Yer holding back! Ya won’t win if ya don’t use that thing like it’s s’posed to be used!” She finished, pointing at the sword in Bon Bon’s hoof with her head.

“I don’t use my sword for carnage, I use it as a tool to protect harmony!” She spat back.

The orange mare gave her a mirthless laugh, adjusting her stance as the swords continued to shower the car in sparks. Bon Bon’s rear legs were starting to burn from the awkward position.

“Well ah use mah sword like it’s s’posed to… like a weapon!” Applejack shouted as she lunged forward, the orange sword slid against the one in Bon Bon’s hoof, its magical edge flying upward into the beige mare’s face.

She couldn’t help but scream in agony as the tip of Applejack’s sword cut through her left eye, showering her face in her own blood. She flipped backward in a desperate attempt to escape the reach of the orange blade… a blade that now sported several red stains.

Bon Bon lifted her teary gaze to try and see where the next attack would come from, but she almost froze in place when she saw Applejack standing there, blade sheathed. The orange mare let out a delighted chuckle.

“Well, this was fun, too bad it’s over,” She said, not bothering to contain her smile.

A fire of pure hatred lit inside Bon Bon, a fire she hadn’t felt for many years. She grabbed the white sword in her mouth and charged at the orange pony. She wasn’t going to let herself be humiliated like this, this fight wasn’t over yet. And now her foe had made the grave mistake of sheathing her weapon, there was no way she could redraw it in time to prevent her head from rolling onto the floor.

She jumped into the air, nearly cracking her teeth from the sheer strength with which she was clenching the hilt. Her only good eye nailed on her target: Applejack’s neck, just above her shoulder. Mouth foaming, she turned her head back to wind up the slash… and heard a single, dry, click.

A line of sparkling orange crossed her view, jerking Applejack’s head violently to the side. She noticed how the mare was holding her sword even though there was no way she could’ve drawn it that fast. The next thing she noticed was the crimson trail the blade had left in its wake… a trail that came from two cuts in both of Bon Bon’s forelegs, just under the shoulder.

She had felt nothing, the cut had been nearly instantaneous. In her accelerated perception she saw how her opponent used whatever inpony strength had propelled her blade to spin around, facing away from her as she continued flying.

Two hooves came at her as the orange farmpony bucked hard. The left hoof connected with her chest, crumpling her armor like it was made from wet paper and crushing her ribcage with a sickening wet crunch. The right hoof went a bit higher, slamming directly into Bon Bon’s jaw, teeth, blood, sword, and fragments of her jawbone went flying out of her ruined mouth as the mighty kick sent her flying backward.

She slammed limply into the crates, just above the body of Haakim. Another crunching sound came from somewhere behind her before she collapsed onto the floor.

She tried to move, but she couldn’t feel any of her legs.

She tried to see, but her good eye was pressed against the metal floor of the train car.

She tried to breathe, but her crushed ribs and destroyed mouth barely let any air reach her lungs.

A hoof kicked her to turn her mangled body over. Her eye was flipped upward and met by the orange face of Applejack.

“Ah’m sorry sugarcube, but that’s what happens when ya bring a tool to a sword fight,” She said, in an almost apologetic tone, “Ah’ll put ya outta your misery”

The orange mare unsheathed her sword once more, aiming it carefully at Bon Bon’s blood-soaked neck, but she stopped after the world exploded in a flash of light. They were out of the tunnel.

Applejack jumped back and deflected several blasts of magic coming from somewhere to their left, but Bon Bon didn’t care anymore, her eyes were locked on the sky. She heard somepony say something incomprehensible before her view was covered in a green haze. Her body rose off the ground, it was probably Celestia, lifting her tortured soul into the afterlife. She embraced the bright light of the sun with a smile… or as much of a smile as she could manage with what was left of her mouth.

Author's Note

Well, this is the first story I've ever published. Any and all criticism is welcome and encouraged.

I'm not a good writer, but I just found the idea too fun to not give it a shot. I hope you somehow got some enjoyment out of my work.

The next chapter should come out by next Wednesday at the latest.