A Shadow of Myself

They were moving through the soil to who knew where. It was cramped inside the vehicle cabin, and it was uncertain who exactly was in charge of the scouting party with Cadence out of commission at the moment. Most of the scouting party seemed to look at Phobia as the pony to talk to. Formerly being a Dreamwarden still commanded some authority. However, their rescuers weren't directing questions to Phobia; they were looking at Charlotte. Perhaps because she was the only human in the scouting party, and they assumed a human was in charge.

"I don't think I should be answering that," Charlotte answered. She pointed to Phobia. "Ask her."

Brightheart looked at Phobia. "What exactly are you and your friends?"

Phobia seemed a little fidgety. "We're ponies. We come from another universe. We recently had an invasion of care bears and received intelligence about a mage called No Heart and are scouting to determine threat assessment. We were hoping to make contact with possible allies in the Forest of Feelings. I doubt we are headed there, but this still seems fortuitous."

"Why are you speaking English?" Andrea cut in. "I remember Sunset was confused about that at first when we met Empathy; then she figured out Empathy was using mind magic to communicate. Most of us have mind magic blocked, but we still understand you. You have to be really speaking English."

Charlotte hadn't thought of that, at least not that they were speaking English. She had realized they weren't using mind magic. Over the last month, she had switched back and forth between Equestrian and English seamlessly, and the scouting party had been using English because it was the native language for more than half the party, but she had kinda taken it for granted. English was being spoken, but Brightheart, Shrieky, and Beastly spoke with an odd accent, an accent like they had in very old movies. What was it called? Trans-Atlantic?

Shrieky chuckled and looked pointedly at Charlotte. "Because the world started worshipping ones like her, and then everything went wrong. You people sound strange. Are you from the source of all of this, or are you from somewhere else?"

"What do you mean by ones like me?" Charlotte asked in confusion.

Shrieky gestured to her. "Tall, virtually no brow, small chested, thin like a wisp. People that we saw in the pictures and movies that fell from the sky."

Charlotte took note now that Shrieky was considerably shorter than her, purple-haired, had a heavy brow, a higher pitch voice than seemed any normal person would have, and she was very stockily built with what had to be a very wide ribcage. This was what the humans of this world were like. Not exactly like the humans of Earth, but close cousins.

"It seems that there was a pretty significant leak," Phobia said consideringly. "You copied the language you saw in the films?"

"We copied everything we could. Our entire society reformed as a sad imitation of what we saw over about twenty years. It was unbelievable how fast people latched onto copying their gods," Shrieky said flatly. "And the foulness of it all drove my uncle insane. I agreed with him about it ruining the world, but I didn't realize until too late how nuts he really had truly become."

"Your uncle?" Apple Bloom asked.

"You know him these days as No Heart," Shrieky said bitterly.

Well, they definitely found the goldmine with these guys. They now had the intelligence about No Heart they wanted and potential allies. This mission could wrap up quickly and easily…except they still needed to get Bursa back.

"What exactly did he do? Just teamed up with the Decepticons?" Luster asked.

Brightheart shook his head. "No. At first, he just tried to undermine the care bears and us." He gestured at Shrieky and Beastly. "They were helping him at the time. His idea was that the care bears were the only ones keeping the people from descending into pure chaos by keeping people decent."

"And after it fell into chaos, society would eventually revert back to how it had been, and they would see your culture as the filth it was," Shrieky said with her teeth bared.

"But we kept failing, and he got crazier and crazier," Beastly said in a whisper. "He started thinking that the humans had to go. Shrieky and I didn't know that he was thinking that yet. We wanted a reset to the way things were, not this."

"He retreated to his sanctuary, and for a while, we thought he had given up," Brightheart continued. "But then he was approached by Megatron. Megatron told him that the Decepticons could destroy the humans, but they had to get the bears out of the way. The care bear stare could convert a Decepticon to an Autobot."

"But an inverted stare could do the opposite," Shrieky said grimly. "And they had a method of converting the care bears to their side. Combining my uncle's magic with the Allspark."

"I don't understand. How does the Allspark impact care bears?" Charlotte asked in confusion.

Brightheart looked at her and blinked. "You know about the Allspark?"

Charlotte rubbed her head. "I know someone who is kinda obsessed with transformer life, and she told me all kinds of things. I didn't know transformers, care bears, or the Allspark were real until recently."

Brightheart nodded. "We'll want to meet her, but to answer your question, the Allspark's primary function is interaction and creation of artificial life."

"Which includes these fuzzballs, who are extra sensitive to it," Shrieky said, waving a hand at Brightheart. "Uncle No Heart could never gain as much control over it as he wanted, but he could do more than the Decepticons could. It has a radius of effect and has to keep the bears within its radius to maintain hold. They go away for too long, and it starts slipping. He got all the care bears in Care-A-Lot all at once and used it on them."

"What about the rest of the intuits at the Forest of Feelings?" Josie asked.

Shrieky sniffed with disdain. "The rest of the intuits are technically substandard—the prototypes for the improved bears. The call isn't as powerful as the stare and doesn't have the same effect on the bots. Plus, I'm not sure he could even get the Allspark to work on them without a lot of work because he has it tuned specifically to the bears, and they have a different wavelength than the other intuits. The Allspark is resistant to having its spells messed with, and it is easy to lose control of it. He could lose his hold on the stronger intuits trying to get the weaker ones if he attempted it. The Forest of Feelings intuits provide no benefit for him taking over, are a risk to do so, and no threat to him. He, therefore, isn't going to even try."

"And I think he liked having the opportunity to kick them around, and that's no fun if he's controlling them," Beastly snickered. Brightheart glared at him, and Beastly lost his mirth. "Sorry, but it's true. Hey, he used to kick me around all the time. I think that was the only reason he kept me around."

"So what you're saying is, the Autobots can't attack Care-A-Lot because the care bears will just zap them and convert them into Decepticons?" Andrea asked.

"Yep," Shrieky said. "He won't leave it either. He stays near the Allspark all the time and is paranoid about losing control."

"And any intuits that try to sneak in to try to steal the Allspark; he tosses over the side of Care-A-Lot. Wasteful when you think about it," Brightheart mused.

"He's cuckoo. What do you expect?" Beastly muttered.

Luster shook her head. "I don't understand this. What does being an Autobot or Decepticon matter? Regardless of their insignia, I don't see where it should make a difference."

"They're golems," Shrieky stressed. "They have free will only as far as their primary purpose allows. These intuits practically fall over themselves trying to help me with my feelings even though I'm unpleasant to be around, rude to them, and constantly rejecting their help. Do you know why? Because I'm a human, and until now, their choices in humans to help were my uncle and me. Some of them, like Brightheart here, have rationalized that they need to help the enslaved humans, but that's still technically doing what he was made to do. I'm sure that elephant has practically stayed glued to that girl's side. He can't help himself. He needs to serve her."

"And Autobots and Decepticons each have their overriding directives," Brightheart said gently. "They've been around much longer than the rest of us, tens of millions of years, and their directives have gotten a little…glitchy…in all that time."

"They both started out doing their thing in peace, but their directives put them into unintentional conflict. They fought each other for so long now that defeating the other is practically a directive," Shrieky explained.

Brightheart looked at the screen. "Anything to add, big guy?"

"Autobots protect life forms so they may survive The Final Conflict. Decepticons harvest and store Energon for The Final Conflict. The greatest source of Energon now comes from life forms that Autobots must protect instead of raw Energon from breach events like when we were made. Our directives are not compatible. Even if the converted bot initially tried to resist turning on us, they would eventually," Excavator answered. The Equestrians all jumped at the voice. Maybe it hadn't registered to them that they were riding inside an Autobot.

Luster's eyes went wide. "Breach events…that would be the leaks. Energon is thaumic energy! It's magic, but what's The Final Conflict?"

"We do not know. Our creator did not give us that information, and he is long since gone," Excavator answered. "Decepticons believe it to be their ultimate domination of the universe and transcendence, but this is not part of the directives; it is what they rationalize."

"How long ago did your creator make you? How long have you guys been doing this?" Scootaloo asked.

"Sixty-five million years ago, during the infancy of the universe. However, our directives only came into conflict around two million years ago," Excavator answered.

"Two million years ago was around the beginning of the age of Luna's Dreamwarden forebear. The rise of magical civilization," Luster mused. "Our universes were also born around the same time."

"Not our universe, it is billions of years old, and there wasn't any civilization or magic on Earth two million years ago," Andrea said.

"There was an advanced civilization elsewhere in our universe at that time, but it fell to the Devourers soon after, another failure. They never last long once they go magical," Phobia lamented.

Andrea looked at Empathy. "Why didn't you know about any of this? You could have at least told us transformers were a real thing."

Empathy made a series of distressed sounds.

"He says he didn't know," Phobia translated.

"Of course he didn't know. Most of the intuits don't leave the Forest of Feelings, lot of cowards," Shrieky scoffed. "Ones like Brightheart here are the exception."

Charlotte bit her lip. She had a question she was terrified of getting an answer to, but she would drive herself nuts if she didn't ask.

"This is off subject, but you said No Heart loses control over the bears if they are away from Care-A-Lot too long, right?" she asked timidly.

The trio nodded to her.

Just come out and ask it, she mentally scolded herself.

"How long does it take?" she asked in a rush.

Brightheart seemed to consider it. "We know it weakens after a few days. He never lets them be gone more than two. My best estimate is a month or so."

She vomited right then and there. Some of it splashed in Empathy, but he seemed more concerned about her than the mess on him. She coughed a few times, then spit out some more bile. That seemed like all of it. She still felt like puking up some more.

"She's sick! We can't bring her back with us. She'll spread her alien sickness to everyone!" Shrieky shrieked.

"She's not sick," Phobia said glumly.

Shrieky pointed at the vomit. "That looks sick to me."

Andrea shook her head and looked ill
as well. "No, she just realized her other self fucked up royally. The same person who taught us about transformers had an opportunity to capture a lot of bears and hold them. No Heart would have lost his hold, but instead, they murdered every one of them. They didn't even have a fighting chance."

Brightheart gaped. "How many?"

"Fifteen," Charlotte whispered.

Shrieky balled her hands into fists. "We could have made significant advances against the Decepticons with that many on our side!"

"Plus, I hate to admit it, but we probably need those bears to help get the humans back on track once they are free," Beastly grumbled.

"Sunset-Take-No-Prisoners-Blessing strikes again, screwing things over," Josie muttered.

"What did you mean by other self?" Brightheart asked. "That is a strange term. I want to know more about this person that easily defeated fifteen bears. It seems like someone who could at least put up a fight against Decepticons."

"It's complicated," Charlotte replied, shaking her head. "It involves time travel and alternate timelines. Sunset is older than me, and a pony, but she and I were the same person up until age six."

"Other universes are weird," Beastly mused.

"You don't want her here," Josie growled. "The reason she was left behind was there was a good chance she'd end up committing complete genocide against the bears. The last few years, it seems like killing has been her only answer to dealing with hostility."

"Arriving at Alpha Base in ten seconds," Excavator announced.

"Time for you guys to meet Optimus Prime," Brightheart said. "Maybe he can help figure out how to utilize you."