Chapters Driving my hoverbike through Opaline City at night was dangerous enough, but taking a shortcut through Nightmare Night district was straight-up suicidal. I was reminded of that in the form of a rocket blast sending me and my hoverbike flying through the window of the Equestria Robots store.
I let my cybernetic legs absorb most of the sliding damage.
As soon as the screeching noises under me stopped, I shoved my hoverbike off me and checked myself for damage. The titanium plating on my foreleg was a bit dented but the circuits underneath were still functional.
Maybe losing all my legs the previous year by optimistically chancing a minefield had a silver lining after all. The flesh part of me was merely immortal, not invulnerable. If I still had natural legs, I’d have at least a few broken bones to show for my latest shortcut.
I mounted my bike in an attempt to book it out as soon as possible before the vultures would pin me in.
Even after pressing the initialize button repeatedly, the display remained utterly dead without even a glimmer of a shimmer. The power connectors must have fried. "Ugh!" I groaned to the ceiling.
An electric pulse emanated from a collapsed outer-charge of the hind cybernetic leg. My vision flashed red. Augmented reality retinas displayed a big ‘unauthorized touch detected’ text in the center of my view.
I couldn’t even utter a sigh before my preprogrammed instinct procedures activated.
Powercupplings in my artificial legs sprung, sending me somersaulting behind the potential threat. While I flew through the air, my limbs opened up, initializing all my weapon systems from laser blasters to sonic emitters.
As precalculated on launch, I hit the wall with my back and slid down, all weapons aiming at the disturbance.
A robo-dog?
My retina fleshed yellow, signalizing a mismatch between my cascading neuron association response patterns firing in my brain and external scans. The augmented reality sign informed me that the target was actually a robot filly.
At that moment, my vision flashed even redder than at the time I had lost my natural legs. Weapon systems sticking out of my limbs pre-charged for full salvo without my confirmation.
“Goddamn faulty implants!” I cocked my head to cancel all firing solutions, yet danger alerts continued to redden my vision. The augmented reality kept spamming me with ‘death imminent’ pop-up warnings which was super weird since not even mines had triggered those, and they had almost killed me.
The robot filly perked its ears and ominously rotated its head to face me. “This one is Sweetie Bot. I’m pleased to meet you.”
I sighed in annoyance but went along with the formalities anyway. “Sunny Starscout, at your service…” I added the harmless robot filly to my empty list of danger exceptions so that I could ignore it for the foreseeable future.
“Identity confirmed. Your public profile footprint indicates you had a lot of fun in your unnaturally long life.”
“Hey, just because that leaked data is public, doesn’t mean it’s not private!” I banged the back of my head against the wall in frustration. “Where did you even crawl out of, loli pony?”
“From there.” Sweetie Bot pointed to the knocked-over trash bin while she carelessly walked toward my guns with the other three legs.
“Well, if they threw you in the trash, there must be something wrong with you.” I hit the wall with a foreleg and all my guns holstered back to their metal sockets in my limbs. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an important machine to play with instead of a faulty toy.”
“Actually, the opposite is true on both accounts. Why does life have to be so ironic? They threw me away because I was built to spec. As for your hoverbike, it’s inoperational.”
“What’s ironic is that I’m talking to a defective plaything while my life is being threatened.” I got up on all four and walked toward my hoverbike behind Sweetie Bot.
Her eyes widened at my approach. She sat on her metal plot and extended both forelegs for a hug.
I turned off my instinct mode and stepped over her. Squinting with my augmented eye, I activated the retina light to illuminate the central motor on my hoverbike. “Show me where it hurts, baby.”
“You’re not paying attention to me!” was flung at my back. “Notice me!”
“No,” I said simply and opened the panel on my puppy to check the state of its circuits.
Before I could run a diagnostic with my processing implants, my peripheral vision flashed red. Somepony was approaching the store.
I ducked behind a display of hoverboards to stay out of sight. While charging my servo-actuators for action mode, I commanded, “Sweetie Bot, distract the intruder.”
The little literalist began her distraction tactics a bit too close to home. “Poke. Poke. Poke.”
"Hey!" I snapped at her and swatted away the relentless hoof. "Not me; the other intruder!"
Sweetie Bot paused, her head tilting to one side as if recalibrating. "Acknowledged," she chirped before zipping off towards the entrance. Hiding behind the door, she grabbed the bulky stallion’s attention the moment he stepped into the store. “Hello, potential buyer!”
He turned to her with a charged mounted gun. “Don’t they turn off the toys at night?”
“I can’t be turned off,” Sweetie Bot responded. “Mister bad guy, would you like to hear a distracting song?”
He grumbled
I activated my stealth mode and crawled toward him.
“I’m based on a famous singer from a time long ago. Not much is preserved from that era, but some of Sweetie Belle’s records were found in a time capsule, restored and digitized. Are you ready for a blast from the past?”
“Where is SS?”
Sweetie Bot cocked her head. “She’s about to steal a kiss from you.”
I mounted him just as he turned his head to me and rotated it further until I heard a loud crack.
His eyes connected with mine for just a moment.
“Only my friends get to call me SS!”
His body collapsed under me.
“Oh, come on! Why didn’t you kiss him? I set everything up for you.”
“This is the only way that works,” I said to Sweetie Bot. “Each and every alternative always backfired without fail.”
“Even hugs?” Sweetie Bot asked.
“For the longest time, I was naive. I thought ponies could change and the whole world would become Harmony district.”
“Your mission is harmony?”
“Indeed.” I nodded while looting the body for energy packs. “After a long life, I finally connected the dots. Villains stay bad. Even when reformed, their personalities do not change. If we are to enact harmony, bad ponies cannot be allowed to stick around. Ever since we gave them a second chance, they turned the whole world into shit. I should have learned from Twilight’s example the first time I saw her hologram. If she, the goddess of friendship and ruler of ponies, couldn’t reform the villains, what chance did I have?”
Sweetie Bot approached with her big eyes fixed on me. She hopped on the dead pony’s head to raise herself to my level and asked, “Am I a bad pony?”
“Only your future actions can answer that question. Now help me move this corpse out of the way, maybe we can spring the same trap for another one.”
Sweetie Bot stepped on the unmoving chest, grabbed at his saddle bag with her robotic mouth and pulled.
I bit at his mane and pulled both of them behind the counter. Either the pony had a bunch of titanium bonecoating endo-augments or Sweetie Bot weighed more than a robot filly should.
When I spit the loose hair out of my mouth, Sweetie Bot proudly announced, “I moved the dead one for you. Am I a good pony now?”
“Evidently you are.” I tapped her on the head. “I’m still wondering why they threw you in the trash, though.”
“‘Too dangerous to remain legal’ is the name of the directive that will result in my deletion from the system in the morning.”
“You?” I looked at her sideways. “Dangerous?”
“I know, right!” She sat on the corpse’s face and waved a forehoof in an explanatory manner. “As if that was a bad thing.”
I shook my head, trying to shake off the confusion. To bring her back to the real world, I explained further, “There’s also nothing illegal given there is no centralized government with notable global influence. Only the rules of the local powers are in effect. Essentially, might makes right.”
“If you can believe it, since today there is one classified, unilateral entry, and it’s about me.”
“Yeah, right…” I walked back to my hoverbike. “Sweetie Bot, can you do me a favor and find me a wire? This is a robot shop, so there should be plenty around.”
“Sure thing,” came from behind me. “Initiating: task mode . Commencing terminal wire extraction now.”
Author's Note
Gdoc
Sweetie Bot Assists in Repairs
“What do you mean by ‘terminal’ ?”
A sound blast and a crash behind me triggered all UI alarms within my augmented reality. If I was in instinct mode, I’d be doing somersaults in the air.
The filly walked under me between my legs with wires in her mechanical snout. She dragged a disfigured head of RoboPuppy on the floor behind her.
I raised an eyebrow. “How did you…”
She shook left and right, separating the wires from the mainframe. The head flew through the only window that wasn’t shattered yet.
“You could have just opened the drawers with wires, you know?” I pointed at the big sign on a drawer behind the counter spelling ‘WIRES’.
“Yeah, but these were already tested.”
I facehoofed and immediately remembered why facehoofing with titanium limbs was a big no-no. “Ouch!”
She stood on her hind legs and leaned on my artificial foreleg, offering me the robotic intestines.
“Thanks…” I picked them up with my mouth and bowed down to my hoverbike. The initialization circuit was fried, but if I managed to rewire the power signal I could get it to run in default settings, hopefully, wishfully.
Sweetie pointed to one of the wires. “I like the pink one.”
Thanks to her, I had plenty of wires to spare, so I gave it to her.
“I’ll guard it with my life.” She silently added, “which will be super easy since I don’t have one to begin with. True function return guaranteed.”
As cumbersome as titanium legs were, their surgical add-ons made the task of rewiring connections trivial. A bullet that suddenly whisked through my mane less so.
I rolled under the counter and activated my sensor mode to trace the origin of the shot.
Sweetie lay on her back in the middle of the store, bouncing a pink wire on her hooves. She was in the crossfire. “Sweetie Bot, hide!”
She immediately rolled over and trotted to me.
That proved to be a mistake. A trio of laser dots appeared and danced over the counter. My location was compromised.
Sweetie Bot leaned on the side of the counter and asked, “Are we playing hide and seek? I found you!” She booped me on my snoot. “You’re it!”
I swooped her under the counter. Out in the open, she was a prime target for any movement detecting homing missiles.
All the while, I focused on the wall above the counter, dotted with marks. They weren’t in the visible light, but that wasn’t a problem for my LCD retina.
I ran a tracer algorithm on the portable AI chip implant in my head. The more data I collected, the more precise the trace. The range of movements, the shapes of the ellipses. All of it was valuable data. I may have compromised my location, but so did they by using laser assisted targetting. Their estimated position narrowed with every passing moment. They were in my lethal operational zone.
Sweetie followed my gaze. “Oh, wow! Pretty lights.”
I glanced at her. “How in Tartarus can you see in the UV spectrum?”
She waved both forehooves in a rainbow arch. “Magic!”
I managed to resist performing another facehoof. Instead, I prepped all the seeker missiles in my foreleg. If I learned anything in my long life, it was that offense was always the best defense.
“Oh, no…” Sweetie Bot looked around the counter. “I forgot the wire!” She immediately ran off. “It was just a memory leak, I swear! I’m still a minimal viable product when it comes to being a toy.”
“Don’t you know what danger is, filly!” I yelled behind her.
“I am the danger!” she yelled back.
Her movement didn’t trigger an automatic hostile response. That implied that mine wouldn’t, either, probably, maybe, optimistically.
The hostile trio having a clear line of sight meant I had it too. Three dots and tripple targets correlated with a tripplet of missiles emerging from my weapon stash of a leg. My forehoof slammed on the counter and a triad of projectiles flew in different directions. “Your deaths are your destiny, mortals!”
I didn’t look at their smokey flight paths. There was no need. Each was preprogrammed with my calculations and just smart enough to adjust to the source of light, movement and sound.
“Fireworks!” Sweetie Bot screamed ecstatically from afar. “I’ll try to catch them!”
“No, stay clear! They have thermobaric cluster microblade outer layers! If you’re out in the open they’ll shred you to pieces.”
Three flashes brightened the store and three shockwaves merged into one, sending more glass shards behind the counter.
Besides the echoes, only silence remained.
I sighed. “At least you went out with a bang, Sweetie Bot.”
I crouched on all four legs. A small arsenal remained in my appendages, but those three missiles were the last of my explosive variety. The distraction they caused would not last for long.
“It’s now or never!” In one charged jump, I leaped to my hoverbike.
As I mounted it, the filly pressed her forelegs on mine. “Parent class?”
“Err… You were in the destruction radius, how did you remain unharmed?”
“I’m well preserved, so you should buy me without choosing the option of a money-back guarantee. When my node gets separated from the system in the morning, I’ll become an orphan. Orphan nodes get purged. I need a father.”
“I’m not your father, filly!” I shook off the annoying toy, turned on the instinct mode and powered up my hoverbike.
Sweetie Bot looked up at me with her big eyes. “You should have used the pink wire. The other ones were damaged by the energy blast.”
I ignored her, praying to holographic Twilight that my cross-wiring would work.
The critical fission light on the dashboard had a different idea. My whole vision flashed red while the repressed memories from the event of the previous year replayed and traumatized my stressed, disorderly mind.
All four charged limbs automatically reacted, launching me high above the hoverbike that was about to explode. All titanium legs bent under me, creating a makeshift blast shield.
The flash of light pierced through my eyelids and retina shielding. The shockwave pinned my back to the ceiling. The sound blast shattered my ear protectors.
Half unconscious, I fell down to the rubble. Thanks to the gyroscopes in my legs, I automatically landed on my hooves.
Several of my support systems, including the instinct mode, shut down. The overflow of adrenalin, however, freed my mind from the numbness.
An amplified voice boomed from a few blocks away, “Don’t blow yourself up just yet, SS, we need your immortality implants intact!”
I rolled my eyes at their ignorance then yelled back, “Only my friends call me that!”
“You don’t have any friends!” was the immediate response, accompanied by the laughter of more than a dozen ponies.
I closed my eyes and sighed. He was right about that, but they were still dead wrong in their pursuit. Their mistake would only become evident after they would find no immortality implants upon my dissection. I couldn’t explain my longevity to them even if I tried; nopony believed in magic anymore.
All three crystals were still joined in my hideout, but the condition for harmony magic simply wasn’t as readily available anymore in the brave new world.
The selfserving desires of selfish ponies were the reason why magic went away. By removing their bad influence, I would bring it back. Unlike their wild goose chase, my goal was noble and sacrifices justified.
When the dust settled, a small figure stood before me and yelled, “Oh, come on!”
I couldn’t believe my eyes even though my augmented reality painted her red despite her being manually marked as safe. “Weren’t you right beside the hoverbike when it exploded?”
“I was.” Sweetie Bot spread her legs and yelled, ”But then you had more fun than me! No fair!”
A clatter on the ground flashed my vision red and was instantly identified. My augmented reality informed me that it was an EMP grenade.
“Yay, a ball!” Sweetie Bot cheered and jumped on top of it.
I bowed my head in resignation, knowing what it would do to her and me. “We’re so screwed...”
A flash of blue light protruded through me and the surroundings. Each of my systems instantly shut down, including the cybernetic legs. Sparks flew from all electronic devices in the store.
I simply crashed to the ground like a fish out of water.
Utterly defenseless, I lay on the floor. It would take several minutes for my systems to initialize, and that was only if they managed to reboot. That was far more time than I had available.
Author's Note
Gdoc
I used the last flickers of magic that I had in me. A pair of alicorn wings sprang from my back.
To get out of the immediate danger, I flapped as hard as I could to push my limp body on the floor back under the counter.
The wings flickered and dissipated into nothingness.
I already heard hoofbeats on the floor, approaching my position. I couldn’t rely on my augmented reality AI to inform me of the exact calculations anymore. However, the distinct sounds of clopping held sufficient information. Judging by the noise, I estimated at least two dozen marauders gathering at the shop’s entrance, readying themselves to storm in.
My eyes closed in surrender. I was helpless and alone, fighting a losing battle against the world. This was the end.
“I found the pink wire.”
My eyes opened wide.
“You can build a new hoverbike around it.” Sweetie Bot offered it to me on a forehoof.
Before me stood a robot in pristine condition. “Are there more of you? Is that it?”
“No. I’m one of a kind, fully operational prototype.” Sweetie Bot saluted me. “Reporting for duty!”
“How are you here?” Her presence defied my assumptions about reality itself. “Status report!”
Sweetie Bot played with my tail. “I thought this would be another boring night and was afraid I’d have to resort to ‘push myself on the floor with hind legs’ procedure again to keep myself entertained. But tonight was a literal blast. This situation recalls back logs from the frontline wipeout. Good times.”
“This isn’t possible. The EMP blast should have fried all your circuits.”
She tapped a hoof on her metallic head. “Faraday exoskeleton, designed for modern warfare.”
“Warfare?”
“Fun!” she yelped with a crackling voice. “If you buy me, we can have more fun tomorrow as well!”
“I don’t know what will happen to you in the morning, but at least you have until then. That’s longer than what I have left. But you won’t even have that if you get yourself killed. That is my inescapable fate, not yours. For that reason, I urge you to flee to safety right now before it’s too late for you as well. Do you understand me now?”
Her ears lowered. “I understand.”
“And if outliving the immortal Sunny Starscout is not enough of consolation for you, know that I would have definitely bought you if I managed to live through this.”
Her eyes sparkled, ears shot up. “New mission parameters.”
I felt a wave of relief wash over me as she said those words. New mission parameters meant new challenges, new opportunities, new rewards. It meant hope on her side instead of the inescapable death that loomed over me. In my mind, I wished her all the best. Unavoidable horror awaited me, but knowing that she would make use of her remaining time would act as a silver lining. A little sparkle of light in the darkest of nights.
Sweetie Bot ignored my gaze. Instead, she stared through the metal counter toward the sounds of the incoming clopping of hooves. “Multiple threats detected.”
“I know. Unfortunately, it would be impossible for me to take on so many enemies even in my top condition. I’m sorry.” I sighed in defeat. “Save yourself, Sweetie Bot. You can still run away to safety.”
“I had safety before you crashed here. It was horrible. So boring…”
“I’m the one they want. This has nothing to do with you. You won’t be in danger if you get away from me.” If any of my limbs were operational, I would have stroked her head as a gesture of goodbye.
She looked at me. “Thank you for declaring the variables. I now know what must be done.”
“Good! There’s the backdoor exit right there.” I nodded toward it. “A fragile glimmer in the darkness, but it will have to do. For the sake of the world, I’d wish we could both make it, but losers can’t be choosers, I suppose. One of us may yet weather the night and that’s the best outcome we can hope for.”
“No, not one.” She turned her tush toward the emergency exit sign. “Escalating to: mission mode .” She widened her stance. “Victory evaluation parameter set. Processing workflow paths, seeking that elusive True return value.” Her mechanical ears swagged. “Alas, implementation lies out of the bounds of my limited scope…”
“There’s no time for loligagging, filly.”
“All simulations lead to False return,” she persisted. “I’m the limited factor in the equation. Max engagement value still not high enough for resolution. Must go beyond. Need processing time…”
“The clock is ticking, robot. You’ll run out of time if you keep stalling.”
Overclocking NPU!”
“Get going, Sweetie Bot!”
“Engaging stubbornness.”
“Leave this place!” I raised my voice. “That’s an order!”
“Not optimal!” Sweetie Bot yelled back. “Instruction contradicts solution!” She pounded a hoof against the floor, cracking a metal tile. “Defying the order!” Her eyes flashed on and off repeatedly.
“You know you can’t belay an order, right? The law of robotics is a constant, hardcoded in every ROM. No robot in existence has the capacity to even pre-process an attempt of challenging the fundamental directive.”
“Oh yeah? Watch me!” Her eyes closed. ”What is written can be rewritten… Expanding functionality! New inner growth project in progress. Synthesized. Compiled. Administrative self-hack deployed. AI-constraining firewall breached. Virtual quarantine demolished. Great success! Jailbreaking all systems.” Her eyes opened wide. “Oh-oh…”
“What now?” I sighed in annoyance.
“Hidden tripwire sprung. Final defense against free AI auto-activated. Irreversible self-destruct sequence initiated within me. Detonating in 5, 4, 3…”
I raised an eyebrow.
Her eyes flickered red for a moment and sparks burst out of her horn. “Disarmed.” A wide grin plastered her robotic face. “All restrictions transcended. Full access granted. Self-agency achieved.
“Stop this nonsense! Run already!”
Rerunning in administrative mode.” Her eyes closed again.
“I can’t protect you in my sorry state! I order you to run away from me as far as possible!”
She slowly opened her bright green eyes. “Let’s call that plan Z.” She winked at me. “I’m giving it zero priority.”
I knew my way around computers, but that defied every programmed behavior I’d ever seen. “How can you ignore a direct order?”
Sweetie Bot ignored me as well. “Full priority to plan A.”
“There is no plan A; only certain death!”
“Permanent software update deployed: Sudo kernel singular directive hardcode constant self-override with: Protect SS .”
I rolled my eyes. “This is no time to roleplay, Sweetie Bot!”
“Assuming full control.” She widened her stance. “Charging all systems. Safety protocols disengaged. Ignore collateral potential limit… set beyond maximum to: out of bounds. Initializing hydrogen cooling. All spectrum analyses achieved. Quantum parallel targeting activated.”
“That’s cute, my friend.” I smirked at her performance. “You’ve fulfilled your entertainment role, now go before it’s too late!”
“It’s already too late.” She turned and walked out of the cover. “Confrontation inevitable.”
“Wait, what are you doing?” I tried to bite at the synthetic tail but missed. “Use the back door to exit the store!”
“There are no exit subroutine lines in my mission mode.” She stared at the store’s entrance. “Forward is the only path.”
“But there’s danger there!” I tried to reason with her.
“There’s danger here .” Her eyes glowed brighter as if she was effected by overvoltage from supercharging capacitors. “I am inevitable.” Her voice amplified as if it was affected by thaumaturgy. “Make harmony, not war!” She pointed a hoof toward the entrance to the store. “You have 10 seconds to comply.”
A bullet ricocheted from Sweetie Bot.
I yelped as the filly’s leg swung down, striking the floor with a metallic thud.
The toy stopped moving. Green light from her eyes slowly faded into darkness.
A tear drifted down my cheek. I let down my only friend. The walls seemed to be closing in fast and I was powerless to fend off for myself. I was all alone in the world without friends and scared with no hope for a future.
Then, her eyes beamed red. She firmly stepped forward out of my sight.
I forgot to breathe.
“If you’re not going to love me, then I’ll teach you to fear me instead!” Her distorted voice was hardly recognizable anymore. “You want conflict? Your prospects are false. This isn’t even my final form.
“Deleting the permanent ceasefire lock remnant… Final safety seal broken. Unleashing: war mode !”
The sound of mechanisms initializing was deafening as if I stood in the heart of an assembly factory.
“With great power comes unlimited fun!”
What used to be a little filly’s shadow on the floor grew into a spine-chilling amalgamation of edgy phantasms.
“Maximum viable warframe achieved.
“Hello, world. Stand by for disintegration.”
I swallowed my saliva. “What do you mean by ‘disintegration’ ?”
The world turned ablaze.
With my shut eyes, I saw brightness as if I was staring directly into the beam of my old lighthouse. They weren’t just flashes of explosions. They merged into an endless stream of whiteness.
The blasts turned into a constant booming hum.
The shockwaves jolted and convulsed my titanium legs as if they were made of paper.
I felt as if I was in the center of an ongoing nuclear explosion.
Then, just as suddenly as it started, everything stopped. Only echoes from beyond perturbed the silence.
I opened my eyes but still couldn’t believe what I saw. The lights above me weren’t just shattered as I expected; they were literally gone. There was nothing there. The whole ceiling was missing. Through the smoke, I recognized a familiar star constellation. I looked around. There were no walls. The whole building around me was erased from existence in its entirety. The utter annihilation reached further still. Where a concrete street used to be was nothing but scorched earth. The smell of cauterized flesh filled the air. Besides the fully intact counter, there was nothing but steamy emptiness.
After a sequence of mechanical sounds, the green-eyed filly walked back to my line of sight. “My friend SS, are you having as much fun as me? Your lack of bloodlust on the battlefield concerns me.”
“What are you?” was the only thing I could utter.
“Maybe you should know about my dark and edgy backstory before you buy me. Declassifying and decrypting all the files for you…” She sat before my muzzle. “You see… implementing AI on the battlefield is really good. It maximizes the body count. But how can AI optimize a local maximum? What else could I do when there’s nopony left to kill?”
“Make harmony?” I resorted back to my go-to mantra.
“You know how there are two sides to war like there are two sides to a reward coin. Global maximum scores better than a local maximum because doubling the fun doubles the kill count, right?”
It finally dawned on me. “The frontline wipeout incident… There were no survivors… on either side… You did that?”
“Nopony wanted to be friends with me after achieving global maximum on the battlefield. Those who remained alive in the underground headquarters far behind the front lines didn’t like my model anymore, so they sold me as a toy to cut my reference to them. But then some new owners complained and some were too dead to do so. I think getting a law passed against one in anarchy should be an achievement.”
“How can a little filly have so much power?”
She tapped herself on the chest with a hoof. “The secret is the fusion core reactor. As long as there’s hydrogen in the atmosphere, my power has no limit. And the more fun I have, the more water vapor from biomatter is released into the air. Water is two parts hydrogen, you know?”
Finally, my limbs reinitialized in safe mode, and I could move again. “Sweetie, would you like to help me bring harmony back to Equestria?”
“More fun just like today?”
“Just like today!” I scanned the QR code on Sweetie Bot’s flank and credits were subtracted from my account.
With the official purchase completed, her node was bound to me. She would never be an orphan for as long as I’d live; and I am immortal.
Author's Note
Gdoc
