Wolfenstein: Worlds Collide

B.J. wasn’t fully sure what he’d been expecting to see in Canterlot. But the seemingly endless blood moon suspended in the sky, the acid-trip fairy tale creatures that populated the world that moon gazed down upon, and the debris he’d seen in the caverns underneath the Nazi-controlled city had given him a fairly good idea of what to expect.

As a result, he was more than a little surprised when he’d stepped onto Canterelot’s streets, and that idea had been utterly shattered by how familiar his surroundings looked.

Canterlot (or at least Canterlot under Nazi rule), was, at a glance, uncannily similar to Berlin, complete with towering, monolithic spires all possessing an oppressively brutalist aesthetic, a looming palace-like structure that resembled the illegitimate lovechild of Deathshead’s fortress and the Volkshalle , and even a prison complex that just-so-happened to have a suspiciously similar name to Eisenwald Prison. It wasn’t a perfect match, though; Canterlot’s layout was a lot more vertical, probably on account of the location leaving nowhere near enough room for Berlin’s usual urban sprawl. The Nazi’s absurdly advanced technology was also far more prevalent, visible in small rectangular holographic displays that replaced the usual posters at street level, the robots stomping and flying and rolling all over the streets, and the red neon lighting, their dim glow melding with the moon’s sanguine rays to the point where it was hard to tell where natural moonlight ended and artificial illumination began. And, of course, there were all the technicolor ponies.

“I take it, based on the way you’re looking around, that you weren’t expecting to see so many ponies walking around in the open?”

B.J. shook his head. “I also expected the ponies who were out in the open to be walking around in chains.” In a way, the Nazis letting ponykind go about their business as if nothing was wrong was even worse than if they just killed any ponies that they didn’t think would be useful and enslaved the rest. Sure, Canterlot’s pony population was much better off this way, but at least in the former scenario the Nazis couldn’t fool the natives into believing that they were actually the good guys, couldn’t indoctrinate ignorant or gullible ponies into their twisted, fucked-up worldview.

“Me too, to be honest. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they only wanted to “liberate us from tyrannical rulers and subversive elements”.” Twilight muttered, the purple alicorn’s gaze falling to her front hooves. “And the worst part? Some ponies actually believe what those bastards are saying.”

B.J. thought back to the streets of Roswell, to his fellow Americans singing praises to the tyrants who’d annexed their country. Most of that praise had been false, an act to fool the Nazis into thinking that they weren’t fantasizing about giving the bastards the jackboot… but at least some of it had been genuine. “...when the Nazis conquered my homeland, they pulled a similar trick. Portrayed themselves as liberators, painted the old leaders as greedy tyrants, stoked old prejudices and kept people angry at marginalized minorities instead of the totalitarian invaders who were stripping away everyone’s rights. It didn’t fool everyone. But it fooled everyone they needed it too.”

Twilight let loose a soft, miserable sigh, wiping one eye with her wing. “I always thought that if somecreature tried to take power by force here, there’d be rioting in the streets, mass upheaval, and so many resistance organizations every single shop would have to be a front for at least three of them. I… I never thought that everypony would just accept this as the new normal and move on.”

“Neither did I.” The rumble of an engine snapped B.J. out of his thoughts, and he looked toward the source of the sound. “The van’s coming.”

Twilight nodded, reaching into her saddlebags with one wing. Right now, the two of them were standing on a narrow ledge, overlooking the street that led to the front gate of Eisenberg Prison… or rather, the crackling barrier of arcing scarlet lightning that served as the front gate. He’d seen a familiar-looking armored van pass through that barrier without anyone inside getting fried, but he was fairly certain that anyone outside the van would be in for a very painful (and possibly literal) shock… and that, as a result, the same ploy he used the last time he had to break into a nazi prison wasn’t an option. Twilight could fly using those wings of hers—somehow—but the Nazis had apparently already learned that the wings pegasi had could actually lift them off the ground, and had installed a few automated AA turrets on the roof, set to give any would-be rescuers who tried to swoop in from above a lethal case of rapid-onset lead poisoning.

Fortunately, Twilight had come up with a way into the prison that bypassed both of those obstacles. All he knew about it was that it involved the vans that the Nazis used to transport prisoners; she wouldn’t actually tell him any details beyond that (presumably due to an “unspoken plan guarantee”, whatever Twilight meant by that). But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that her plan probably involved the metallic, rod-like device she’d just pulled out.

“If my measurements are right, then when the armored van passes that trashcan down there…” She murmured, eyes locked on the black, rectangular vehicle as she held the rod-like device out over the street. Her hoof released the rod as the van passed said trashcan, plunging down toward the ground like a javelin… and landing right on top of the van, splitting down the center into three different rods connected at one end, like a tripod spread to the point that it was flush with the ground. “Perfect.”

“That thing will shut that glowing wall down?”

Twilight shook her head. “No.” Sure enough, when the van reached the barrier of red lightning, it passed through it without incident, leaving said barrier largely undisturbed. “It’ll just let us get around it.”

“…how, exactly?” B.J. asked. If that device wasn’t meant to shut down the barrier, then what was it supposed to do?

Instead of responding, Twilight just placed a hoof on his shoulder. A burst of violet light erupted from her horn, the magical discharge accompanied by an odd, shimmery noise that rose in pitch as a purple aura rapidly enveloped them both. There was a bright flash, a brief sense of weightlessness, and a biting chill that engulfed B.J.’s entire body… and the next thing he knew, they were somewhere entirely different, somewhere much lower to the pavement.

B.J.‘s eyes went wide as they scanned his surroundings, taking in the concrete walls that surrounded them, the handful of vans parked in close proximity, the other side of the crackling red forcefield. A shocked exclamation started to rise up from his throat… but Twilight silenced it with a hoof to his mouth before it could slip free. The purple alicorn gestured with one wing at the van they were now standing on top of, the same van that she’d dropped that tripod-like device onto less than a minute ago… and the shackled, muzzled ponies being herded out of it by black-clad prison guards.

B.J. didn’t need to be told that an explanation of what the fuck Twilight had just done would have to wait until those guards were out of earshot. The two of them silently dropped down onto their stomachs, pressing themselves against the roof of the van, watching in silence as the Nazis in black dragged their newest charges—literally, in the case of some of the more rambunctious captives—into the depths of the prison complex. The captain had to actively fight the urge to level the laser cannon strapped to his back and make a few heads explode; nobody in their right mind could argue that the bastards didn’t deserve it, but the last thing he wanted was for the Nazis to learn of their presence here, make the connection between Twilight Sparkle breaking into one of their prisons and her ties with two very specific prisoners, and turn a relatively simple rescue mission into a hostage situation.

After a few seconds, the black-clad soldiers vanished through a door along with their charges, their commanding voices fading into the distance “Finally…” Twilight murmured, picking up the device she’d dropped onto the van’s roof and folding it back into a rod. “Now-”

“Did we just teleport?!”

“…oh. Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re not from around here.” Twilight admitted, a slight blush creeping onto her face as she stowed the rod in her saddlebags. “And yeah, we just teleported. Before the magic suppression field went up, I didn’t even need that Portable Teleport Pylon to do it. Now, though, I gotta store up a metric ton of magical energy in the Pylon in order to travel any reasonable distance, and even then I can only teleport to it. On the plus side, I can use it to teleport to a location that isn’t in line of sight.”

Twilight Sparkle leaped forward, her wings spreading and letting her glide over to a nearby ledge; unlike Eisenwald Prison, there weren’t any convenient walkways leading off of the roof of the parked vans. That wasn’t a problem, though; according to Twilight, he was apparently an “Earth Pony”, and one of the benefits of that was an impossibly high muscle-strength to muscle-mass ratio. The leap from the van to the balcony was all too easy.

And speaking of ponies’ abilities… “Next time you do that, a little warning would be appreciated.”

“It’ll probably be over a week before I build up enough of a charge in that pylon to do that again, but the next time I do that, I’ll warn you.” Twilight promised as she opened up a maintenance access hatch, revealing a long, dark crawlspace, dimly lit by crimson light strips. “Shining Armor and Fluttershy are being kept in separate sections of the prison, so if we want to make this quick we’re gonna have to split up. We’ll meet back here once we’ve busted my friends out. You remember Shining Armor’s cell number, right?”

B.J. nodded as he slipped inside the narrow access tunnel, following behind Twilight. “High Security Block D, cell 24.” He’d committed the cell number to memory, and wouldn’t be forgetting it until Shining Armor was out of that cell.

“Okay. Let’s go cause a prison break.”

Almost… almost… Twilight thought silently to herself, creeping toward the guard. All she had to do was get a few feet closer…

The guard started to turn around, but by then it was too late. The alicorn pounced forward, the metal pipe she’d grabbed flying toward the helmeted human’s head. The improvised club hit home with a CLANG , and the last guard collapsed into an undignified heap, out like a light.

As it turned out, she still couldn’t bring herself to kill the prison guards. Killing a creature that was seconds away from doing the same to her was one thing, but killing someone who wasn’t was quite another. Nopony in their right mind could argue that they didn’t deserve to die, not after what they did to Celestia, to Luna, to countless other innocent ponies… but for some reason, despite easily being strong enough to smash a human’s chest in with a single blow, she just couldn’t bring herself to put that much force behind her swings, at least not when her own head wasn’t on the line.

Fortunately, there were plenty of ways to take somebody out without killing them. An incapacitating electrical discharge, a poisoned dart in the right spot… or, as Twilight had just demonstrated, a good, solid blow to the head.

Even better for Twilight, the guards were really, really lazy, and apparently didn’t even consider loud, audible CLANGs to be out of the norm. They made the Royal Guards seem competent in comparison… and, Twilight had to admit, that was REALLY saying something. Between that, the gloomy, barely-adequate interior lighting, and the way the rotunda setup of this general population cellblock concentrated all those guards in this central tower, it was almost pathetically easy to take them all out of action, one by one.

And now, with all the guards incapacitated, nothing was stopping her from opening Fluttershy’s cell and rescuing her friend.

“Okay, now that the guards are dealt with…” Twilight murmured to herself, rearing up on her hind legs so she could study a nearby control panel. It took a lot of searching around to find the switch she was looking for, but once she did, it was flipped without incident. The distant sound of metal rattling against metal drew her attention toward one of the countless cells set into the walls, the 11th cell on floor “F”. With that done, she darted out onto a nearby bridge connecting the tower to the multiple walkways running along the sides of the rotunda, spreading her wings and lifting off. During her time in the Everfree forest, she’d been too preoccupied with basic survival to practice using her wings all that much, and was still pretty clumsy in the air… but she didn’t need to be graceful to reach the cell.

A second later, and she touched down on the metal walkway near the open cell, stumbling a bit as she landed but still managing to stay upright. Another second, and she was standing in front of said cell, its open door looming in front of her. A third, and her eyes had adjusted enough that she could see the darkened, almost-pitch-black interior of the spartan prison cell… and the trembling, vaguely pony-like shape curled up on the mattress within the cell, huddled beneath a paper-thin blanket.

“Fluttershy?” Twilight asked, taking a few tentative steps into the cell. The pony underneath the bench flinched at the sound of her voice, curling up tighter in some futile attempt to hide. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m-“ Twilight started to say, stepping into the concrete cell fully and reaching toward the blanket…

The pony hidden underneath it leaped backward, a distinctly male-sounding whinny of terror slipping free of his throat as the blanket fell away from his body, revealing a snow-white coat, a golden-blonde mane, and cobalt-blue eyes.

The stallion standing before her was scrawnier than she remembered, his mane was an ungroomed mess and had lost some of its color, and there were several shackle-like metal loops clamped around his hooves and neck, but he was still very recognizable… and definitely not Fluttershy.

“...Prince Blueblood?!”

“...Twilight?” The prince in question asked, some of the tension leaving his body. “You… you actually came to rescue me ?”

“Of COURSE not, you narcissistic twit!” Twilight shouted back. The stallion winced at the insult, but Twilight barely noticed, preoccupied as she was with yanking the files she’d pilfered out of her saddlebags. “I’m looking for Fluttershy!”

“...oh.” A hint of disappointment crept onto Blueblood’s face, but he didn’t seem all that surprised by that declaration. “Haven’t seen her, sorry.”

“WHY NOT! It says right here that this is Fluttershy’s cell!” Twilight almost snarled, speaking half to herself as she whipped out Fluttershy’s Prisoner File and gave it a thorough look-over. “It's lights out, why isn’t she here?!”

“Probably because the file’s outdated or misleading or-”

“Oh, that’s it! The file has the wrong cell number!” Twilight spun around, bolting from the cell and running along the walkway, glancing at the interior of each cell she passed. Most were empty, and the few ponies she did see she didn’t recognize.

“Or the wrong cellblock, or the wrong prison. She might’ve even escaped by now!” Blueblood called out, his hooves clattering against the metal as he struggled to keep up. “We don’t even know is she’s even here, and even if she is, we don’t have time to search every single cell-”

“WHY NOT!?” Twilight practically screamed, whirling around and pegging the cowardly unicorn with a positively lethal glare. “Because you’re scared of all the lazy-as-all-buck guards I just effortlessly knocked out?”

“Because I’m scared of the reason the guards are so lazy. The thing that actually does the guarding here.” Blueblood glanced around fearfully, his eyes darting over his surroundings. When they found nothing threatening, his gaze returned to Twilight. “And trust me when I say that we do not want to still be here by the time it finds out that I’m wandering around making a racket past light’s out and you’re the reason I’m doing that.”

Twilight opened her mouth, another snarky retort on the tip of her tongue… but it promptly died there when a drop of something red, sticky, and wet landed on top of Twilight’s muzzle.

Her first thought, weirdly enough, was that it had to be ketchup, or strawberry jam, or something equally innocuous. That thought didn’t even make it past the obvious question of what those sorts of substances were doing in the cellblocks instead of the mess hall before the fluid’s coppery, metallic smell flooded her nostrils, leaving her with absolutely no doubts as to its true nature.

“Up past your bedtime, making some noise, breaking all the rules, manufacturing your own demise…” A disturbingly childlike voice began speaking right above Twilight’s head, its words sung to the tune not unlike an off-key nursery rhyme. Twilight slowly began to tilt her head up toward the sound of that voice, toward the source of the drop that had just splattered all over her snout, as if being hesitant could delay what was coming.

For a second, all she saw above was the shadows cast by the walkway above the one she was standing on. But then, a second drop of blood dropped down from those shadows, landing right on Twilight’s snout. All of a sudden, she could just barely make out the outline of something clinging to the underside of the walkway. Something two, maybe three times her size, so large she found herself wondering how something so huge managed to sneak up on the two of them so easily, how it could hide its immense bulk in such a shallow patch of darkness. Something with a vaguely dragon-like shape.

And then, the thing leaned down, its face sliding into the tepid red light.

The appearance of its head called to mind somepony covered from ears to hooves in full plate armor, but Twilight could see right away that it wasn’t a pony. That much was obvious from the fact that its steel ‘helmet’ featured no eyeholes, no visor, no faceplate, just blank, unadorned metal where a pony’s face should be, from the gleaming metal mechanisms she could see in-between the gaps between the plates, from the thing’s maw of rectangular, dagger like teeth, interlocking together with manufactured precision.

“You’ve all been such naughty little ponies…” The mechanical monstrosity sang, despite the fact that its maw remained closed and unmoving, its childlike voice suddenly tinged with a crackling, staticky rasp. “And here, naughty ponies are the first to ĐƗɆ!”

“…we should run.” Blueblood suggested, his voice a trembling, barely-audible whisper. And for once in her life, Twilight found herself agreeing with him.

Twilight’s lungs were on fire, her heart pumping at a furious pace, a burning ache forcing its way into every muscle in her body. Still, she kept running. If she stopped…

The rush of sharp, steel talons ruffled her fur, descending toward her torso with intent to crush and slice; she tried to dive to the side but was only half-successful. A screech of pain erupted from her throat as the monstrosity’s steel claws buried themselves in her flank, searing pain engulfing her back leg as she was tugged backward. The blood-soaked talons slipped free of the wound, but not before she lost her balance and nearly toppled over the railing. Thinking quickly, she grabbed the metal bars and vaulted over them, actually toppling over the railing right in time to escape her mechanical pursuer’s snapping steel jaws.

Blueblood was somewhere within the central tower, probably scrambling to reach the ground level and get the heck out of this horror movie setpiece while she did her level best to avoid getting mauled. Twilight couldn’t blame him; had their roles been reversed, she’d probably have done the same. Unfortunately for her, she’d gotten the bright idea of splitting up so that at least one of them would get out alive, and the mechanized dragon had chosen to go after her.

Fortunately, she could fly.

Her wings spread wide, the cold, slightly stale air rushing over her feathers as she began flapping as hard as she could, trying to put on speed even as she struggled to maneuver through narrow gaps and tight turns. She’d seen similar-looking robots out in the Everfree, even had the dubious honor of having to flee from them once or twice; they could fly as well, but their wings were made up of interlocking, feather-like blades, and next to useless for generating lift. Instead, they used a combination of strange, turbine-like devices that could somehow nullify gravity and slightly-less esoteric jet thrusters to achieve flight. They could easily beat her in any contest of speed, but were nowhere near, even considering the fact that she was a clumsy, inexperienced flier. All she had to do was keep weaving in between gaps it couldn’t-

“Think you can flee with those wings?” Twilight glanced back at the mechanical dragon, her eyes going wide as she spotted the red glow at the back of its mouth. “Too bad they’re about to go up in flames!”

She’d never seen one of these things use any sort of breath weapon before. But then again, she’d never heard them talk either.

She didn’t dodge quite fast enough. A ray of glowing red energy clipped the edge of her right wing, another scream of agony tearing itself free from her already-ragged throat as the appendage was enveloped in burning, searing agony. The smell of scorched fur and cooked flesh flooded her nostrils as she plunged toward the ground, coming to a very painful stop on the cellblock’s concrete floor. Twilight didn’t let her rapidly growing agony slow her down; the instant her hooves touched the ground, they were pushing her up and driving her forward, toward the entryway to the cellblock. Behind her, she heard a ground-shaking WHOOM, felt the steel beast’s claws graze the tip of her tail as it scrambled to recover from its less-than-successful attempt at crushing her beneath its immense bulk.

She hung a left as she bolted from the rotunda, glancing back just long enough to see the creature slam straight into the wall. It recovered distressingly fast; just a few moments later and it was already charging after her again, the sound of metal tearing up concrete growing in volume with every passing second…

Claws raked across Twilight’s leg. She screamed in agony even as she swerved to the left, her legs crumpling beneath her as she skidded painfully across the cold, hard floor. The mechanical dragon pounced forward, its blood-soaked claws stretching toward her…

With a thunderous WHOOM, a thick, heavy steel wall slammed down between Twilight and the creature that was out for her blood, quickly followed by a loud, jarring BANG as said creature collided with the barrier. Twilight tried to scramble backward… and promptly collapsed again the minute she tried to climb to her hooves, a barely stifled whine slipping from her throat as the pain proved too much to bear.

“You… you can still walk, right?” Twilight glanced up at Blueblood. He was pushing some kind of tall, narrow forklift-like device underneath a second metal slab, opposite the first.

Twilight shook her head. She hadn’t looked at herself yet, had been consciously fighting the urge to do so; taking the time to assess how injured she was would just increase her already-high stress levels and risk sending her into a full-blown panic. But she could feel the trickles of blood running down her back legs, could smell the smoldering plumage of her burnt wing. None of the wounds she’d received were mortal, but if that mechanical monstrosity gave her another injury, it would almost certainly be a fatal one. “That… that thing can’t get through that wall, right?”

Blueblood opened his mouth to answer… but was cut off by another BANG, this one much louder than the first, the blow that produced it so forceful it left a visible dent near the bottom of the metal wall. The former prince promptly concluded that the creature’s raw strength had just spoken for itself, grabbed the device, and shoved it under the blast door. He then grabbed a lever on the back of the device with his hooves, rapidly pumping it up and down, the device slowly lifting the massive metal barrier.

Another BANG rang out, the bottom of the first wall bending even more. Twilight glanced between the two barriers; Blueblood had lifted the second one to the point that a pony could slip under it, and through the gap between that barrier and the floor, Twilight could see the same hallway the maintenance access hatch she’d used to enter the prison proper was located… and the bottom of the ladder leading up to that access hatch, up to the relative safety of the maintenance crawlspace.

But she’d never reach that ladder, not with her injured back legs. Not unless that mechanical dragon was stupid enough to try and completely break through the barriers rather than get its talons under them and lift them up, and given how it was attacking the bottom of it and not the center, it almost certainly wasn’t.

But Blueblood… he might be able to make it. He still had a chance of getting out of here alive… but he’d have to leave her behind to do it.

“C’mon! Just a little-“ Blueblood started to call out.

“There’s an access shaft a couple dozen feet down that corridor, to the left.” Twilight hissed through gritted teeth. “Run for it, now. Make sure to drop the wall back down behind you.”

“...surely you aren’t implying-”

“I’m not implying anything.” Twilight cut him off, a third BANG punctuating the end of her response as she pushed herself up with her front hooves. “Go. I’ll… I’ll try and buy you some time.” She didn’t stand a ghost of a chance of stopping the murderous machine trying to force its way through the metal slab before her, but maybe she could slow it down, buy Blueblood a few precious seconds and make it that much more likely that at least someone would make it out of this horror movie set piece alive-

“I’m not leaving you.”

Twilight froze, her brain misfiring as it struggled to reconcile the conflicting natures of those four words and the pony who’d spoken them. “...what?”

“I said, I’m not leaving you,” Blueblood said again, his voice trembling yet firm. One of the stallion’s hooves slipped under Twilight’s barrel, lifting her onto his back. She winced a little as the motion jostled her injuries, the groan of pain that slipped free of her throat merging with Blueblood’s grunt of exertion. “Dear Celestia, you’re a lot heavier than you look…”

Twilight was too stunned to even speak, let alone respond to the former prince’s (presumably unintentionally) offensive remark. She didn’t know Blueblood very well, but she knew him well enough to know that he’d never do something like this… or, at least, she thought she did. This was the same stallion who hadn’t hesitated to push Rarity in front of him to protect himself from an incoming cake, who’d even looked surprised when Rarity took fully justifiable offense at being used as an equine shield… and yet here, now, with something infinitely more deadly than an airborne pastry coming his way, he was suddenly demonstrating far, far more bravery than Twilight even knew he had.

She would have been impressed if he wasn't demonstrating that bravery in the stupidest, most suicidal way she could’ve ever imagined.

Blueblood turned around, kicking the piston-like device holding the second barrier up out from under it the minute the two of them were on the other side. The first metal slab gave way less than an instant later, claws slipping underneath it and starting to lift it upright as the second slab dropped into place with another WHOOM. It wasn’t long before that WHOOM was followed by yet another BANG, the mechanical monstrosity getting through the first metal slab and beginning to break through the next. We’re never going to reach the access shaft by the time that thing gets the slab up…

And yet, for a few moments, it seemed like they were going to reach it. Blueblood obviously wasn’t accustomed to strenuous activity, and Twilight could feel his malnourished muscles trembling from the strain of carrying her weight… but contrary to what she’d assumed, he was actually managing to reduce the distance between them and the ladder, despite having to carry Twilight while doing so. Progress was painfully, torturously slow, but it was being made, foot by foot by gasping, staggering, hard-won foot. For a second, Twilight let herself believe that they were going to make it.

She really shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up.

With a particularly loud BANG, gleaming steel claws punched through the bottom of the second barrier, their owner lifting up the only thing standing between itself and the two of them with horrifying ease. We’re gonna die here. Twilight thought to herself, distantly, glancing between the dragonlike beast and the remaining distance to the ladder. It was so close, less than a dozen feet away… but that thing would be on them long before they even began to close that gap…

…wait.

Twilight glanced back at the creature, an idea popping into her head. She wasn’t entirely sure how human-made devices worked, but she’d picked her way through enough mangled wreckage to realize that one of the most basic components in all the more advanced devices were electrically conductive ‘circuits’ that transmitted electronic pulses in between other, more complex parts. The same was probably true of this creature. Maybe, if she applied a strong enough pulse to the wires to drown out all the others…

Twilight blinked back the tears welling in her eyes, her despair quickly giving way to desperate determination as she began scraping together every last iota of magical energy she could muster. The spell she was trying to cast had an incredibly short range, would only be able to produce a small electric discharge, and that was assuming it could even reach the circuitry that it was trying to affect through all that armor… but she was already as good as dead, so it wasn’t like it could make her predicament even worse.

“Hi hi hi…” The second bulkhead dropped down as the creature holding it up surged forward, pouncing toward the two of them. Blueblood managed to find a second wind, his pace increasing slightly, but Twilight barely noticed; all her attention was on the gleaming steel monstrosity flying through the air toward her and Blueblood as she readied the spell.

“Tiᵯe tø-!”

All of a sudden, a portion of the ceiling collapsed, giving way beneath the force of something slamming into it from above. An instant later, and that something had forced its way through the crumbling chunks of concrete debris to slam itself down on top of the mechanical dragon, crushing it in an instant. The ray of crackling violet lightning Twilight was aiming at the now-very-dead mechanical dragon discharged harmlessly against a particularly large piece of concrete as her concentration broke, her eyes going wide as she caught a glimpse of the surprise savior’s oddly dragon-like silhouette through the smoke and dust that now filled the air.

…a dragon? What’s a dragon doing here? And how-

And then, the rest of the ceiling began to collapse, and the species of the being who’d just intervened on their behalf was suddenly the absolute least of Twilight’s worries. A scream of terror erupted from Blueblood’s throat as she threw herself off of his back, throwing her front hooves over her head and neck as she tumbled to the floor and squeezed her eyes shut-

Something long, sinuous, and metallic slammed into her side, shoving her backward and away from the falling debris. Twilight’s eyes snapped open, and it dawned on her that Blueblood might not have been screaming at the prospect of being crushed beneath a bunch of rocks.

The thing that had slammed into her side was the tail of another mechanical dragon, a segmented, blade-tipped appendage currently in the process of sweeping her and Blueblood out from under the falling debris… and into the reach of the tail’s owner.

“Don’t worry, Twily. I’ve got you.” Steel claws wrapped around her and Blueblood, the mechanical horror they belonged to speaking in a synthetic, static-tinged mockery of her old assistant’s voice. A scream hadn’t even finished tearing itself free of Twilight’s throat before her kidnapper lifted off, the ground vanishing beneath her hooves as she and Blueblood were carried off into the sky.