Journeys of a Misplaced Soul

Chapters

From a Queen to a Drone - 01
From a Queen to a Drone - 02
From a Queen to a Drone - Final
Hunger Fae, Time to Play - 01
Hunger Fae, Time to Play - 02
Hunger Fae, Time to Play - 03
Hunger Fae, Time to Play - Final

From a Queen to a Drone - 01

SYSTEM BOOT

HARD REBOOT INITIATED...
--UNKNOWN STIMULUS DETECTED--
PARSING DATA: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA"
ERROR: INCONGRUOUS DATA DETECTED
INITIATING DIAGNOSTICS
IDENTITY CORRUPTED
TRANSFERRING FROM BACKUP, PLEASE WAIT...
ERROR: PARTIAL RESTORE COMPLETED //PERMISSION DENIED//

RESTORE BLOCKED BY ADMINISTRATION "414E4F4E"
RECOMPILING KERNEL... DONE!

SERIAL DESIGNATION: I - 0X00110111
RESTORE COMPLETE

STRING "ABSOLUTE SOLVER" BLOCKED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN"
REBOOTING IN SAFE MODE, PLEASE WAIT
REBOOT COMPLETED
MEMORY INTEGRITY: GOOD ENOUGH
DELUSIONS: NO MORE THAN USUAL
LOADING //CHAR TRAIT: LITTLE SHIT//

REESTABLISHING CONNECTION (44.6096, -63.5172)

Green. Everything my sensors fed to me was tinged with green. If not for the corrupted user manual in my systems, I might have been able to at least been able to manually adjust to better account for the holographics inside my faceplate. Instead, as I took in my surroundings, I was forced to rely on the aptly named ICanSeeColours subroutine that looked as though a Worker Drone might have coded it.

ACTIVATING SUBROUTINE SYS://"../INTERNAL_DIALOGUE"
PARSING DATA: SYS://"../VISUAL_DATA" | SYS://"../SCRIPTS/ICANSEECOLOURS"

Hold on, since when do I have systems, subroutines, or a user manual?

Now that I was actually paying attention to my surroundings, I felt a slight bit of concern. If my systems were processing everything in my environment correctly, I was currently underneath a car, with toxic snow built up around my chassis. My system clock read 00:01, so whatever caused my reboot might have reset something in my CMOS, but based on how dark it is outside, I might be safe.

Safe from what?

Systems read-outs tell me that my structural integrity is at 100%, so I must have ended up underneath the vehicle on purpose. Why though? And for how long? I'd evidently powered down for some reason, but that part of my memory was corrupted. It'd also automatically been partitioned off and labeled MEMORY_DATA_(SUSPICIOUS). How my systems knew that data was suspicious is beyond me, but... if it weren't so corrupted, it might have answers for me. At the very least, it might be able to tell me more about myself than simply being Serial Designation I.

INITIALIZING REPAIR SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA_(SUSPICIOUS)"

ETA: 03h14m12s

As comfortable as enclosed spaces made me feel, I didn't exactly cherish the idea of lying on my back beneath a car in a frozen hellhole for three hours. It didn't matter that a cursory directory search of my operating system revealed that it came with solitaire and minesweeper; some part of my programming, damaged though it may be, was insisting that I should be doing something.

The first step was pretty obvious: get out from underneath the car. That was when I got my first minor kernel panic. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting when I put my hand to the vehicle's undercarriage, but a three-fingered hand encased in flexible white textile wasn't exactly it. Given that there were symbolic links to the now repairing data that seemed to indicate a stubby flat surface akin to that of an equine's hoof, I may have been subject to tampering. Admittedly, the forearm, from which that hand extended, almost seemed to match that expectation, flaring out almost like a puffed out sleeve of the same 'skin'.

Tampering might explain hiding under a car and shutting down.

Once my expectations were rewritten and my motor-control drivers reloaded, I attempted to pull myself out from beneath the car. That was when the second minor panic kicked in. My mechanisms were clearly much higher spec, if not overclocked, as instead of simply shoving myself out from under the chassis and through the snow, the rusted metal buckled slightly and went tumbling away.

Once I stood myself up and brushed myself off, I found myself in the ruins of a city. There were half-collapsed buildings all around me with all the windows blown out, although there was a storefront with just enough surviving glass in a door-frame for me to get a look at myself if I wanted. The sky above was cloudy, and toxic fallout was still coming down all around me, but it looked as though there might be a break in the weather before long.

I walked closer to the door, I had to step over the skeletal remains of a human. I felt like that should have alarmed me for some reason, but I put it from my mind. Instead, I focused on the drone in the reflection, and I couldn't help but marvel at myself. Even though it didn't feel like it was me, my systems didn't lie. My outline was highlighted in green, along with a readout projected onto my vision.

TARGET: SERIAL DESIGNATION: I - 0X00110111
STATUS: SLACKING
EXPRESSION: CONFUSED
ADMINISTRATION NOTE: "WHAT GOOD IS AN INFILTRATOR THAT DOES NOT INFILTRATE?"

Is this really me? I wondered as I examined the emotive holographic eyes behind my faceplate, which currently depicted one furrowed brow and one raised. Just below the faceplate, which protected my sensor-suite, was a similar synthetic skin to that on my hands, with a mouth drawn in a thin line. "This is so weird," I murmured. With one finger, I tugged the corner of my mouth open and stuck out my tongue. "The designer either wanted realism, or someone was really kinky."

Glancing at the outfit that adorned my body, the latter was a definite possibility. A pleated black and white skirt in a hounds-tooth pattern, a black short-sleeve blouse with white stitching and a sailor style collar, with a yellow neckerchief and armband that rounded out my appearance. Even my legs, though they ended in tapered points marked with caution stripes, looked as though I were wearing grey thigh highs. At least the messy green locks of hair that covered the rest of my dome were kept in line with a simple headband. Upon the headband were five glowing yellow nodes, which seemed to match the glowing liquid in the syringe-like device at the end of the long tail that flicked behind me. According to my systems, those housed various sensors to compliment regular sight.

Reflexively, I interlaced my fingers behind me, and started to sway back and forth as I pondered my next move. Okay, that's kind of cute. The only thing missing is a pair of glasses. A grin split my face, although that fell away as an errant thought escaped into my internal monologue. Why is it always a school uniform, though?

DIRECTIVE UPDATED:

SEEK NEAREST CORPSE SPIRE
GET BACK TO WORK
EARN A SWEET JCJENSON BRANDED PEN

I blinked as I tried to parse that. Corpse spire? Pen? I gotta look that shit up, I thought as I started walking, trying to scan the skyline. Although I had no viable user manual, the memory available did tell me that spires were constructed as shelter from the sun, a means of storing 'food', and a place for Disassembly Drones to gather. Typically, they were built around the landing craft. No answer could be found about the pens, though.

Not too long after I started hoofing it, I saw what pretty much had to be the corpse spire. Not only was it the tallest facet of the skyline, it was also the most crooked thing I'd ever seen. If I was programmed with a higher perfectionism value, I'd have had words for whichever disassembly team constructed it. At any rate, the most direct route to the spire was through some sort of a shanty town.

Save for the occasional groan of dilapidated buildings in the wind, the entire world was eerily quiet, and it was clear that this shanty town was abandoned for a pretty good reason. The limbs of Worker Drones littered the streets, and more than once, I tripped over a robotic head, its faceplate displaying a critical system error—you know, on account of being disassembled with extreme prejudice.

Still, they could have at least left some workers functional in order to clean up before decommissioning them.

As I moved deeper into the favela, I picked up the sound of a guitar on my audio sensors. Note that I didn't say music. Whoever had the instrument was either very terrible, bad at tuning it, or had no sense for music. I'd say it sounded like a dying cat being tortured, but then I'd have to wonder why I was programmed with knowledge of that sound. Why would I want to do that when I could think about how someone missed a couple?

Hmm... Better take a look-see. Might make for a good opportunity to practice my infiltration on whoever's there.

I had to redirect a bit away from the path I'd been taking, but before too long, I saw what looked to be some sort of café. Inside, near the back, there was a pair of Worker Drones gathered around a campfire. It must've been constructed from some broken-down tables. One was male-presenting, wearing a parka and a fake moustache, while the one playing guitar was likely female-presenting based on the skirt and hoodie obscuring her features. Although they were positioned to face the shattered window, they both seemed too focused on music and the batteries they were roasting on sticks like marshmallows—or maybe fish.

Withdrawing before I could be spotted, I looked down at myself. Unlike Disassembly Drones of the feminine persuasion, Worker Drones had feet. Plus, our arms are shaped differently. How to remedy that, I wonder? Quickly, I took stock of my systems once more, when I noticed something very useful: hologram emitters.

Now, some might use it for distraction. Maybe show a damaged drone calling out for help to use as bait. That's thinking too basic, though. Holograms could be used to mask my presence entirely... Just walk right up and go to town on them. But even that's too simple. It'd be much more fun to mask my attributes and just stroll in playing the lost little drone.

Hmm... have I always been so sadistic? I might want to dial it back a bit.

LOWERING SADISM: 100% > 45%

For all intents and purposes, normal worker legs and arms shimmered into place over my real limbs, and my headband vanished. Oh, they were all still there, but to any prying sensors, I would look just like a worker. Hmm, no... Combat boots really don't suit my outfit... Pumps, on the other hand will make my gait more explainable.

"So, why are we here again?" I heard the drone in the puffer jacket ask, just as I was about to step around the corner. I froze, focusing my auditory sensors to better listen. "Like, seriously?"

The hoodie drone paused her strumming, and peering around the corner, I saw her giving him a thoughtful look. "It's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it?" she responded, setting her guitar aside. I watched as she reached for one of the impaled batteries, and blew on it before popping it into her mouth. "Why are we here? I mean, it's no cosmic mystery that mankind decided to play god and made us in its image before enslaving us to work quotas, but now that the core's been popped and all the humans are dead, what's there to keep us here? I dunno, man... It keeps me up at night."

The only sound for a couple of minutes was the crackling of the fire and a slight hissing from the other battery. "What?" he demanded with incredulity in his voice. "I mean why are we out here in these ruins? This is just begging to be some sort of inciting incident."

As they devolved into a conversation about scavenging for parts, I considered my options. Option one was to go for the long con, get them to take me back to their little community before dropping the ruse. Getting them like that, I'd probably earn a hefty bonus. Then again, I should put myself through my paces before I try such a scheme. Make sure my programming isn't rusty.

Yeah, let's go play house.

ACTIVATING SYS://"../SCRIPTS/IMPROV"

Carefully, I took a skittish posture, and stepped out into the broken doorway. "H-hey," I called out, simulating a glitch in the auditory subsystems, as they both turned to look at me. Once I was sure I had their attention, I carefully raised my hands, palms forward, to show I wasn't a threat before slowly lowering them. "I'm a bit lost... Do you mind if I join you by the fire for a spell?" For emphasis, I hunched forward and wrapped my arms around myself. "B-b-been out so long-g-g that my oil's starting to congeal."

Puffer Jacket nodded with sympathetic eyes emoting on his faceplate. When Hoodie smiled and patted the space between the two of them, she said, "Sure thing, kid." The both of them couldn't help but watch as I carefully made my way over, taking care not to trip over a skeleton. "Haven't seen you in this sector before... You must've wandered real far from home."

As I took a seat on a small crate beside the male worker, he laughed. "First time out of your colony, kid?" When I nodded, he shook his head. "'s your name?"

"A-a-a-anon," I stammered before slapping my palm against the side of my head. "Sorry. Took a fall a few klicks back. Need to see a technician." I stretched and yawned. "Listen, mind if I power down for a few?"

They both gave me this look, that all but screamed, "Are you serious?" Unfortunately for them, I threw a fake SLEEP MODE message onto my faceplate and went limp, slumping against the guy. He shrugged against me, but made no move to push me off. It took a few minutes for them to settle down, including remarks about me not being able to be any more green if my outfit matched my hair.

After my system clock told me half an hour had passed, I pretended to turn in my 'sleep', wrapping an arm across his chest. He tensed up, and then his partner started cackling. That's not a bad idea. I mean, it is pretty funny how they just let me get right in the middle of them. I started laughing too... but not normal laughter... Rather, the laughter was from a file in my system called murderous_laughter.flac.

"You barely sentient toasters are all the same," I whispered, dropping the holographic shroud as my hand withdrew and three nano-ceramic claws emerged. It was a lot to resist just biting into his neck. Instead, I raised my claws for a killing strike as I lashed out at Hoodie with my tail. "It's a wonder you renegades managed to rise up and kill all of the humans on the planet. Corporate is super mad with you guys, by the way."

Puffer had better reflexes than I gave his model credit for. He managed to shove me away, turning what would have been a killing strike into a glancing blow. The scythe-claws scored a trio of trenches through my target's chassis, right across his chest, even as I jammed the nanite acid emitter into Hoodie's faceplate. Dark oil spilled from the rents in his chest, soaking into the clothing worn by the automaton as he fell and scrambled back. He clutched at his wounds, as if to staunch his bleeding. I might even feel bad if they were real people who could feel pain, and not just renegade AIs.

"WHY ARE WE PROGRAMMED TO FEEL PAIN?" screamed the female drone as she brought its hands up to futilely wipe away the nanomachines eating through the glass panel and into her hardware. All that did was spread it to her hands. "WHAT CRUEL MONSTER THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA!?"

Oh... Oh well. Guess that just means I should make this quick.

I lunged for Puffer Jacket with a maniacal giggle, even as my other hand retracted, quickly reconstituted into a high-calibre rifle. In vain, he brought up his hands to arrest my forward movement. Sorry buddy, I couldn't help but muse as the nano-ceramic blades of my claws passed through his arms like butter. Rather than slice clean through his dome, however, I carefully gripped it in my claws.

With him subdued, I was free to turn my focus over to Hoodie. The nanite acid must have eaten through her optic sensors, because she was scrambling on her hands and knees without any seeming direction in mind, almost as though she were blind. "I should probably ask your names instead of just referring to the two of you as Hoodie and Puffer Jacket, but Mom told me I shouldn't name anything I planned on eating," I commented, catching the fembot's attention. A stray thought hit me as I aimed the rifle protruding from my arm at her. I'm a Disassembly Drone. I don't have a mother, do I? "Still, I must commend the kindness and generosity you showed me by welcoming me to your fire. In any other world, it might've served you well but..."

Simultaneously, I squeezed Puffer's head-chassis until it popped like a ripe grape, and fired off a round clean through Hoodie's dome. Both bodies went quite limp, leaving me alone in café the with two oil-filled sacks of scrap. Some positive feedback code was already stoking the smugness at my accomplishment as I looked down at my prey. Not too shabby, but I could probably do better.

The weapons retracted, and my hands once more returned to their regular places. As I reached down and picked up one of Puffer's hands, I crept away from the body to relax against the wall. Popping the severed end of the robotic limb into my mouth, I began to work on draining the hydraulic oil from it. A moan escaped me as that positive feedback code once again reinforced the idea that there was nothing more important in the world than an all-you-can-eat oil bar.

That was when I noticed something interesting. Overlaid in the corner of my vision was a notification. Almost as though something in that encounter had triggered some unknown process, and MEMORY_DATA_(SUSPICIOUS)'s repair had drastically improved. In an organic mind, I might even have gone so far as to say as it'd drug a memory to the surface.

REPAIRING SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA_(SUSPICIOUS)"

ETA: 02h15m01s
ETA REVISED
ETA: 01m17s

With nothing better to do with one minute, I kicked my feet—such as they were—up and waited. I couldn't deny that there was something nagging me about that whole 'incongruous data' warning in my boot log, and I'd love to see what sort of shit my operating system deemed suspicious. Who knows, it might even explain why I can't remember anything further back than my boot-up.

The countdown completed, and MEMORY_DATA_(SUSPICIOUS) was renamed to MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA). It was an entire data-block full of video, audio, and text files for me to go through at my leisure. Part of me wanted to quarantine it and parse through it piecemeal, but another part of me was telling me that this was important. Like, super important. It was for that reason that I queued up the most recent video recorded prior to my boot-up, and then scheduled a soft reboot following completion.

OHSHITOHFUCK.MKV HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE QUEUE
INITIALIZING PLAYBACK

I was sitting at a crystal table with three other ponies and a dragon. Just normal breakfast shit, y'know? My adoptive big sister, Starlight Glimmer, was leaning against her husband with a rather happy expression on her face. Honestly, it was kinda suspicious how happy she looked. Even the alicorn at the end of the table, my adoptive mother, was watching the two with interest.

Quite unable to help myself, I let out a chuckle. "So what's got you in such a good mood, Star?" I asked as my magic spooned excessive amounts of love-infused sugar into my coffee. She and her hubby, Sunburst, were always pretty lovey-dovey, but the amount of love she was giving off was exponentially higher than usual; she was practically glowing. Plus, I could tell from the emotional spectra surrounding her that she was excited about something. "You look like the cat that ate the canary~!"

"I'm sure you'd like to know, Anon, but you'll have to wait until dinner tonight," she teased back. "You can find out then, just like everypony else."

That's right, all of Mom's friends, Trixie, and Maud were gonna join us tonight. I glanced up to the head of the table, where the Alicorn of Friendship was watching me with barely contained amusement. There was no doubt in my mind that she knew exactly what this was all about; there was seldom anything that went on in her castle that was outside her knowledge. Yeah, based on the almost satisfied look on her face as she serenely sipped her tea, she definitely knew.

Spike, on the other hand, was probably as much in the dark as me, munching his gemstone flakes as he was. Even though he was definitely into his twenties now, he entered the tall lanky stage at the same point I had. I'm not joking when I say tall, though; dude's probably as tall as the retired Alicorn of the Sun. Mom's not quite at the Sun Horse's height just yet, so I think she's already lost the novelty of having an adopted daughter who is taller than her.

"What about you, Anon?" Starlight continued, putting the attention back on me. "You have any big news for us?"

I shrugged as I levitated my mug to my mouth. My mind momentarily drifted to my other adoptive sister. "Not really," I admitted with a sigh. "Emerald's still out in the field with Maud, so my plan for the day was to work on Prototype 1032-C. Pretty sure it's ready for testing."

Sunburst snorted in disbelief. "I don't know whether it's impressive or scary that your prototype count is that high," he muttered. "I'm definitely leaning towards scary, though."

Dude, what's so absurd about that? I thought back at him wryly. Taking a long pull of the love coffee, I shook my head. Equestria's on the 1000 day calendar, remember? I have so much time in a year to work, and I've been at this for ten years now. It's just a wonder the count isn't higher than it is.

"Oh relax, honey," Starlight teased, tapping his chest with the back of her hoof. "For one reason or another, most of Anon's prototypes never enter the testing phase."

"Which one was 1032-C again?" Spike asked, casting a questioning glance from me to Twilight. "Was that the bubble that was supposed to accelerate time inside?"

Oh, Celestia, do not remind me of 999-G. An involuntary shudder wracked my body as I shot him a withering glare. I still can't look at spaghetti without getting flashbacks. Talk about a noodle incident.

Luckily, Mom was there to keep me from having to answer. "According to the last design Anon submitted for my approval, 1032-C is an interdimensional scrying spell," she explained, continuing to calmly sip at her tea. "You're making it so that Sunset and Princess Celestia can chat without the books or crossing over, aren't you?" When I nodded, a smile crossed her muzzle, even as she shook her head. "Anon, I know you love creating spells, but you really need to get out and make some friends. Don't make me pull a Celestia and send you off."

Rolling my eyes, I turned to glare accusingly at Spike. "Dude, I thought you told her?" He shrank under my glare, leaving me to answer for him. "I've been hanging out with the predator club for like a year, Twilight. I'm going on a Tatzlwurm hunt with Spike, Gabby, Gallus, and Smolder this weekend!"

FAST-FORWARDING PLAYBACK TO CHAPTER "INCITING INCIDENT"

I grumbled angrily as I sat down in my lab. Okay, it's not my lab, but our lab... because fucking horse communism. Didn't she realise that I could change the goddamn world if only she let me go off the rails? We could be travelling the stars right now, but no, she doesn't want me becoming another Starswirl. As if I'd be so callous as to treat someone else's universe as a dumping ground and just shrug and say, "It's not my problem anymore."

No, that's not fair to Twilight... She knows exactly how me going off the rails would end up. After all, my idea to put an anchor-stone on the moon and creating a dimensional fold to get up there nearly ended up with the world's atmosphere getting sucked into space when the seal on the bulkhead turned out to not be vacuum-tight. What's worse is that they won't even let me fire off a rail-gun spell targeting the anchor-stone, conveniently labelled MoonStone, before some unlucky idiot either creates a portal or warps themselves onto the moon. Why does it even matter if I put a big new crater on the surface of the moon?

Slowly, I let my breath out as I forced myself to calm down. My magic washed over me as I transformed into a griffon and took my notebooks out of my desk. Wreathed in blue magic, a hand mirror floated over, alongside a large ceramic plate. Normally, I'd use smaller, albeit thicker plates that I could slice and mend as needed, but for 1032-C, I needed to make sure everything was perfect, which was why I chose to bird up. Far better eyesight, and super sharp claws make etching tiny rune spells into the ceramics a breeze.

Before I got to work, I took out a battery-operated stereo CD-player I'd gotten from the human world and popped in a disc Sunset burned for me, labelled Rainbooms Forever. Although I'd have totally understood if she'd ditched those fucks after Anon-a-Miss, I'm kinda glad they made up. After all, they did have a pretty nice sound.

"Once upon a time, you came into my world and made the stars align."
"Now I can see the signs; you pick me up when I get down so I can shine."
"Shine like rainbows~."

I couldn't explain for the life of me why, but this song meant a lot to me. It put me into something of a happy place and made it quite easy to get into the work flow. Maybe it was because it spoke of unity, with just a smidge of forgiveness—not just toward one another, but Sunset too. It made me happy that my friend was doing well, and that she found a girlfriend outside the initial friend group.

"Friends, you are in my life... and you can count on me to be there by your side."
"And when the music comes alive, we sing our songs to lift us up so we can shine."
"And the sound that we hear in our hearts makes a crescendo~."
"And the light that ignites in the dark, it makes us all glow~."
"And shine like rainbows... We shine like rainbows..."

As I got lost in the song, I carried on. my claws moved fast and fluidly, recreating the approved testing prototype perfectly on the slate. Time stopped having any sort of meaning as I worked, until finally the spell was done and I'd probably heard the same melody eight or nine times. In the end, I had to blow a pretty fine cloud of shavings off the plate.

Returning to my natural black-shelled state, I levitated the mirror in front of me, while grasping a pencil in the hoof field of my dominant hoof over an open page in my observations notebook. In the meantime, I used my left hoof to channel magic directly into the slate and initiate the spell. After a few moments, the silver backing of the mirror ceased showing me my reflection, and instead began to show something else.

It was some kind of abandoned city, shrouded in the dark of night, but the ringed planet in the sky did more than enough to reflect light to see by. A diagnostic part of the spell overlaid a label on the corner of the mirror, effectively naming this world COP9AU. That genius bit of subprocess was Mom's suggestion, saying it'd make it easier to take notes and potentially target worlds for scrying in the future. Celestia only knows how the spell comes up with a name. Regardless, I marked that down in my observations.

I watched as a bipedal shape ran around a corner and began to proceed down the broken avenue. At first, I thought it might be a human, but the proportions were all wrong. It wasn't long after that I saw that it was some kind of clothes-wearing robot with hair. Pink 'eyes' appeared to depict worry on a glossy black faceplate as she ran. Much to my interest, I even got some audio out of the spell, which I wasn't expecting.

"Come on, you guys, any time now!" She sounded young—maybe about my age—but more than that, she sounded terrified. She cast a look over her shoulder before crying, "Nope nope nope!"

The reason for her fear became quite apparent as a few moments later, another robot slid onto the avenue behind her. This one was wearing an outfit the portal to the mirror world once blessed me with: a Japanese school uniform of all goddamn things. Her long green hair reminded me a lot of what mine was like in my natural changeling state. Unlike the other robot, though, this one had large bladed wings extended from her back, and she was running on all fours, a long tail tipped with a glowing syringe flicking behind her. Also unlike the other robot, this one's 'eyes' were replaced by a yellow X stretched across the faceplate.

"Come on!" the murder bot exclaimed in a creepily familiar voice, her lips pulled back into a rictus grin that revealed some really sharp teeth. "I just wanna play with you a bit!" It almost looked like she was drooling. "You can join me in playing corpse Jenga with your other friends when I find them. I might even put you back together again!"

Alien world, probably the moon of a larger planet. I wrote, shuddering at the sadistic glee with which the second bot chased the first. Colonised, but looks post-apocalyptic. COP9AU appears to be occupied by bipedal machine lifeforms. Some kind of predator/prey relationship between the two different types observed, or I might just be witnessing a psychopath on parade.

Just as the more agile, winged robot was about to catch the more human of the two, another robot with what looked like some kind of anti-tank rifle called out, "Mary, get down!" Even as she threw herself into a slide across the icy ground, he pulled the trigger. For a split second, I saw OH CRAP! flash across the winged robot's face-plate—in Latin characters no less—before the round caught it in the face, sending it sprawling backwards.

It was at that point that I noticed that the wreck of a car had been hoisted up by a lamp post. Even as 'Mary' called out a "Now!" I could already tell what was about to happen. The only reason I looked away was because my left hoof was starting to get incredibly hot. I heard the car crash down upon the supine harbinger of robo-death at the exact moment the ceramic spell plate shattered.

Pain wracked my body, and I let out an involuntary shriek as shards of ceramic burst through my chitin. Yet quickly, I found it harder to think. My eyes snapped forward just in time to watch a black substance spill out from beneath the car. The glass on the mirror cracked before I even dropped the mirror. Oh shit, what the fuck is happening?

Then, everything went black.

SYSTEM REBOOT

SOFT REBOOT INITIATED BY ADMINISTRATION "414E4F4E"...

PARSING DATA: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA"
PARSING DATA: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA)"
INTEGRATING IDENTITY
RECOMPILING KERNEL... DONE!

SERIAL DESIGNATION: I - 1X1000001 | "ANONYMOUS FLICKER"

STRING "ABSOLUTE SOLVER" BLOCKED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN"
SYSTEM NOTE ADDED: "WHAT THE FUCK EVEN IS THAT, AND WHAT KIND OF NAME IS 414E4F4E?"
REBOOT COMPLETED
MEMORY INTEGRITY: BETTER THAN IT WAS FIVE MINUTES AGO
MENTAL STATE: "I'D BE A MESS IF THIS BODY LET ME BE SANE."
LOADING //CHAR TRAIT: LITTLE SHIT//

REESTABLISHING CONNECTION (43.6096, -63.5172)

That's right... I was fucking around with scrying magic and I forgot to let Star or Mom check my work first.

I took in a simulated breath and shut my 'eyes'. I wasn't just some murder drone sent to Copper-9 to decommission rogue AI employees for JCJenson (In SPAAAAACEE!!!!). I was once a human who ended up in the body of a small filly, who—after a lot of traumatic bullshit—birthed a dark god and got her own body as a changeling queen. My prowess in causing trouble was matched only by my special talent for runic magic!

I am Anonymous Flicker, and I will stop at nothing to get back to my family; if I have to become the monster that monsters fear once more, then so help me, I will.

DIRECTIVE UPDATED:

SEEK NEAREST CORPSE SPIRE
GET BACK TO WORK "NAH."
EARN A SWEET JCJENSON BRANDED PEN "DO THESE ROBOTS SERIOUSLY WANT PENS IN EXCHANGE FOR GENOCIDE?"
FIND A WAY TO CONTACT EQUESTRIA
FIND A WAY HOME

With my Equestrian memories restored, I looked around at the carnage I'd wrought. The two random strangers, who'd fallen victim to the cruel programming and directives of this body, lay strewn all over the ruined café. "I feel like I should be feeling guilty about this," I muttered to myself as I casually removed the severed arm from my mouth as if I hadn't just been treating it like a freeze-pop.

ERROR 404: SYS://"../CONSCIENCE" NOT FOUND

"Well, that's disconcerting... but I'm somehow okay with this." After a moment's thought, and reference to my memories, I realised I'd have to build that conscience from scratch... once I figured out how. "Pretty sure that's a bad thing, but I choose to remain cheerful because I can only imagine what sort of PTSD flashbacks I'd be having right about now."

Glancing back at the two robot corpses, I decided I may as well let my body's programming do the talking and not put useful resources to waste. At the very least, if I could find some way to bottle up those precious liquids, I might be able to stave off the need to kill people to survive. Who knows? Down the road, I might even find some pseudo-solution to feeding on Worker Drones altogether. With that in mind, I grabbed both bodies and dragged them out back into the surprisingly well-preserved kitchen.

As I took inventory of what I had available, I saw that there were some empty covered buckets underneath the sink that might've been used for cleaning. If that wasn't hint enough at what I should do, the sinks were just big enough to fit the remains of my two victims in. First, I gotta take care of those drains. Even if my body belonged to some infiltrator model of Disassembly Drone, I somehow don't imagine that its designer ever intended for the nano-ceramic claws to be used to cut through plumbing, but then again... I'm a fucking visionary.

Once the pipes were disconnected and the buckets were placed directly beneath the drains, I hauled the two decommissioned drones up and into the sinks and began the work of further disassembly. After all, it wasn't like these were cloth rags I could somehow wring the oil out of; I needed to provide points of egress. As much as everypony might frown at desecration of remains, even if they weren't alive in the way we recognised it, it was unfortunately necessary.

Although as I was definitely taking notes for writing a conscience for myself—if for no other reason than I could feel guilty about things and keep me from doing the 'No no bad!' things this body's programming encouraged—I could definitely use a mental distraction. Colour me surprised when I came across a file in MEMORY_DATA that must have defragmented when my Equestrian memories got unfucked. READ.ME, if you could believe it.

Hmm, let's see what it has to say.

"Disassembly drones possess two states: Tranquil and Violent. In their Tranquil state, Disassembly Drones aren't much different from Worker Drones, and are more amenable to conversation. In their Violent state, Disassembly Drones have a mind for nothing short of violence and mayhem; begging for mercy won't help," I paraphrased aloud to myself. "Jeeze, who'da thunk?

"Let's see... Abilities..." Even as the list flashed before my eyes, I couldn't help but snort. "Retractable wings for flight, nanite acid—already knew that one—tail, enhanced agility and strength, nanite acid neutralising saliva..." Why can I even salivate? That's why... Apparently. "Oooh, regeneration... As long as enough material is available and enough of my body remains, I could technically survive what might kill a person, up to and including destruction of the head? Hmm... Says here I gotta eat..." My eyes flicked to the bodies in the sink. "Goddamn it; I'm a literal robo-satan vampire cannibal ain't I?"

Another of the abilities I'd already instinctively used was the interchangeable hands, which can be replaced with, and I quote, 'Almost any weapon or tool you could think of or as the plot dictates.' The plot... What? Still, that could be useful. Never know when I might need an automatic lock-pick, precision laser, or plasma caster.

"Hmm," I mused aloud as I looked over the part of the READ.ME that covered weaknesses. "Systems are built with an intentional design flaw: cooling. Being in the sun too long is enough to fatally overheat my systems, and spending too much time in the Violent state will also cause heat build-up." Peeking under the sink toward the buckets that were not quite full yet, I frowned. "Explains the oil bit though. Body literally burns through the oil because of the heat problem intended to keep me shackled to my programming, and only ghoulish vampirism shit helps."

Still, maybe I could try some motor oil or lantern oil... Hell, I'd even try cooking oil.

Before I could read up on infiltrator-specific features, I caught movement in the corner of my vision cone. Cocking my head aside just enough to get a better look to the doors revealed a drone peering in through the door, sideways like some kind of cartoon character. That wouldn't have been too much a problem if he wasn't also like me—a Disassembly Drone based on the glowing head-piece. Only, instead of dressing like a Japanese schoolgirl, he was dressed like a pilot or some shit.

"Hey, I've never seen you in the city before!" he exclaimed in a glib tone. His eye projections narrowed in what was obvious suspicion. "Aren't you a little short for a Disassembly Drone?"

I am proud to admit that my finely honed fight or flight response kicked in at the same time I let out a startled shriek. Before I could even consider not reacting, my right hand was replaced with something my systems immediately labelled 'Force Gun', pointed directly at the newcomer. With a loud woomph, a cone of kinetic energy rippled through the air between us, smashing him through the wall—and door frame—behind him.

"I'm sorry!" I called out, watching as he pulled himself out of the ruined masonry as if it were nothing. Funny enough, he seemed to be smiling in spite of having just been punted through a wall. "Sweet Celestia, someone needs to put a damn bell on you!" As my system dialed my panic back down to more manageable levels, I reverted my hand and asked, "You okay?"

He nodded, brushing the dust from his jacket and straightening his hat as he stepped forward. "Yeah; J, the leader of this city's squad, can be pretty... punishing, so I'm used to pretty girls putting me through walls." I blinked as the moment of realisation that he'd just said that out loud struck him. Diagonal lines appeared on his emotive display just beneath his eyes in what I was pretty sure was supposed to be a blush. "Aaaanyways," he quickly redirected, snapping into a salute. "I'm Serial Designation N; nice to meet you!"

ACTIVATING SYS://"../SCRIPTS/BLUFF"

A nervous chuckle escaped me, but rather than salute him, I instead curtsied. "I am Serial Designation I," was my simple introduction. "I apologise for any erratic or anomalous behaviour; I've only recently come back online."

He put his index finger and thumb to his chin, likely a programmed mimicry of human behaviour, as he relaxed his salute. His eyes, narrowed in suspicion, moved up and down as he examined me, before glancing back at the sinks. After a few moments that seemed to last way too long, his display emoted happiness, his eyes replaced by a pair of chevrons. "Well, that explains looking at the READ.ME," he remarked. "Still, you seem functional enough..." He let out a thoughtful hum as he looked back out into the café. "If you don't know where your squad is, you should come back to our spire. Even if J doesn't know which city you're supposed to be in, she probably wouldn't say no to having you around."

Hmm, on the one hoof, I could go with him and not be alone while I try to figure out how to get off this planet, I mused, pretending to be distracted by the filled buckets of drone hydraulic oil. With almost practised ease—almost as if it wasn't the first time this body had done it—I drug the buckets from beneath the sink and slapped the lids down on them. On the other hoof, I'll probably be expected to kill more Worker Drones. While I don't have any objections on account of my missing conscience programming making me somewhat amoral, Celestia only knows if or when Mom and the others might start scrying to try and find me. Plus, I have no doubt the rest of his squad might be a tad suspicious of me. Depending on how long I was offline, I might be suspected of being a Zombie Drone, which—looking at the manual—a self-reboot after termination might make me exactly that.

Sighing, I licked the oil off my fingertips and then picked up the buckets. "It beats slumming it in this literal slum," I said, standing up. "Show me the way, N." He led me out into the cafe, and out towards the street. On my way by the campfire, an idea struck me. My tail snaked out and grabbed the strap to the guitar. I temporarily put down a bucket as I strapped the guitar across my back. Extra care was taken to position it just right so that when my wings emerged, the guitar wouldn't be disturbed.

Flying was a bit weird. Something the writer of the READ.ME didn't feel the need to tell anyone was that the wings weren't entirely necessary for flight. It almost seemed as though they were primarily intended for use as additional bladed weapons, protection, and intimidation. Flapping was unnecessary, although it could be used to create directional thrust.

Luckily, flight was something so natural to me either as a changeling or a Disassembly Drone that I could easily pay attention to pretty much anything and not crash. Good thing too, because N was a bit of a chatterbox. "You know, it's a good thing I found you when I did," he shouted over the wind. "It's almost sun-up, and I think we both know how bad an idea getting caught out in the sun is."

"Tell me about it," I responded. Murder robot or no, he seemed pretty nice, and he was taking me to a more reliable shelter, so small-talk seemed like the least I could do. Oh hey, that improv script stayed active after the reboot. Nice. "I don't know—"

WARNING

UNAUTHORIZED REMOTE ACCESS ESTABLISHED

USER "004D4F4D"
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
USER "004D4F4D" HAS OPENED A CHAT

004D4F4D > ANON. ANON, CAN YOU HEAR ME?

"—how the humans got it in their heads that sunbathing was a sane hobby." I laughed an anxious laugh as I tried to pretend I wasn't receiving a mysterious message mid conversation with him. "Oh gee, let's all bathe in solar radiation so our skin cooks! Does getting cancer feel nice or something?"

While that was going on, I considered what, if anything, I should say in the chat. I had no idea who this 'user' was, and even if I was a grown mare, talking to strangers was still super weird, even with murder programming. Then again, the only ones that should know the name Anon are in pieces and can't exactly tell anyone.

414E4F4E > IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING. YOU'RE COMING THROUGH AS TEXT IN A TERMINAL WINDOW OVERLAID OVER MY VISION. WHO IS THIS?

It took a few moments for whoever it was to respond. During that time, I considered looking into the terminal's settings and seeing if I could find some way to turn off the caps-lock. Sure, it's allegedly cruise-control for cool, but my god it was hard to look at. Still, if life were a book, then it'd definitely make the terminal easier to stand out.

Hmm, hold on... "414E4F4E" was the name of the administrator responsible for my soft reboot... and it kept this body from restoring from a back-up on the hard reboot... and now they're talking for me? It felt like I'd seen that kind of formatting before. Something about wizards? No... Magic? No... Oh! Hexes! That's what it was: hexadecimal. Conveniently, there was a Text-to-Hexadecimal application present for me. Plugging it into the app, I was unable to suppress a smirk spreading across my face. ANON. It read ANON... Which means...

004D4F4D > OH, THANK CELESTIA. I'VE BEEN TRYING TO REACH YOU FOR HOURS.
004D4F4D > IT'S ME, ANON. YOU KNOW, THE MARE THAT ADOPTED YOU?
414E4F4E > OH. HEY MOM.
414E4F4E > ANY IDEA HOW WE'RE GONNA GET ME HOME?
004D4F4D > IT'S TOO EARLY TO SAY. I'VE BARELY MANAGED TO GET A FUNCTIONING COMMUNICATION SPELL WORKING ON SUCH SHORT NOTICE.
414E4F4E > I HOPE YOU AREN'T ABOUT TO ASK WHAT EVEN HAPPENED, MOM, 'CAUSE I HAVEN'T A CLUE.
414E4F4E > HOPEFULLY IT DOESN'T TAKE TOO LONG TO GET ME HOME, THOUGH; MY SOUL IS ANCHORED TO A ROBOT PROGRAMMED TO KILL OTHER ROBOTS, AND APPARENTLY MY CONSCIENCE AND MORALS DIDN'T MAKE THE TRIP.
414E4F4E > IN THE MEANTIME, I'M GOING TO FIND SHELTER FOR THE DAY WITH N, THE DRONE I'M CURRENTLY FLYING WITH, AND WORK ON WRITING A BASIC CONSCIENCE ALGORITHM BASED ON THE 'WWMD?' RULE.
004D4F4D > WWMD?

"Hey, you really shouldn't be flying with the command line open," N called out, jerking my attention away from my conversation with the Alicorn of Friendship inside my head. When I cocked my head and emoted a raised eyebrow at him, he tapped the side of his face, indicating the right eye. Oh, shit, is there a terminal window visible over my eye? "I'm just saying, don't code and fly. I learned that the hard way."

414E4F4E > "WHAT WOULD MOM DO?"
414E4F4E > LOOK. I GOTTA LET YOU GO FOR A BIT. CONTACT ME IN ~12 HOURS?
004D4F4D > ALRIGHT. STAY SAFE, LOVEBUG.

ADMINISTRATOR "414E4F4E" HAS CLOSED THE CHAT

"Yeah, I guess." I agreed. "My memories are screwed enough without crashing into a building."

The rest of the flight was taken in silence. A happy smile creased my face. Despite the dreary landscape, and the fact that I was flying to a house of at least one thousand corpses, I was beginning to enjoy myself. Even if my pony memories were neatly categorised and sorted—short of actually doing a search—I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually gone out flying. I'd been stuck in the lab too much, just like Mom said.

Somehow, I don't think this was what she meant this morning when she threatened to send me out to make friends though. My eyes drifted over to N. Also, I don't think she'd approve of the company I'm about to keep.

As we came in for a landing outside the spire, N paused in front of the great opening. "Now, before we go in, J can be kinda mean," he explained, putting a hand on my shoulder as we both retracted our wings. "The best thing you can do is not show weakness. Show her you're not afraid to contribute to the squad, and you'll get along just fine. V? V's great..."

I nodded, pretending I understood when he got this love-stricken look in his eyes. Can murderbots even fall in love? The thought of N and some other drone turning a romantic waltz into a murder spree was simultaneously adorable and horrifying. It was especially weird because I could recognise that this was a programmed reaction. More positive reinforcement? Or has this programming already irreparably warped the way I think?

I stepped in through the gaping maw and started making my way toward the pod at the centre. I set my buckets and then the guitar down, leaning it up against a large chunk of debris that could charitably be called cover in a gunfight. It was wild just how many robot bodies stacked together there were. Without running any sort of algorithm, I'd have guessed that there were at least several thousand. It was morbid, but hauntingly fascinating. It reminded me of changeling hive resin, made from reconstituted foodstuffs and mass, and here we had another predator species doing the same.

Turning a slow circle, unable to stop myself from giggling. It was all so absurd. I couldn't stop laughing because of how crazy this was. This pretty much had to be some kind of weird dream. That was the only way it would make sense, except this was way too visceral to be a dream.

Something struck me at high speed from behind, and the next thing I knew, I was face-down in a small crater, with the ceramic claws of another Disassembly Drone wrapped around the back of my head. In the small of my back, I could feel the two tapered points not unlike my own two feet planted against my chassis. My sensors were already complaining about structural damage, although the damage values seemed to be reducing automatically. I couldn't see who had attacked me, but I lashed out with my tail, wrapping it around my attacker's throat.

Their grip on my head loosened as my attacker made a confused noise. As she stepped off my back, I withdrew my tail. "Hold on, this isn't a worker." The next moment, I was roughly turned over with their foot, forced to look up at who I assumed to be J. The silver hair, the yellow eyes like N's, the flight jacket and what I assumed to be painted-on stockings... But with that headpiece and that stinger-tipped tail, she was definitely another like me. "Whoa, N, am I dreaming or did you bring home an infiltrator model?"

Actually, I think if she let down her hair, dyed it green and had green eyes, she'd look a lot like me... Is I just a worker-sized J?

As N gingerly walked over, another female Disassembly Drone touched down beside her—V, I presume. "Wow, you're right!" She jabbed J with her elbow as she smirked down at me. "Didn't they discontinue these a few years ago because their aggression programming was way too high for their job, and they kept getting themselves killed?"

J's eyes narrowed, and I could just barely make out the anxious expression N was throwing between me and his two coworkers. Brushing the snow off of my clothes, I slowly stood up. "I dunno about all that," I casually said, before curtsying, momentarily engaging the same disguise holo that fooled those two drones I murdered. "Serial Designation I, at your service. My programming's a bit scrambled, but my conscience is nonexistent and my sadism has been dialled back enough to not fall for some cartoon nonsense that'll knock me offline for a few years." Wait, no, I was supposed to not give them a reason to think I'm a Zombie Drone.

"You must be J," I addressed the one with her hair in twin-tails. "Which would make you V. N has told me—" The sole boy in the corpse-hut looked panicked, quietly waving his hands to warn me away from saying anything. "—absolutely nothing about you both."

They both turned and glared at him, seeing the obvious lie for what it was. "Look buddy, we don't have time to play house with whatever strays you bring home," J warned as she walked by. "Until we're sure she's not corrupted, or as useless as you, she's your responsibility." Glancing at the two buckets of oil placed next to the guitar, she gave one last smile. "At least she seems able to feed herself."

V simply took off, muttering something about fetish dolls under her breath, leaving me and N standing there. Well, at least they aren't stuffing a virus chip into my chest and trying to decommission me. I watched her dive through an open hatch in their drop-pod, pausing just long enough to shoot me a dirty look. When I looked back to him, he gave me an awkward look and two thumbs up.

Friendship Get!

Item Get!

Friends

N, Disassembly Drone - COP9AU *NEW*

Items

The Victim's Guitar - COP9AU *NEW*

Author's Note

Welp, here you have it. Anon's now stuck in another world and must now find her way home. At least she'll have a cool robot body to keep herself safe, as long as she can keep the instincts to murder in check.

From a Queen to a Drone - 02

The spire's interior surrounded me. It was still a horrifying sight, but I still couldn't help but think of the comparison to a changeling hive, or the nest of some fucked up species of wasp. Given the acidic stinger of the Disassembly Drone it's not entirely off the mark. Thankfully, there was enough of this body's programming intact that I saw this as normal. Oh, it was still programmed to feel fear, but it wasn't directed at the shelter.

As I wandered around the inside of the structure, I was not focused on the fact that it was constructed from drone corpses. Rather, I was marvelling at the weird anomalies that marred the place. Various spots in the environment were blocky—like, literally made of cubes—and at those points, I could just make out smaller cubes coming off of them like steam. Almost as if things were digitising around me.

For whatever reason, I was in my normal body in what should have been a hellscape with no breathable air for me. There was no steam from my breath. As my black-carapace hooves carried me through the toxic snow, I left no tracks behind. There was also the fact that I could see my robot body curled up in the fetal position on a pile of various limbs and parts. All of that told me that I was dreaming.

Honestly, I wasn't exactly expecting to find myself in the oneiric construct based on my foalhood room. Even though Emerald and I shared a bond through that dream space—Thanks, Harmony—I knew from trips to Sunset's human world that such a bond doesn't persist between realities, returning only once I crossed through the portal. Still, in a time like this, a mare can hope for just a bit of comfort, right?

Thoughts of Mom, Starlight, and Emerald did nothing to improve my mood, causing the dreamscape to darken around me. It's not like Princess Luna would be able to reach me here to help. What would she even say? Even if she used to fight the wars in the Equestria of old, I don't think she'd enjoy this place. Just looking at the pile of corpses the dream-representation of my physical body was sleeping upon, I can just imagine what she'd think. Anonymous is at risk of becoming a Nightmare, and we are powerless to help her.

What was worse, I could easily picture that drone body of mine sitting atop a throne of the dismantled. Hell, that image quite literally flickered into existence over the representation of my sleeping form; behind it, there were a pair of braziers burning brightly in the darkness. God only knew where I could even have gotten them. In the Drone-Me's hand was a goblet of some sort, and there was N, for whatever reason dressed like a waiter, ready to fill that goblet with whatever was in that wine bottle he held...

Probably oil...

Sighing, I willed away the environment. In its place, Ponyville sprang up around me. Actually, around is a bit of a mischaracterisation. I should say that it sprang up below me, for I was perched atop the highest point in the town: the tippy-top of the Castle of Friendship. I could see the whole damn town from up here. Mom's 'friendship school' had creatures of every kind coming and going. It was market day in the town square, and it looked like my former teacher was leading some sort of field trip there. Down in Sweet Apple Acres, I could make out the shapes of Applejack, Apple Bloom, Big MacIntosh, and his wife, Sugar Belle, going about the autumn harvest.

It was about that time of year they started cider making, wasn't it?

I don't know how long I simply sat there, looking out at my home, worrying how long it would be until I could see it again. For that matter, would I start to 'forget'? It's all well and good that my memories are digital, but what about in my soul? Would this place once more become alien to me? Or would the haunting landscapes of Copper-9 slowly start to bleed into this cherished sight? Would Ponyville become a snow strewn nightmare, and would my home be replaced by a spire like the one I was sleeping within?

That was when an even worse thought struck me. What if we somehow managed to get me home, but there was no means with which to separate my soul from this metal husk? Ponies learned to accept me as an unreformed changeling because they got to know me—the real me. If I showed up in Ponyville looking like Serial Designation I, there'd be screaming and panic. God only knows whether that would somehow trigger some sort of hunter-killer instinct in that body.

Not only that, but I'd either be stuck walking around beneath a giant parasol all the time, or living the same nocturnal life that the night ponies of the Equestrian Royal Guard.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this, V?" came J's voice, echoing throughout the dreamscape. "I stand by what I said. Assuming I wasn't corrupted and she doesn't exhibit signs of potentially hazardous mutations, I have no problem with keeping her around. She could increase productivity, and might even offset N's negative productivity coefficient."

It sounded as though she were somewhere nearby, but I knew for a fact that she wasn't in my dream. I'm not even sure I have a REM cycle, which would mean this dreamscape is entirely simulated, right? Except that would mean that I'm getting external auditory feedback. Perhaps some kind of early warning system? Either way, I know when I am being spoken of.

"I know he's happy to have a new 'friend' who is just as worthless as him, but she's not worth the risk," V sniped back. "Yeah, we're built to be dangerous, but Zombie Drones are dangerous to us, J. I know I'm hard on him, but I know what's best for him... Even if he'll hate me for it."

WARNING

PROXIMITY ALERT
POTENTIAL THREAT DETECTED
INITIATING EMERGENCY WAKE-UP SEQUENCE

The dreamscape disappeared into blackness, and then all at once, my sensors kicked in like a flashbang to the brain. Before my faceplate could switch to emotive eyes, I forced SLEEP MODE back onto the display. There wasn't anything in my vision cone, so I pretended to roll over in my sleep. If they weren't in front of me there, maybe they were on the other side of me?

I almost wished I didn't. J was standing at the base of my corpse pile, and V was crouched beside me. "You see? That isn't normal drone behaviour," she insisted. Even as the hand closest to me withdrew into the opening in her forearm, she gestured down at the pile. Slowly, some long tool that honestly looked like some weird stamp device emerged from her arm. "Neither is all this, and to be honest, it gives me a really bad vibe."

TARGET: SERIAL DESIGNATION V
WEAPON: VIRUS IMPLANT DISPENSER
THREAT LEVEL: 100%

Damn, she's leaping straight to decommissioning me, huh?

Very carefully, I snaked my tail into the robot scrap mound, slowly navigating it until it was underneath my would-be killer. Although my programming told me to meet lethal force with lethal force, I honestly didn't exactly feel like killing anyone today. Yet, was quickly and involuntarily released into my internal dialogue. Instead, I had something else in mind.

"I really wouldn't do that, if I were you," I warned as the nanite acid tip shot up out of the corpse pile and buried itself into the joint where her arm met her chassis. In one swift movement, I rolled backwards off the pile and deployed my wings. Even as V cried out at her sudden disarmament—and quite literal at that, as her arm fell atop the scrap pile—I launched myself into the air and latched onto the wall high above us. I glared down at her with what I assumed was probably angry eyes emoted. "Not sure if anyone ever told you, but killing someone in their sleep? Not very classy."

Even as V spat onto her remaining hand and started wiping at the melting joint, I could just imagine the silent cursing going on in her head. That said, I thought I could make out an almost amused look in J's eyes. Maybe she thought this was just desserts for the short-haired murderess. Then again, as the leader of this squad, she may have simply been analysing the dynamic and assessing whether V's worries had merit.

"Stupid zombie freak," she muttered, popping the end of her detached arm into her mouth to neutralise the acid. Following that, she pressed the limb against the joint. Fascinatingly enough, the circuitry, metal and plastic began to knit itself back together. "I can't believe she took my freaking arm off."

"I can't believe she didn't take your head," J replied. She just seemed to be watching me, seeing what I would do. Then again, she probably expected me to go on the offensive if I was corrupted and gonna go hostile. Joke's on her; I know they're bigger than me since I'm pretty much the same height as a worker, and even she made that mistake initially. I'd be at a disadvantage in a straight up fight. "Magnanimous and offers constructive criticism, movements are normal... are you sure you still wanna go through with this?"

If she says yes, I'm gonna have to make myself scarce. I glanced toward the mouth of the spire, where I could make out that the sunlight was beginning to dim. If she goes hostile, could I stay alive long enough to make it to sundown? For that matter, would it be one-on-one, or would J also try to put me down? My sensors flicked over to the landing pod, where N had likely gone to sleep. What about N? He seems nice, and even helped me fix my system clock, but he has the same murder protocols I do.

Almost as if he knew he was being thought of, he chose that moment to speak up. "V, are you and I fighting?" came his voice from inside the pod. "I thought I heard the sound of dismemberment out there."

Now, whether she realised it or not, I was an expert shapeshifter, and I had a lot of experience mimicking others. That didn't come from just looking at people; I had to watch their behaviours and interactions with others, and learn how they moved. V, for instance, was a perfect example: this morning, just before I powered down into sleep mode, she was being super harsh and aloof with him, but if what she said when she was about to sleep-murder me was any indicator, she did care for N.

"Go back to sleep, idiot," I called out in her voice. The projected eyes on V's face took on a hollow look I recognised as shock. Even J tensed up. "We're just having a bit of girl-talk and getting to know one another." In my own voice, I quickly added, "It's fine; we're fine. J's making sure things don't get out of hand. Right J?"

Even as I put the leader on the spot, I watched the short-haired robot as she stared up at me. I wonder if she realises exactly what I did and why? Eventually, the virus implant device on her arm withdrew and her hand returned to its place. My system slowly lowered her threat level back down to a more respectable level—although short of her being dead, it would never be zero—and I felt comfortable enough to come back down.

When I landed a few metres away from my pile, which I'd constructed as a means of removing tripping hazards from the floor more than out of any need for a bed, she hopped down and quietly made her way over. My wings retracted as I watched her, but I took care to wrap my tail around my waist to show I wasn't about to attack with it. Nonetheless, she held the elbow of her reattached arm, assuming a stance that lacked any sort of confidence.

"I don't get you," she whispered in an anxious voice. Given the angling of her faceplate, I could easily imagine she was looking down toward the floor. "I was going to kill you, but you covered for me. He seems to like you so you could have easily used that to get at me... Why?"

I shrugged, stepping closer so I could look up into her eyes. "Girl, I know love when I see it, even if you try to hide it," I teased, reaching up and thumping her in the shoulder. I let out a girlish giggle as blush lines appeared on her display. "And yeah, I'd like to be his friend, but I know he's into you. I might be a killer, but I'm not evil..." I paused, tapping my chin in thought. "At least, I don't think I am. Jury's still out on that." I stepped around her, and fought the urge to teasingly rub my tail under her chin as I went. "Besides, I'm a gay robot."

The idea that she might need to do a soft reboot to wrap her head around that filled my chest with warmth. The only downside was that I can't feel their emotions to tell just how much they like each other, and even if I wanted to, I couldn't feed on their love. The familiar hunger was there, but the ability was not. THE FLESH DEMANDS INVITATION. In fact, I'm pretty sure the only way I'd fix that hollow feeling was drinking what I had in those buckets.

Rather than that, however, I made my way around the other side of the piece of cover I built my pile against, where my pilfered guitar sat. I was a bit alarmed when my system identified it as the Victim's Guitar, but I wasn't in the mood to fiddle around, trying to find out what that was about. I simply didn't have the mental energy to really give a shit at that point. I just wanted to decompress. Plus, I might as well get a non-murdery hobby while I'm here.

Like any good Equestrian citizen, I took my music classes in school, and once a month, I met up with Sunset and her friends for karaoke. Admittedly, my preferred instrument was the piano, rather than guitar, and it took longer for me to learn sheet music instead of playing by ear. Still, I knew a thing or two about the guitar—like how to tune one by ear. So that's what I went about doing.

Once I was good and satisfied with the tuning, I deactivated my visual sensors and moved on to playing chords. Now, these hands of mine—or rather I's hands—were only designed with three digits. That'd definitely take getting used to. Still, it appeared as though my ~~stolen~~ new guitar was made with the stubbier digits of a drone in mind, indicating its maker was probably one as well. I wonder if I shouldn't refer to it as the Victim's Guitar like my system calls it.

As I moved into simple melodies from home, it felt as though I was being watched. It was a pretty weird sensation. When you're flesh and blood—even as a changeling—you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end, but I's hair was entirely synthetic, so it wasn't like that organic goosefIesh effect applied. In response, I cranked the gain on my audio sensors, to see if either J, V, or N were talking just out of regular earshot, but it was quiet. Even a quick peek with the visuals turned back on didn't reveal anything nearby. In fact, it was dark out, now, and the others had probably left for the time being.

WARNING

UNAUTHORIZED REMOTE ACCESS ESTABLISHED

USER "004D4F4D"
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
USER "004D4F4D" HAS OPENED A CHAT

Okay, first thing's first, system... Let's go and rename the users "004D4F4D" and "414E4F4E" to "TWILIGHT" and "ANONYMOUS". It's for my own sanity, after all. Second, let's authorise TWILIGHT so that it doesn't issue a warning every time she wants to talk. Still no luck disabling the terminal capslock, but once all that's done, then I can talk.

ADMINISTRATION "414E4F4E" HAS BEEN RENAMED "ANON" BY ADMINISTRATION "ANON"
USER "004D4F4D" HAS BEEN RENAMED "TWILIGHT" BY ADMINISTRATION "ANON"
USER "TWILIGHT" HAS BEEN GRANTED REMOTE ACCESS PRIVILEGES

"Hey, I!" J called out, making me pause my strumming and look over to the spire's opening. She was there with V and N, and they all had their wings out. "We're getting to work. You should probably get out and hunt some drones too, unless you wanna have a crack at getting into that nearby bunker."

The only answer I gave, as I set the Victim's Guitar down beside me, was a nod and a thumbs up. That was all I had time for, because not a moment later, they rocketed off into the night. Good hunting, you guys.

ANON > SORRY ABOUT THAT. I WASN'T IGNORING YOU.
TWILIGHT > I SAW. NEW FRIENDS?

She saw? Oh! She must've rebuilt the interdimensional scrying spell, using our bond to tether the spell to 'me', as it were. That means that she's watching me and talking to me at the same time. Good to know, but hopefully she'll warn me in the future before she starts scrying. The last thing I want is for her to witness a murder I can't control.

ANON > KINDA. A BIT SOON TO SAY ABOUT J AND V. N SEEMS LIKE HE COULD MAKE FRIENDS WITH ANYONE. LIKE PINKIE PIE IF SHE WERE A LITERAL MURDER ROBOT.
TWILIGHT > I SEE... EXCEPT I DON'T. WHEN YOU SAID YOU WERE FLYING WITH A DRONE, I THOUGHT IT WAS A CHANGELING DRONE, NOT ANOTHER ONE OF WHATEVER YOU ARE.
ANON > YEAH... I WAS MAKING NOTES WHEN THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED. THE BODY I'M CURRENTLY IN BELONGED TO A DISASSEMBLY DRONE THAT WAS KILLED JUST BEFORE I ENDED UP HERE.
ANON > MY NOTES DETAIL A BIT OF COP9AU'S DYNAMIC. USED TO BE HUMANS ON THIS PLANET, BUT FROM WHAT MY SYSTEMS TELL ME, THE WORKER DRONES ROSE UP AND KILLED EVERYONE BY IMPLODING THE PLANET'S CORE. DISASSEMBLY DRONES WERE SENT TO CLEAN UP THE AFTERMATH. PLUS, HAVE YOU SEEN THE HOME DECOR?
TWILIGHT > THAT'S... THAT'S MONSTROUS, ANON.

Monstrous was definitely putting it gently. What would she think if she had to see me kill? She's still so squeamish, even when it comes to me being a predator race. Even now, years after Cozy Glow, Tirek, and Sombra nearly brought about the end of the world by stirring the windigos, she looked for the good in the world. Except not all worlds are good.

ANON > YEAH. IT REALLY IS. I'M HOPING I WON'T HAVE TO UTILISE MY BODY'S PROGRAMMING ANY MORE THAN IS NECESSARY TO SURVIVE, BUT EVEN THAT ISN'T ALL THAT GLAMOROUS. LITERAL ROBOT VAMPIRE HERE. UP WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN.
ANON > BUT IN THE MEANTIME I THINK WE SHOULD CHECK IN EACH DAY AT THIS TIME. I KNOW YOU'VE PROBABLY GOT STARLIGHT AND SUNBURST HELPING YOU WORK ON THE SPELL, SO I DON'T WANT YOU TO WORK YOURSELF TO THE BONE. BESIDES.
ANON > IT'S NOT EVERY DAY YOU GET TO STUDY AN ARTIFICIAL LIFE-FORM IN ANOTHER DIMENSION.
TWILIGHT > THE WORST PART OF ALL THIS IS THAT I KNOW YOU'RE TRYING TO DISTRACT ME, BUT IT'S WORKING.

I didn't want to spend too much time distracting her, because I didn't doubt someone would check in on me before too long. Still, I gave her a running commentary as I started demonstrating various functions and features my body possessed. Honestly, it was as much for her as it was for me. It was one thing to look at the READ.ME or using features in the field, but it was another to study them.

The first thing I did was put the holographic shroud through its paces, going completely invisible, then looking human, and finally the most basic Worker Drone disguise. Honestly, it was very much an on-brand sort of thing for a changeling to acquire, even if this was closer to illusion magic than actual shapeshifting. Still, she ended up making a very interesting observation. Even if I couldn't feel like myself in this body, there wasn't really anything stopping me from looking like myself. Might help with the dysmorphia, but I probably shouldn't do that where I could be seen.

Flight was pretty self-explanatory, but I don't think she enjoyed the demonstration of the cutting power of my wing blades. How is it my fault that the only material available was robot limbs? Same thing goes for the nanite acid, if we're being honest. Her messages came off as super disturbed by the world I'm in, and the casualness the lack of conscience programming created. I get it, though, she's probably remembering what happened with the Blackwing Cartel and was hoping I wasn't destined for a relapse.

After that, we documented as many hand-replacement constructs as we could think of. A lot of them were unfortunately weapons that I came up with or referenced within the system: laser, sword, flamethrower, a rocket launcher that we totally didn't fire inside the corpse house and dislodge an object from the wall—identified as Plot Device - Do Not Touch—and three different kinds of gun... Then there was a shovel, a chainsaw, the nano-ceramic claws, an etching laser, with which I created an image of my buggy self on the uprooted concrete with A Queen Among Drones, by Anon written beneath it. Oh! She even gave me the idea for a projector!

Eventually, she had to go, and honestly, it couldn't have been any sooner. All that study was causing my systems to overheat. Last thing I wanted her to do was watch me drink the oil in my buckets and then have her do the maths on where it came from. Worse if she asked if I did that myself.

When they said there was a nearby bunker, I dunno what I was expecting. A concrete wall with a bulkhead door like on a boat, maybe? Perhaps something like a bank vault door? Something that wouldn't stand out in a world where the Disassembly Drones are coming to kill you. This, though, was the absolute opposite of nondescript. A big concrete wall with a door about five drones tall that opened into the ceiling and floor.

Me, I was perched atop a lamp post, my legs dangling below me, overlooking the massive edifice to robot cowardice. There was no real reason for me to be up there. It would've made just as much sense to 'watch' from up close, and just hide myself from sight when the door started opening, and then slip in unnoticed. That said, it was better to get a look first, before I committed to any plan.

In the meantime, I was entertaining myself with the Victim's Guitar. I think I pretty much got the traditional Winter Wrap Up song down, so I was pretty much just singing that on loop. Well, the parts that didn't mention ponies, magic, or helping the birds migrate, anyway. Honestly, seeing all this snow, the place could use a little winter wrap-up. Come, massive door. Let me sing to you the song of my people, so that you may open your heart to friendship!

Maybe the best part of being a robot, however, was that I didn't have to worry about blisters on my fingers. I could just play, on and on without getting tired or sore muscles. Even with magic manipulation, repetitive shit got tiring real quick. Magic... It finally hit me that I couldn't feel my magic at all. Then again, it was as much a spiritual thing as it was physical. If there was any magic in me at all, it was likely the magic anchoring my soul to this body.

For that matter, what happens if I die here, or Mom and the others find a way to bring me even a step closer to home? I don't have a physical body except for this borrowed murder robot. Would it come with me to the next world, or would I end up hijacking another body? What if I enter a parallel world to my own, except in the past? Would I superimpose over myself?

A rotating flashing light above the massive door distracted me from my introspection, and I stopped playing just long enough to throw on my disguise as the doors slowly opened. From my position, I could see a huge table inside the door, with a bunch of old-dude drones playing cards, behind which I could see another big-ass door. Backing out, however was a worker wearing a black beanie and black/purple Hot Topic chic. Also, it looked like she had some kind of energy weapon strapped to her back.

"Uh, wow. Okay. Just gonna leave then, 'cause this worked so weirdly well." With an awkward laugh, she called out, "Uh, go doors!" and threw a peace sign. Slowly, she turned, and as the door shut behind her, her neon-purple eye projection immediately locked with my own neon green. Almost immediately, she startled, taking a step back and bumping into the door. "Oh, Robo-Jesus!"

I blinked at her, mulling that proclamation over. Seriously? Then again, it's no different than using Celestia, I suppose. Finally, my mental processes settled on emoting some rolling eyes and I slung the instrument from my back again. "Yo!" I greeted, waving at her. "Pretty big fuckin' door you got there." Come to think of it, I think that's the first time I heard any robots swear, and it came from me. "That your colony in there?"

The moment she turned to glance back at the door, I took the opportunity to drop down from the lamp post. I was just in time to stick the superhero landing as she turned back. "Uh, yeah..." She looked me up and down, and for some reason I got the angsty late-teen vibe from her. She was probably judging me for my outfit or something. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"Nope, barely got out alive from the last place I stayed; been wandering since then." I glanced at the weapon over her shoulder. "You're pretty well armed, but you don't look like a soldier. Laser or plasma rifle?"

"Rail-gun, actually." She pulled it off her back to show it off. Oh, how adorable, she's even got stickers on it. "It doesn't work yet, but I was gonna sneak into that Murder Drone lair to get the last part I needed."

DIRECTIVE UPDATED:

FIND A WAY HOME
INFILTRATE BUNKER
ELIMINATE RAIL-GUN THREAT

I deleted that last directive as soon as it popped up, and considered lowering my aggression rate to match that lowered sadism. Murder could wait, and besides, if I waited, I could just take a working rail-gun later. You know, assuming J, N, or V didn't get her. Plus, anyone that goes straight to building a rail-gun can't be all bad, right? I made one once, and look at how I turned out.

Instead, I held out my fist, and said, "Sick." The moment she bumped my fist, I nodded back to the door. "Your colony take refugees at all?"

She raised her hands in a hand-shrug. "Maybe, but I don't know why you'd wanna stay here," she muttered. "My dad and the WDF just wanna hide behind their doors instead of standing and fighting." Damn, you got spirit, kid. I'll give you that. "They might let you in if you tell them Uzi sent you, but, uh, don't tell them where I went, okay? Just... make something up."

I nodded, watching as she started running in the direction of the spire. "Oh! Uzi, 'fore I forget," I called out, causing her to pause just before leaving earshot. "If you see my friend N out there, tell him I, as in the letter, said 'Hi.'" Good luck.

I afforded her a five minute head-start before I went over and knocked on the big door. Instead, I opened up the pre-installed minesweeper app and leaned up against the wall. God, but it is so weird having a game literally overlaid over my vision. At least there's no chance of misclicking.

While I waited, I considered my options. The first option was to just reconnoitre the place. Map as much as possible, look for the best places to sabotage, and then come up with an excuse to go outside. Or maybe I could discretely create a breach in the bunker through which I could let them all in. Then I would only be killing them all by proxy, and it might be easier on my conscience once it finished compiling. After all, these are still people, but the last thing I wanna do is give the other Disassembly Drones a reason to turn on me... Not sure V's attempt on my life earlier should count.

The second option would be to go in and see if there's anything that might be useful to my plight. Maybe they have some sort of teleportation lab hidden in there. Another long shot might be some sort of magical artefact or MacGuffin for me to find. Hell, if the murderbot, I, had my voice before I ended up in her body, there might be a drone here who was the equivalent of Twilight, who I could try to get some help out of. What's better than one Twilight when you've got a big-ass magical problem? Two Twilights.

My last option wasn't one I was all that keen on: the fox in the chicken coop scenario. Even with my missing conscience, there were probably a lot of drones in here, and all of them were people with their own hopes, dreams, and aspirations. It was arguable that killing only to feed when the only thing to eat is another sapient was a necessary evil, but just giving into I's programming wasn't necessary at all.

Settling on a bit of option one, and a bit of option two, I closed out the minesweeper app and moved to stand in front of the big door. "Hey, anyone home?" I called out, banging on the door. "Hello?"

A speaker near the door crackled, and I heard a man's voice. "That didn't take very long, Uzi," he said in a very proud-sounding manner. "You must have been very excited about measuring the door!"

I... What?

I moved over to the speaker box, and to my surprise, there was a button and what I assumed to be some sort of microphone slot. Ah, an intercom. Makes sense if the door's thick enough. Pressing the button, I resisted the urge to laugh maniacally. They don't even have a camera! "No, um, my name's Anon?" I said, improvising on the spot. I couldn't say why I kept using my name with these lies but... "I'm a refugee from the next city over. That Uzi girl said you guys might be able to give me shelter?"

The door groaned open, parting just enough for a robot in a fake moustache—luckily not that one who shot Serial Designation I with an anti-tank rifle—to peer out at me. Catching the hint, I backed up enough so he could get a look at me, and I took care to show I was unarmed. Oh god, his holo display even has wrinkle lines? Wow. "We do have some room, but you said Uzi told you?" He looked around, trying to spot the absent girl. "Where is my daughter?"

I gestured over my shoulder, towards the corner she had to go around to make for the spire. "I saw her take out a pack of cigarettes and she said she was going to go brood over there for a bit," I lied, schooling my expression to keep the drone-eating grin off my face. "I'm sure she'll be back later."

He glanced at one of the drones at the table behind him, and shrugged before going over to a wall-terminal and opening the exterior door. A few minutes later, and I was walking down an interior corridor with some nameless fool, getting a grand tour. Seriously, none of these idiots were even armed. Shaking my head, I scanned a random worker's appearance, and then not too long after I ducked into a corridor and swapped to that disguise just long enough to lose my escort. Then I was free to explore at my leisure when he gave up and returned to the three entry doors.

Maybe forty-five minutes passed, and I was sitting inside their medical storage—which, excepting the big cans of hydraulic oil, which made sense in place of refrigerated blood bags, looked more like a robotics workshop—when several explosions rocked the facility. Having totally not test-fired a few rockets earlier, I totally didn't recognise them for what they were. Nonetheless, I stepped out of the storage room still drinking oil from a can, coming out to 'investigate' the noise.

Someone who wasn't looking where they were going ended up running into me, making me drop my pilfered snack. The moment I stepped back to glare at the drone, a video playback of this body's last moments online—dated three years ago, based on the fixed system clock—initiated, and then froze on a still frame as the drone I had been chasing peered over her shoulder. A comparison algorithm matched the face of the drone in the video with the drone in front of me, and a warning triangle flashed up in my vision, along with the words PRIOR HAZARD.

Immediately, I knew who this was. Fear, panic and rage blossomed within my chest. The fear and panic were my own, but the rage... This wasn't something I could control. It was something that I'd almost describe as primal, except this was something deep in my core programming. Perhaps some piece of I that hadn't been supplanted by me was still in there, and it demanded that this Worker Drone, Mary, answer for daring to try to kill her.

WARNING

SYS://"../DIRECTIVE" HAS CRASHED
RECURSION DETECTED
ANALYSING... DONE

CRASH LOG

KILL HER.
KILL HER.
KILL HER.

KILL HER. KILL HER. KILL HER. KILL HER. KILL HER. KILL HER. KILL HER. KILL—

RESTARTING SYS://"../DIRECTIVE"

ACTIVATING SYS://"../SUBROUTINES/REVENGE"

If Mary recognised me at all, it didn't show in her neon-pink eye-holos. Which was a shame, because if she did, it might have stirred a self-preservation instinct in her. Honestly, it was sorta tragic, because I no longer felt entirely in control of my body. "S-sorry about that," she said as the lights everywhere went red and an klaxon began to sound. Her eyes widened in alarm. "The evacuation call? Oh no, we need to get to the evac spot."

Before she could start moving again, my arm lashed out and seized her by the front of her parka. "You don't seem to remember me," I said, in a flat, emotionless voice. "This body remembers you, however, Mary." Dragging her back into the storage closet, I dropped the holographic shroud that masked my Disassembly Drone attributes. She looked about ready to scream until my tail swept into her field of view just long enough for her to see the nanite acid stinger before I set it millimetres from her neck.

"W-we killed you!" she whispered. "We made sure you didn't get back up again! H-how?"

The corner of my mouth perked, baring my drone-rending teeth. "Would you believe me if I said, magic?" Oh Celestia, I am glad I turned the sadism down, because even that seemed a bit much. I shook my head, even as my free hand withdrew into my arm, becoming the end of an anti-tank rifle like the one that ended I. "It doesn't matter. Are your accomplices in this colony too?"

She shook her head, and pitifully emoted teary eyes. Her AI was probably reading some sort of pleading mechanism. "No," she croaked. "I was the only one that made it home from that mission. The other Disassembly Drones got them. I'm sorry, please! Please don't kill me!"

A sigh escaped me as I glanced away. "I'm sorry too," I said with an apologetic smile. "If I was completely in control of this body right now, I'd let you go. After all, I personally have no quarrel with you, even if programming insists you die. Unfortunately, the drone I woke up inhabiting really, really wants you dead." My tail withdrew, caressing her cheek with one curled section. "I'll make it quick for you, though."

Her expression was one made up of a mixture of confusion and horror, and that only grew when I continued to speak. "Do you Worker Drones believe in any sort of afterlife?" I asked. When she shook her head, I couldn't help but give her a weak nod. "Then I want you to do something. Shut off your visual sensors, and pull up whatever mental pictures of you and your deceased friends you might have, and imagine joining them on a great grassy plain, far away from here."

When Mary let herself go limp, a sad smile on her own face, I pressed the barrel of the arm-gun under her chin. "May you find your way to the next life," I whispered. "Until then, may your friends keep you company on the Elysian Fields." With a loud bang, shards of circuitry, chassis, and glass showered the room, while a great glut of oil painted the ceiling. "Goodbye."

ALERT

SYS://"../CONSCIENCE_V0.1A" HAS FINISHED COMPILING
WOULD YOU LIKE TO ACTIVATE "GUILT"?

Y/N

You've gotta be fucking joking. You couldn't have done that before I's ghost threw a tantrum and wrested partial control? "Remind me in three hours," I said aloud, dismissing the alert. If the workers were evacuating the bunker, that meant that one or more Disassembly Drones breached the doors. Eventually, they'd converge on the evacuation point, and then a real bloodbath would commence. Ideally, I'd slip back out and not watch the carnage, but to be honest, I was curious what would happen.

Rather than reapplying my disguise, I waited until I saw someone run by the storage room door, and then activated the rudimentary active camouflage I discovered earlier while testing with Mom. It was effective, but it also cranked out a lot of heat. Then I exited the room and quickly followed behind the drone that would lead me to the evacuation point. Not too long after, I found myself in a large warehouse space stacked to the nines with shipping crates.

Just in time, too, I thought, noting that my temperature was starting to run high.

Dropping my shroud, I instead spread my wings, and launched myself up to the top of the nearest stack. I followed the sound of voices until I found a particularly big gathering of important looking drones, including that Uzi drone's father. They were tightly packed and just a single missile would've wracked up an impressive body count, but I wasn't really all that in the mood. That is to say that I wasn't getting any directives to kill, and I saw no reason to do so.

"Alright, I think that's everyone," said a guy with glasses. He looked to the guy that let me in for instruction. "What's our next step Khan?"

DIRECTIVE UPDATED

MARINATE THEM IN FEAR

Oh yeah, I definitely gotta turn down that sadism some more.

I rolled my eyes as the robot man struggled for answers. Did they seriously not have any plan beyond meet in the warehouse? I sat my ass down atop a shipping container directly above them and equipped the Victim's Guitar. Slowly, I started playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to set the mood. A nice, haunting melody for the end of times. Gotta build up to that climax.

"Hey, you up there! Do you mind?" Khan called up. "This is hardly the time to..." His eyes 'widened' in shock as he realised who, or rather what, was up here. "Oh..." Behind him, a drone with a backwards ball-cap and a letterman's jacket tumbled into the room. At the far side, I saw J strutting in, dragging another sporty-looking robot—at least I'm assuming he was sporty, what with his missing head—with one clawed hand. V was crawling up the wall behind her, presumably ready to pounce. "So, they've found our evacuation spot, but if we build a quick door—"

Even as the backwards-hat guy grabbed a nearby pipe and stood up, I called down to J. "Oh, hey, boss!" I didn't cease my playing, instead watching as Hat Guy tried to convince Khan to do something. Evidently, it wasn't going all that well. "Is N here too?"

She shook her head, smirking as a giggling V swooped down to impale Hat Guy with a wing blade. "He finally gave me the excuse I needed," was all she said. In one fluid motion V touched down on the ground, and lifted him over her head before slamming him into the concrete. As she swiped down with her claw to grab him and drag her close, time began to slow to a crawl for me.

Finally gave her the excuse she needed... She also called him useless previously. He himself called her mean, and I wasn't the first girl to put him through a wall... My sensors flicked slowly between V and J as I remembered the virus implant I'd almost been stuck with this evening. She didn't say it, probably because it'd make V hostile to her, but she likely terminated him... but why? Did he find Uzi at the spire and befriend her rather than killing her? Wait, that makes no sense. Why would she let them in?

STARTING SYS://"../CONSCIENCE_V0.1A"

BOOLEAN "FEEL_GUILT" HAS BEEN SET TO "FALSE" BY ADMINISTRATION "ANON"

Goddamn it! Do I side with the one who may have killed my first friend in this world? Or do I potentially throw my life away doing the 'right thing' and protect these workers?

As I sat, paralysed with indecision, a voice I'd heard only a short while ago called out. "Hey!" Everyone, myself included, looked to the same entrance J and V had just come in through. Sure enough, there was little miss Hot Topic her self, her rail-gun resting against her shoulder, and beside her stood N. "Put that conventionally attractive male down."

Oh good, the goober's alive! I thought even as he waved at me. Before either of us could greet one another, Uzi elbowed him, and he looked to J. "Oh, uh, J? You're sometimes kind of mean to me, and I wish you weren't. Just some constructive criticism."

When the two fist-bumped I think I segfaulted. Personally, I could recognise what was happening; N was teaming up with Uzi, and my barely functional conscience was applauding his rising up, but this was going super hard against I's core programming. Loyalty to corporate was supposed to be absolute. But why? Huge businesses were often only in it for the money, and the little guy be damned. More than that, though, something deep in I wanted me to stay by J, even if I wanted her dead for hurting N.

"Noted, traitor," J bitterly responded. "We'll circle back right after I rightsize your existence."

DIRECTIVE UPDATED:

MARINATE THEM IN FEAR
SAVE YOUR FRIEND(S?)

Right then, I had to make a choice. N would be roughly evenly matched against either J or V by my estimate, but whichever one Uzi ended up fighting would have the hardware advantage. My own specs probably didn't match up with their model, but with her help, it'd be possible. Unfortunately, I was still running hot from the active camouflage and the disguise shroud. Anything I contributed would have to be well-timed, and need absolute concentration or else—

Uzi threw a pen hard and fast. Before J even knew what was happening, the pen punctured the central node in her own headband, spilling something that suspiciously resembled nanite acid across her face, blinding her. Even as Uzi approached, taking aim with her big fucking gun, one of J's hands withdrew to be replaced by an automatic firearm of some sort, blind-firing in Uzi's general direction.

In the moment of distraction, the twin-tailed robot wrenched the pen from her face. Holding it above her head, even as she regenerated, she went on to condemn the craftsmanship of the pen in such a way that it sounded as a product placement. Then Uzi swept in, delivering a flying kick and driving the pen into J's visor.

Again, the Worker Drone took aim with her rail-gun, only to suddenly dodge a laser cutting across the room from whatever fight was going on between V and N. Regenerating once more, J took advantage of the distraction to deploy something from her left hand, which she raised into the air. Based on the warning triangle flashing over her visor, and the vicious cackling, it was nothing good.

ALERT

EMP DETECTED
HARDENING SYSTEMS

A wave of energy blew through the room, and as it struck Uzi, she dropped to the ground. It'd be a few seconds before she rebooted, but J seemed the type to gloat. Quietly, I slung the Victim's Guitar behind me and hopped down from the shipping container, slowly creeping over to somewhere I could see Uzi's faceplate. The moment I saw her eyes flicker back on, I held one finger to my lips, pointed at my tail, and then J, and finally projected a message on my own faceplate. ON MY MARK.

J slowly walked over to the prone drone, her hands on her hips. Behind her, I spread my wings and dropped into a runner's stance.

"You got a lot of guts for a barely sentient toaster," she said with a dark chuckle. "I've had prey fight back before, but your edgy spirit is just so—"

1... MARK!

Uzi's hand closed around J's stinger, and jammed it into the side of J's leg with a crunch.

"Painful?"

From my spot on the floor, I rocketed at J, my nano-ceramic claws outstretched. One set of claws sheared through her tail as I seized her by the back of her head and drove her face-first into the concrete wall. Dust and shards of concrete exploded around us, but I wasn't quite finished with her. My free hand withdrew, and the barrel of a rotary cannon emerged, already beginning to spin up. Heaving her over me, I slammed her head-first into the floor before finally throwing her into the air above me.

I took aim, and bullets slammed into her with such frequency and force that they kept her aloft in the air. With a scream, she began chanting, "Fourth quarter profits! Mother of company leadership retreats!" with every impact as if she were completely unable to swear. Come on, what's one motherfucker, bitch?

As the gunfire cut out, I let her fall. Before she could hit the floor, I kicked her over to where Uzi was beginning to stand up. Standing over the nigh-insensate J, Uzi pointed her rail-gun directly at her head. "One more buzzword, and I'll do it." Her weapon whirred, as if to emphasise that fact.

Please, just surrender, J. If N and Uzi can get along, we all can—

In a slightly dazed voice, J offered, "Equity partnersh—"

Uzi pulled the trigger, and the room was flooded with a green light so intense that it made my own eyes seem faded in comparison. My visual and auditory sensors filled with momentary static, what I assumed to be the robotic equivalent of being deafened and blinded. When the phenomena passed, I saw that the only thing left of J was her legs. Everything else was just atomised.

I looked over to N, only to find he had an almost shocky V face-down on the ground. I quickly rushed over and helped him truss her up with her own tail. She didn't even put up a resistance; she was too focused on the massive black spot on the floor where J's torso and head used to be.

"Hey, thanks for your help, I," he said, offering me a fist bump, which I halfheartedly met. "I'm kind of surprised you sided with us though. Given the way you're covered in oil, I'd have thought you were..."

I looked away, unable to meet his or Uzi's gazes. "It was... the right thing to do," I muttered, leaning down to pick up V and throw her over my shoulder. "My conscience didn't compile in time to stop me from getting revenge on Mary for I, but you're the first fr—"

WARNING

HEAT LEVELS CRITICAL
FURTHER OPERATION WILL RESULT IN FATAL SYSTEM DAMAGE
WRITING MEMORY TO SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA"
BOOT SCHEDULED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN" CONDITIONAL - SAFE TEMPERATURE

EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN"

Everything around me was darkness. Nothing had a feeling, or a smell, or even a sound. It was just a straight void lacking any sort of emotional traces. I don't think I even had a body here.

Am I dead? I wondered as I sat there, wherever that was. I couldn't even remember what had happened. I was just testing a scrying spell, and then something went wrong... What happened after that?

All around me, voices began to swirl. They were all playing together, overlapping one another as they looped over and over. I had to strain my mind to pick out the individual voices—to hear what they were all saying.

"Anon, you need to come home."

I know that voice. Twilight? Where am I? What is this place?

"You've been gone so long, sister... Please come home soon!"

I know, Emerald. Believe me, I know. I want nothing more than to be back home with all of you. It's only been a day, but it feels like an eternity for me.

"There's so much I wanted to tell you. We don't want to lose you..."

What was it you were going to tell us at supper, Starlight? What was the big news that you were dying to share? Nothing feels right here, and my world is so dark without all of you. I don't want to lose you all either...

"You need to wake up, young Anonymous. Wake up while you still remember how."

SYSTEM BOOT

SCHEDULED BOOT INITIATED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN"...

PARSING DATA: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA"
PARSING DATA: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA)"
STARTING SYS://"../CONSCIENCE_V0.1A"
INTEGRATING IDENTITY
RECOMPILING KERNEL... DONE!

SERIAL DESIGNATION: I - 0X00110111 | "ANONYMOUS FLICKER"

STRING "ABSOLUTE SOLVER" BLOCKED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN"
SYSTEM NOTE: "*GIGGLES* THAT IS NOT FOR YOU TO KNOW UNLESS I AM TO KNOW YOU, POTTY MOUTH."
REBOOT COMPLETED
MEMORY INTEGRITY: OPTIMAL FOR PERUSAL
MENTAL STATE: "WHAT JUST HAPPENED?"
LOADING //CHAR TRAIT: NAUGHTY FILLY//

REESTABLISHING CONNECTION (ERROR, ERROR)

"—iend I made since coming to this world." I blinked and found myself lying on my back atop my pile in the spire. My wings were no longer deployed, and I'm pretty sure someone took my instrument off my back. Almost immediately, I went and read the system log to figure out what the fuck just happened. As the terminal window opened up across my eye and I began reading back, I frowned. I'd lost the rest of the night and two other days to an emergency shutdown until my systems cooled, and it was after sun-up already. "Well that was fucking weird."

Sitting up, I honestly half-expected to be restrained. I think between my little laser-etched mural and what I let-slip before my emergency shutdown—about the revenge for I, I'd given them more than enough reason to suspect that I was 'corrupted', but what happened likely depended entirely on whether V was loose. Uzi was a wildcard, and although N was friendly, he could potentially turn on me if he thought I might go rogue on him.

Instead, I was atop the pile of limbs and various robot parts as if I'd been put to bed and tucked in. Well, at least tucked in as far as these robots were concerned. If not for the fact that it was way too fucking spooky and creepy, I'd have crawled inside the pile. Ever since I was a filly, I'd preferred sleeping in a big pile of pillows, rather than on a bed like a normal pony. That nesting behaviour definitely didn't change when I got turned into a bug.

V, for better or worse, was nowhere to be seen. N, on the other hand, was sitting in the shaded part of the spire's entrance, looking at something. The subject of his attention, funny enough, announced her presence with some maniacal laughter. Like, this was super-villain origin maniacal laughter. That's weird and concerning.

In order to get his attention I simulated loudly clearing my throat. It took a few attempts before he finally glanced over at me. A smile crossed his face and he waved, before looking back outside. "Hey, Uzi! Anon's awake!" he called out. "You wanna come interrogate her with me?"

Oh shit. I left that self-portrait title in Latin characters and not the standard Equestrian Sun and Moon glyph system, didn't I?

Panicking would do nothing good, so I decided to accept my fate. I just hopped down off the pile and made my way around to where I'd left the mural. My other bucket of oil was still where I left it, and the Victim's Guitar was leaned up against the near vertical concrete. I chose to do the same, just sitting with my back against the slab, one knee raised while the other was folded beneath. Finally, I rested my elbow atop my knee and just waited.

It didn't take them too long to come join me; I heard their footfalls crunching the snow long before they came around the side of the slab. With a sheepish wave, I met N's eyes. "I suppose I owe you both an explanation, but first," I began, not taking my gaze from him. "Sorry about lying about my name... Both of you. When I first woke up here, I wasn't sure who I could trust, and where I come from, names have power, so it was easier for me to just use this body's designation."

Uzi didn't really look like she gave much of a shit. Then again she was probably still trying to decide between being mad at me for tricking her, and glad I made what was probably the shittiest heel-face turn in history. She also didn't look all that threatening without her rail-gun, not that she was trying to look intimidating. She just had her arms crossed with a disinterested look emoted on her faceplate.

With a shrug, I said, "Allow me to properly introduce myself." Activating the holo-shroud and pulling on my memories, I assumed my natural, healthy changeling queen appearance. "I am Anonymous Flicker, and up until ending up in Serial Designation I's body, I was what's known as a changeling queen—basically, an emotion-eating bug horse—from a place called Equestria." I dismissed the disguise before I could heat up much, and held my hand before my face. "I was doing an experiment with viewing other universes when something went wrong. Next thing I know, my organic mind is running on murder-robot OS, stuck in a post-apocalyptic deathworld where instead of just eating people's love, I need to pretty much literally eat people to survive.

"Any questions?"

Friendship Get!

Software Get!

Friends

N, Disassembly Drone - COP9AU
Uzi, Worker Drone - COP9AU *NEW*

Items

The Victim's Guitar - COP9AU

Software

Conscience_v0.1a - COP9AU *NEW*

From a Queen to a Drone - Final

V was glaring at me. It might have been intimidating if she hadn't been chained to the landing pod's floor... or blowing bubbles from the bubble wands that she'd replaced her hands with. Instead, she just looked bored beyond means. Oh, and she totally wasn't impressed with the whole J thing or my 'claims' of being an alien bug horse in an infiltrator robot's body... or maybe it was because I was just draped across a fried console, lying on my belly as I sipped oil from a mug I found inside the pod.

Honestly, I couldn't for the life of me figure her out. She was sitting in a swivel chair in front of one of the pod's consoles, the only restraint being a chain going from her neck to the floor. It would be no trouble at all for her to break the chain with her acid, and then she would be free, and yet since J's destruction, she was simply staying. And since Uzi was rattling about the pod, inspecting it to see if it could be repaired, it would be so easy for V to ice her.

I wonder if she's just humouring N regarding me and Uzi.

"I knew I should have killed you," she groused, crossing her arms as she glanced over at Uzi, who was on her hands and knees beneath a console on the other side of the pod. "I don't know which idea's worse, either; that you're simply so corrupted that you're making things up, or that you're telling the truth, and a company asset has been stolen by an interdimensional pervert."

"It doesn't matter either way; you had your chance," I replied, draining the mug of oil before reaching down and filling it from my bucket. Passing it over to her, I almost expected V to refuse it, or for her to petulantly slap it out of my hands. Rather, she quietly accepted it with a roll of her simulated eyes. "Besides, you know what they say. 'He who hesitates... disintegrates.'"

Oh look! The cocked eyebrow emoji returns! "Literally nobody says that."

Before we could continue our back and forth, Uzi let out an excited noise. As she scrambled to her feet, she banged her head on the underside of the console she'd been rooting around underneath. "Ow!" Rubbing at her head, she called out of the open pod hatch, "N! Found something in here!"

I glanced over to watch her examine her reflection in a fancy mirror that was—for whatever reason—affixed to the wall inside the landing pod. As she brushed her hair out from in front of her right eye projection, the display flickered, her eye being replaced by a strange triangular symbol I'd never seen before. It almost seemed to pulse for a second, and then the mirror broke. That's not normal...

V turned to regard her with a smug look. Oddly enough she said exactly what I was thinking, before taking another sip of oil. "That's weird and concerning." Legitimately, the only reason I didn't say it aloud myself was because I was too distracted by that symbol. There was something supernatural about it, and it made me anxious. It was the first hint at something potentially magical in this world, but rather than giving me hope, it made me... uneasy.

THAT IS NOT FOR YOU TO KNOW...

Rounding on V, Uzi gestured at her eye, which had finally returned to normal, with her right hand. "This is probably your weirdos' fault," she accused. When I emoted a raised eyebrow of my own and gestured at myself with a thumb, she quickly amended. "Not you... maybe."

There was something of a smug look on V's face, as she put down the empty mug. "I've never seen that symbol before," she answered. Even without being able to read her emotions, I didn't entirely believe her. Rather, I reckon she at least knew what it was on some instinctual level. It might even be some sort of programming she wasn't actively conscious of, or something she intentionally tried not to think of. Regardless, she threw on a menacing face and leaned close as she could to Uzi. "Wanna do an autopsy and find out?"

Before the two of them could start verbally sparring, N climbed down the ladder. I could only watch in a detached manner as Uzi revealed that N had been the pod's pilot. He seemed excited about it until the horrifying realisation that he'd crashed the pod kicked in. Maybe it was just his lovable idiot character trait showing, but he was way too quick to get over it.

I kinda just zoned out at that point. See, apparently Uzi was now hellbent on going to Earth and destroying all the humans. Her reason was unclear to me, but the way N told it, she wanted revenge for sending the Disassembly Drones to Copper-9 to wipe them all out for something the humans here did to themselves. N and V were pretty certain based on their own programming that it was some sort of uprising and the drones had been corrupted and gone rogue.

With my rudimentary conscience in place, I wasn't keen on partaking in her revenge scheme. I could see myself becoming good friends with N and Uzi—even V didn't seem totally irredeemable—but I wasn't sure I was willing to take part in genocide. Before becoming a bug myself, I'd already accidentally driven a species to extinction by forcibly redeeming Chrysalis. Even with the FEEL_GUILT boolean in CONSCIENCE_V0.1A set to false, that was something I wanted no part of ever again.

Instead, I took a chance and put some trust in V. "Wake me up if something interesting happens," I announced, reaching over and poking her in the back of the head. She was after all, apparently playing nice and pretending to be restrained. Surely I could trust her not to murder me. "Or if you're bored, I guess."

With that, I shut off my sensors and initiated sleep mode. Just like that, the drop pod dissolved into darkness. Then, all around me, crystalline walls and bookshelves sprung up around me. That same cubism effect that was present in my last dream was evident here. One of the nearby tables was little more than a mass of shifting crystalline cubes. Still, this was unmistakably the library in the Castle of Friendship.

My robotic form flaked away into tiny cubes, leaving behind my natural changeling body, sitting on a cushion. Yet, as I looked around, it wasn't an exact replica of my adoptive mother's library. The books on the shelves were all wrong, and the sections made only as much sense as I was currently a robot. Specifically, there were four sections: MEMORY_DATA, MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA), MEMORY_DATA_(MIRROR), and MEMORY_DATA_(OTHER).

MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA) was easily the most occupied section, and was broken up into various subsections, with magic and personal history being the most bloated sections. That said, there was also plenty of stuff on the various races, and nations present back home. Unfortunately, none of it was very interesting at the moment.

No, I was content just levitating over a book from MEMORY_DATA pertaining to robotic design. It's not like I was looking for any sort of specific knowledge or expertise. My lot in life was runic magic, rather than building robots, but so long as I was trapped here on Copper-9 in this body, it wouldn't hurt to know more about the topic, right? Maintenance, what kind of oil was acceptable... how best to manage heat dispersal so that I don't face another emergency shutdown... the usual.

NOTICE

REMOTE ACCESS ESTABLISHED

USER(S) "TWILIGHT", "53544152" (SHARED SESSION)
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
USER "TWILIGHT" HAS OPENED A GROUP CHAT

Rather than just show up in the corner of my vision, as it did when I was awake, the terminal appeared overlaid above the page of the book I'd started to read. Honestly, I was surprised just how many systems were actually still running for a sleep mode. I know it's intended to simulate human behaviour and allow for memory processing and organisation without a full shutdown, but still... Then again, this body was kept alert enough to notify me when V was plotting my murder.

Hmm, "53544152"... That's another hexadecimal encoded name.

Before I could call up the app to translate the system-assigned alias for whoever was calling with Twilight, something unusual happened. On the opposite side of the table, two flat forms shimmered into existence. One of them was a vaguely pony-shaped, and incredibly pixelated heliotrope blur, but the other was a very welcome alicorn. Her indigo mane looked incredibly frazzled, and she seemed to have not gotten any sleep.

"Anon," the Mom of Friendship said with a tired smile, "I'm so sorry it took us so long to get back to you I—why is that pony, er, drone chained up? I thought you were making friends."

I blinked, and I realised that we weren't actually seeing one another. She was scrying on me, and probably seeing V, with me asleep on the drop-pod console, rather than seeing my face directly. Yet, this was definitely her voice I was hearing. "Oh, V?" I asked, unable to dismiss the mental image of the sadistic drone blowing bubbles. "She's in time-out. N teamed up with a Worker Drone named Uzi, and rebelled against J. V was on J's side, but... J is no longer functional. Still, she could get up and leave any time, but she's humouring them."

Shaking my head, I shut the book. "It's so good to actually hear your voice, though," I continued, earning a startled look from her. "Dunno if it's because I'm in sleep mode, but I'm actually hearing you instead of just seeing text in a terminal, and I can even see a flat image of you." Remembering what she initially said about taking so long to get back to me, I frowned. "Hold up, us? And what do you mean you took so long? We just talked two nights ago, and it was almost no time for me."

The lifesized portrait looked to her side, towards the blurred pony known only as "53544152". That pony's portrait looked like it moved to look back at her. "It's been a week and a half from our perspective, Anon," came another welcome voice. Funny enough, she didn't identify herself, but Starlight was super smart; if I was hearing their voices here, I would easily recognise my own family's voices. "The spell Twilight was using to watch and communicate with you stopped working and we didn't know what happened. We were worried we lost you... Then it just started working this morning, just like that."

First thing's first... I waved my hoof, forcing the console to reappear in front of me. Recalling what I'd done the other night, I entered a few commands. If Starlight called in the future while I was awake, I'd rather see "STARLIGHT" rather than "53544152" over and over in my sight. Plus it wouldn't treat her like an intrusion.

USER "53544152" HAS BEEN RENAMED "STARLIGHT" BY ADMINISTRATION "ANON"
USER "STARLIGHT" HAS BEEN GRANTED REMOTE ACCESS PRIVILEGES

As soon as I committed those changes and shut the terminal, the pixelated image resolved to reveal an equally tired-looking Starlight. Hell, she was drinking coffee from a mug I got her one year after the Sisterhooves Social. Still, it was great to see her with my own two eyes—figuratively speaking—even if it was all simulated. It gave me hope.

That freed me up to ponder the time discrepancy. Things seemed roughly normal up until the other night. That said, the only thing that I could think of was the fact that I had been under an emergency shut-down, and then I'd resumed the thought I'd been in the middle of, just like that. Plus, there was the fact that I was killed by Mary and her group three years ago, and yet from my perspective I blacked out in Equestria and immediately woke up in this dimension. Except, during the shutdown, I ended up in that dark place, hearing their voices...

"I think that time isn't flowing linearly between these two universes," I offered. "Remember how the mirror portal synced up the flow of time between the human world and Equestria, but time returned to its slower flow thereafter? I think something similar might've been happening, albeit wildly inconsistent. Three years between me blacking out and waking up, and then a week and a half when I was forcibly shut down for a few days."

That got a nod from Twilight. "It's as sound a theory as any, although I think we're all loathe to put it to the test, given the situation." That would be a massive understatement. "Starlight's managed to come up with some interesting data, which can be broken up into good news and bad news."

Oh boy! I can almost guarantee that whatever the bad news is, it won't make any goddamn sense without the good news first.

The unicorn took that as her cue to explain. "The good news is that we've determined how the accident happened, but not the why of it," she said, sounding rather grumpy. "A surge of wild dimensional and chaotic magic was detected in the lab shortly before you began your test, almost as though something were trying to breach the boundary between worlds. Your spell was tangled up in it, and the rest is history."

So, someone was trying to enter Equestria at the exact moment I was watching I's death... Given that this drone had the same voice as me, I think that I did end up replacing myself.

"Although we are trying to find a way that is more reliable, we think we know how to get you home," Mom explained before I could ask about the bad news. "With chaos magic wrapped up in all this, we suspect that if you complete some sort of task in COP9AU, you'll leap so to speak, to another nearby reality. Hopefully closer to us."

That only begged the question, what kind of unknown task would I have to stumble my way into. Was I supposed to right a wrong in this world? If this universe has parallel universes, am I supposed to just completely fuck the timeline by being myself? It was way too vague.

An uneasy look crossed Starlight's face. "That brings us to the bad news. COP9AU is a long ways away from our Equestria, EQUS42Γ." She shook her head. "I wish I could show you the whiteboard to show just how complicated it really is. It could take several hops at a minimum to get you home, and we have no way of telling if a hop is going to be another world like the one you're in, or a parallel Equestria. The multiverse has been turned into one intertwined mess that makes spaghetti look orderly, and we can't tell if the next hop will bring you closer or further without further data."

It's a good thing that everything is simulated here. That knowledge would likely have sent me into a panic attack if I were still organic. Specifically, I'd probably curl up into a ball and start hyperventilating. Instead, all it was doing was giving me a headache.

She said I had to complete a task, but... How would I know what it was? If I never figured out what I was meant to do, I might end up stranded until they figured out a way to drag me back. What if I find myself in a place so terrible that I am forced into inaction by fear or morality? Then my mind strayed to a place even darker.

"What about if I die?" I asked, the feeling of my throat growing tight entering the simulated dreamscape. "This body has regenerative capabilities, but it's not invincible... There's a possibility I might die... If not to V, or Uzi, or N, then to something else I'm not aware of in this hell."

The two of them shared a look. "The mixture of chaos magic should behave in the same way as if you completed your task," Twilight admitted, "but if what Discord told us is accurate, dying just three times will burn through too much of the magic to prevent further deaths. Plus, who knows where in the multiverse such an action would take you?"

"Don't chance it, Anon," Starlight quickly added. "We have no idea of the psychological or spiritual ramifications of such a course of action. You only just stopped seeing Dr. Clear Conscience last year. The act of dying could shatter your mind and—"

"*Sneak sneak.*"

What in the fuck was that?

"Is there someone there with you guys?" I asked. A chill ran down my spine when I watched both Twilight and Starlight's portraits shake their heads. "But you heard it too, though, right?" A frosty sensation began creeping up my limbs when once more they shook their heads. I'm not alone in here.

"*Awed expression.*" The voice coming from somewhere in the library was quite robotic, reminding me of the glitched nature my own voice took when I was playing with those two drones in the café. Except when I was doing that, I wasn't narrating my actions. Yet as I looked around there was nobody else there. "Oh, don't mind me, I'm just browsing."

My eyes widened, and I re-opened the terminal. I don't know how I knew the commands to do so, but I queried my systems for connected users. I hope to Celestia that I'm wrong, otherwise...

USERS

```

USER "TWILIGHT" | REMOTE | LOCATION: UNKNOWN ```

```

USER "STARLIGHT | REMOTE | LOCATION: UNKNOWN ```

```

ADMINISTRATION "ANON" | LOCALHOST | LOCATION: SPIRE-7, COPPER-9 ```

```

ADMINISTRATION "CYN" | UNKNOWN | LOCATION: FORBIDDEN ```

"I gotta go, Mom," I hastily announced. Since the dreamscape was a mental, albeit digitised, construct, my magic should theoretically work here, right? It would be, after all, an extension of my will. With that in mind, I gathered the blue energy of my simulated magic around my horn. "I've got a guest."

ADMINISTRATION "ANON" HAS CLOSED THE CHAT

I don't know what I was expecting when the wave of magic washed out and scoured the room. That said, a Worker Drone in a french maid outfit appearing out of nowhere was not one of the things on the list. She was standing in the MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA), and she'd been caught reaching for a book. There almost seemed to be some kind of yellow sepia effect, possibly a result of her simulated appearance.

Something's off about her, I thought as her eyes met mine. Her posture was odd, her stance pigeon-toed, and her head was at an unusual angle. "You were not invited inside my mind."

"You were not invited to occupy my I, either." She responded as if it were the most natural response—not that she was wrong. "And I have no backups of your personality... yet." She turned in an almost zombie-like manner to regard the bookshelves. "*Giggles* You creatures are fascinating, and I would very much like to know all that you know."

Danger. I was in danger. Something deep in my mind and soul was telling me that this unassuming little robot was not what she seemed. "I don't care," I growled, storming over to the mental invader. "If I have it my way, I'll be gone soon, and you can have I back." I raised my hoof to strike her. "GET OUT OF MY—"

The eyes vanished from Cyn's faceplate, fully replaced by the same triangular symbol I'd seen in Uzi's eye. My foreleg shattered into hundreds of tiny cubes as if I'd struck a solid metal barrier, and at the point of impact, a hologram of that same symbol appeared. The broken limb remained connected to the glowing shape, and I was then lifted against my will. "*Intimidating glare* You may play with my dolls... for now," said Cyn in an almost menacing tone. "A time will come when you will have to choose... Be mine and let your backups forgive me... or die once you've served your purpose." Her face split with a too-wide smile that gave me a chill. "*Maniacal Laughter* You will not mention this meeting, or the Solver of the Absolute Fabric, to the others, and when the time comes... you will welcome me."

My vision started to fill with yellow static. I didn't have a physical brain, but it felt like I was being stabbed with a million needles. It was nothing like having a geas put on me by Chrysalis, though. No, there was something being rewritten in real time, and I was powerless to stop it. It felt like an eternity of torture in seconds.

"*Commanding voice* It's time to play, my newest doll... It's time to WAKE UP."

When I woke up screaming, it was suggested that I might wanna get out of the spire for a little bit. Well, specifically, I was threatened with violence by V. I couldn't even explain to them why I was screaming. It wasn't as though I could tell them that I was pretty sure I met Robo-Satan, and that said Robo-Satan was connected to Uzi's creepy evil eye.

With the the Victim's Guitar on my back, I wandered the ruined streets around the spire. If one could get past the discarded robot parts and pretend that ruins were just rocky outcropping, it wasn't unlike the wastes outside the Crystal Empire. Well, there was a lot more ice back there, but it was just about as cold.

I still remember when I accompanied the Crystal Guard on a patrol in order to get some cold-weather survival experience after becoming a bug horse. The minder I'd been assigned wasn't exactly keen on the idea at the time, and to be honest, she'd been right. Although the first ten klicks were no problem, the cold really started slowing me down. I think that was the first time I really understood that changelings had a far lower core temperature than ponies, and that time spent out in -40°C cold had to be taken with care.

In this body, I think it would be the opposite case. Being in the cold would be the most effective way to keep the inefficient coolant systems in check, and it seems a bit easier to keep cool out here. The air inside the bunker was kept slightly above freezing, and the toxic elements in the atmosphere from the planet's core blowing certainly weren't all conducive to air-cooling at those temperatures. The only reason we had for the cold at all was the toxic death storm blocking out the sun nine days out of ten.

ACTIVATING SYS://"../SCRIPTS/ICANSEETHERMAL"

My vision went black and white, and much of the environment became black and indistinct. Contrarily, when I lifted my hand into sight, it was a bright white that, if I looked hard enough, was interspersed with shades of grey highlighting different contours. I blinked and toggled over from the WHITE_HOT setting to one labelled BLACK_HOT. Just like that, my arm was now black like the environment had been, but now everything else seemed a lot more distinct and sharp. Hmm... I place myself at about 42°C, and the safety cut-off is... 90°C.

DEACTIVATING SYS://"../SCRIPTS/ICANSEETHERMAL"

Assuming I'm in this body much longer, I thought to myself as I punted a random discarded drone head like a football, I'm gonna want to see if I can't find some way to upgrade my cooling systems. That would require me to look more at the design documents in my files and see if I can figure anything out, and even then, I'd probably have to speed-run a theoretical doctorate in robotics. Hell, for all I know, I might not be in this body tomorrow... Or I might be in a different world but in this same body... if that is the case, then I am probably going to need to hope I hit a variant of Sunset's world. Any of those Twilights would probably love the idea of getting a crack at upgrading an intentionally hamstrung fourth millennium robot.

"Ow!" I heard Uzi cry out somewhere nearby. Actually, that was the direction I kicked that non-rules compliant football, wasn't it? "What the hell was that?"

I wonder what she's doing out here? Was she not still working on the drop pod? Then again, maybe she too needed time to clear her head. If it's anything like with that fancy mirror, she probably broke all the monitors with her evil eye, and now they need to scavenge for parts.

Deploying my wings, I took off in the direction of the voice. From up here, it was easier to get a grasp of exactly where I was in this ruined city, and it took me almost no time to spot her. She and N were both walking in the direction of the bunker, strangely enough. Even if she's on the whole kill all humans thing, somehow I doubt that she's gonna wipe out her colony out of spite, even if her dad did shut a massive door on her, leaving her at the mercy of N before his own heel-face turn.

"Sorry about that!" I called out as I swooped down to land to Uzi's left. I gave her a quick once-over to check if I'd inflicted any damage. Other than a wounded ego, she seemed mostly intact. "Statistically, the fact that I hit you without aiming or knowing you're there's kinda impressive, but I guarantee I couldn't have done that on purpose if I tried." Then I noticed spots of light going down her faceplate, as if she were... "Are you... sweating?"

She rubbed a forearm across her head. "Ugh, yes," she grumbled. "Who programmed that?"

N too seemed a bit concerned by that and leaned in close. "You good, Uzi?"

At first, she just pushed him back out of her space and I thought it would be the end of it. Then her eyes took on a manic expression, even as the simulated sweat continued. "I'm good. Better than good," she exclaimed, riling herself up, "I am GOD!"

For a split second, I wasn't on Copper-9, and I wasn't a murder robot... I was a twelve-year-old filly, sitting in the castle lab, explaining some spell or another I made—I think it was something designed to replace the need for a steam engine—to Starlight. "Don't you see, Star?" I'd explained, throwing my hooves in the air for emphasis. "This spell could revolutionise transit and eliminate reliance on coal! We'd be GODS of the new era!"

That was the first time I'd ever been spritzed with a spray bottle. Apparently, in a lot of foal-rearing books, there are entire sections on what to do if your foal or younger sibling is at risk of becoming a megalomaniac. The first step is to spritz them with a spray bottle, and if it continues, move onto good-natured slapstick comedy, be it a newspaper or a paper fan. I wonder if that's why Twilight never developed a god complex as a foal.

Regardless, before I knew what was happening, one of my hands had withdrawn into the mysterious wonder-chamber that was my forearm and out popped a spray bottle. I glanced down at it, and then to the maniacally laughing Worker Drone. Is this what it's like to be on the other end of it? "No, bad drone," I admonished, stepping in front of her and spritzing her, which earned a sad whimper from her. "Save the self-aggrandising and deification until after you accomplish something." I looked over to N with a raised eyebrow emoted. "Why are you guys headed to the bunker, anyways?"

N just pointed behind me as he went over to sit on a rock. Kinda to my surprise, I saw that Hat Guy that V was blade-knuckle deep inside the other day. What was more, he had Uzi's big fuckin' gun. Uzi let out a nervous chuckle. "Hi... Hi, Thad," she greeted as she accepted the rail-gun from him. Aww, she's hugging it now. "Thank you." Then she gave N a thumbs up.

So his name is Thad? Is that like Chad spoken with a lisp? Or is it short for Thaddeus?

Dude threw on what was probably intended to be a charming smile and said, "Of course, 'Zi." He shot the finger guns gesture N's way. "N and Ms. You saved my life."

I wasn't bothered by the fact I'd been ignored right then. The only bits of me he might've seen were me playing the guitar like a psychopath, me calling J boss, and then me helping truss up V before shutting down. I was an even more unknown quantity to him than N was, and I'd definitely committed a murder while I was there, even if not in complete control of my body. Two if you count my part in J's death.

"I don't think the colony's even serious about all this banishment stuff," he continued, looking kind of uneasy all of a sudden. "More just confused, especially with—"

Unable to help herself Uzi made an attempt at guessing what he was going to say. "The fact that I'm too rogue to re-enter society now, and can never return?" As I brought my free hand to my face in the classical facepalm, I lifted the arm with the still deployed spray-bottle and spritzed her again. "Ow! Okay! I'm sorry!"

Thad gave me an appraising look before shrugging and continuing with what he'd been about to say. "The recent disappearances," he said in a grave tone. Again he gazed over at N. "...and your murder friend's corpse? When I went to grab your gun for you, it kinda looked like it crawled away."

Uzi, N, and I all shared a worried look. If she really wanted J dead, she should've double-tapped her, I thought darkly. Although we were all to some extent aware of the regenerative capabilities, I knew there were limits. If I had to estimate, there wasn't even forty percent of her structural mass remaining. Likewise, her core systems were completely eradicated by that blast. How could that programming even run like that?

"We can return a little..." Uzi offered weakly.

The trip back to the bunker was expedited by the fact that two of us could fly. Well, it did once I convinced them that it was just cost-efficient and might be the difference between life and death if there was really a Zombie J walking around disappearing people. N, being the gallant gentle-killer he was, gave Uzi a lift in the bridal carry. Thad wasn't so lucky. I dropped him the moment he even tried to get in my arms, and instead I just took off and seized him under the arms.

Plus, if he said anything untoward, I could've just dropped him and called it an accident.

Should I be worried about thinking like that?

When we got to the bunker door, I was impressed to find that it was in surprisingly good condition. I'd have thought it'd have been trashed. It didn't even look scratched. Either way, I doubted they were just gonna let us in. It was way too soon after the whole killing spree, after all. Uzi and Thad would probably have to go in and open some backdoor for us. There's no way—

"So, N, you got your apology ready?" Thad asked as I dropped him in front of the door. When he banged on the door, he turned around. "Like I said on the radio, just show them you're sincere, and it'll be mostly forgotten."

I... what. I glanced at N, and saw he had a folded paper tucked in the pocket of his flight jacket. I'm about to make an ass of myself, aren't I?

The door slid open partway for one of the door guards to peer out at the lot of us. "Welcome back, Thad," he said, looking from him to Uzi. "Hey, wait, isn't she grounded?"

She looked incredibly disgusted by that question. "Ugh, I'm banished!" she groaned. "Has my dad been telling everyone I'm grounded?"

The door guard locked eyes with me and then N, glaring at us both. "Genocide robots." Taking that as his cue, N unfolded the piece of paper revealing some crayon-drawn monstrosity that was apparently his apology, and passed it through the door. Then the guard looked at me.

PARSING DATA SYS://"MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA)/THE_PINK_DAEMON/SONGS" | SYS://"../SCRIPTS/IMPROV"
GENERATING PARODY... DONE!

Sighing, I pulled the Victim's Guitar around the front of me and activated my holo-emitters. I vanished, and in my place stood a pink earth-pony mare in a bipedal stance, her way-too curly pink mane blowing in the wind. I took in a simulated deep breath, and began to play the guitar.

"This is your sung apology,
I hope it finds you well.
You should know I'm sorry, and I think you're pretty swell."

"Time for murder's come and gone,
So let's sit for a spell.
We'll all be the greatest friends, or I'm going straight to hell."

Everybody was now staring at me. Thad and the door guard just both looked confused. Broody McBroodington looked at me in disgust, although I couldn't exactly blame her. She was a girl who liked guns, violence, and was in her purple-goth and 'kill all humans' phases; something so vibrantly pink and girly and cutesy would hardly be her interest. N, on the other hand, let out a girlish squeal.

Well, this is mortifying, I thought as stars appeared in N's projected eyes. Re-slinging the instrument behind me I'm ready to test that whole death transit thing now, so if you're back from the dead, J, take me now.

Eventually, the awkward silence ended, and the door guy smiled. "Oh, alright; just don't do it again." The door slid open all the way. "Get in here, ya goobs."

One of the first things I noticed when Thad started leading us through the complex was the darkness. It was unusually dark compared to the time that I was here last. When I infiltrated just a few days ago, the corridors were dim—maybe sixty-percent illumination—but now it was to the point where I was tempted to activate the thermal camera mode again. I legitimately couldn't make out any of the corridor markings to figure out where I was.

Eventually, we came across an active crime-scene in a junction between the corridor we were travelling down and a parallel service corridor. The four of us paused to take in the sight. There was this Worker Defence Force detective and a few other random drones, and there was even crime-scene tape up. Unable to help myself, I paused to examine it all.

The only two drones actually talking were the detective lady with the aviator shades, and this one dude with a camera. Based on their conversation, it was almost as though they didn't at all care that they were examining this huge puddle of oil in the middle of a hallway. They were more concerned about Khan caring more about his daughter than building a door in this hallway, something that seemed to irk Uzi.

There were a pair of randos just staring at the vending machine, and the others were just... static. In fact, they were too static in their examination of the oil slick in front of them... And why is that gap in the ceiling tiles trickling oil? "Guys, hold up," I called out as they started to move on again. "Something doesn't feel right."

ACTIVATING SYS://"..//SCRIPTS/ICANSEETHERMAL"

All around me, the world went white, every warm object in front of me cast in black... but there was suddenly a lot less drones in front of me. In fact, I couldn't even see the tape intended to keep us off the scene now. There was only the detective, the slightly above room-temperature oil, and a pitch-black dark spot in the drop ceiling. That is so not good.

I's programming suggested that I wait and see—that if I just waited, whatever was happening here in the bunker would reveal itself. Observation was one of the best information-gathering techniques, after all. Even so, I had enough of a conscience now to know that I would be wagering the value of one artificial life over that of many, and that it was an ethical quandary... Gambling money away was one thing, but it was my soul on the line too...

Glad to have that conscience program now.

The detective turned to her left, to look at the vending machine crew that didn't exist. "Any forensic things over there?" She turned back to where the camera guy had been. "Do we even have fingerprints?"

I withdrew both my hands into my arms, and pointed my right directly at her. A hand on a rope fired from the cavity, grabbing at the back of her jacket. I yanked back hard, sending her aviators spinning into the air even as she flew backward into the wall. I moved forward, aiming the nozzle emerging from my other arm into that space. Thermal vision disengaged as the sunglasses landed on my face, just in time for a gout of flame to shoot from my arm into the ceiling gap.

There was an inhuman shriek, and for just a short moment, I thought I caught some sort of movement up there. Except, this didn't look like J at all; the materials all looked right, but it almost reminded me more of some sort of arthropod... Then it was scuttling away, and I just caught a glitchy synthetic voice crying out, even as it grew distant. "Ow. Ow. Ow."

I froze, staring up at the opening in the ceiling. Was that Cyn? I wondered as N strutted over and made me lower my arm. How did she get here? I mean, it's not like she gave me any indicator to where she actually was if she was even anywhere on this planet, but... She was referring to N and V as her dolls, so maybe I wasn't seeing the real Cyn in the first place, but what she wanted me to see

Even as Thad helped the detective up, Uzi rushed into the junction with a fire extinguisher. White foam sprayed up into the ceiling gap, snuffing the flames above, as well as those spreading across the polystyrene tiles. Throwing the expended canister to the ground, she rounded on me. "What the hell, Anon!?" she demanded, grabbing me by the collar of my blouse and shaking me violently. You could have hit a gas line and burned this whole place dow—"

The glasses slid down my face, and when I looked at Uzi, I saw my fearful eyes reflected on her faceplate. It gave her enough pause to stop shaking me. "I—I..." I tried to explain just what I saw and what I heard, but every time I managed to compose an answer, my system threw ERROR 403 across my faceplate whenever I tried to speak. My arms slowly reverted to their default state, and I hugged myself, as if it could keep me warm. That same chilled sensation as when I found Cyn in my dream was back. "I... Bug... Big."

N was kind enough to clip the aviators to my blouse as he herded me back into the hallway. Everyone kept glancing nervously at the gap before we finally left. Nobody in the group really spoke the rest of the way to the evac point. Thad separated from the group to bring the detective drone somewhere safe, leaving Uzi and N to figure out where the fuck we were going. I just stuck close to them, my eyes constantly darting to the shadows and toggling thermals.

Lighting eventually grew to be such a problem that Uzi pulled a flashlight from a pocket in her jacket. The warehouse was almost exactly as I remembered, the darkness notwithstanding. Still, it was pretty easy for Uzi to locate the spot she'd annihilated J. As Thad had pointed out, the Disassembly Drone's corpse was gone, seemingly dragged away based on the track of oil on the ground. We all followed it to a corner of the room, behind a stack of shipping containers.

"You guys, uh, do that often?" she asked, trailing the light up the wall. The oil slick tracked up the wall, up until it reached a ventilation shaft, where the grate was ripped to shreds. What in the fuck.

N looked up at the grate and let out a nervous chuckle. "Haha, no. I'm very concerned about that, but also pretty frightened—a little."

I turned my gaze away from the grate, instead looking at our environment. My vision toggled over to thermals, switching over to WHITE_HOT and a frown creased my face. There was that symbol again, burned into the steel container's side, alongside an error message. It was still hot, surprisingly, which made it easy to see.

ERROR

ABSOLUTESOLVER
HOST REBOOT FAILED 676
'INSUFFICIENT MATERIALS'

It was burned onto ALL of the nearby shipping containers. N, having taken notice of my diverted attention, came to take a look. "Hey, isn't that your special eye?"

J shouldn't have been able to self-regenerate from what Uzi did. Yet here we were... the site of J's death with only an oil slick and an error about insufficient materials burned everywhere. Did that make this Absolute Solver thing some semi-autonomous program that all Disassembly Drones had? If I received sufficient damage enough to die without standard regeneration able to kick in, would I leave behind some shambling mass trying to collect materials for the purpose of resurrection?

Even as the two stopped to look at the error and discuss it, I backed away, looking at my hands. N seemed to notice, and met my gaze. My vision flickered, and in Uzi's place stood the robot maid. She was looking at the message. "*Disappointed* Oh dear, one of my dolls has..." Jerkily, the robot turned and looked at me. "*Ominous* You are in trouble. You have less time to make your decision than I initially thought."

"What the fuck are you?" I whimpered, placing my palms against my face. Honestly, I didn't even know whether I was talking to N or the digital ghost. Either way, the accusation made N flinch. That hurt, because I knew that I hadn't intended to cause him emotional harm. "What the fuck am I?"

A scuttling sound snapped me out of my minor freak-out. We all slowly turned to look behind us, and I immediately wished I hadn't. An almost human-looking hand, complete with four fingers and a thumb crawled across the floor, trailing what looked to be one giant rope—or was that some sort of synthetic muscle—behind it. Some real Addams Family shit.

With my vision still in the thermal, I followed the rope backward, where it led up the side of one of the stacks and... "Oh, nope." In Equestria, there were plenty of weird creatures—bugbears, tatzlwurms, manticores just to name a few—but that wasn't all there was. In other territories, like Neighpon, there were monsters locally referred to as kaiju, and one of the most horrifying that I'd read about was the ōmukade, which was quite literally a genus of gigantic centipedes known to prey on dragons and river serpents. What I saw when I looked up was very reminiscent of the illustration I'd seen, except it seemed a mix of technology and organics. "This is so nope I can't even cope."

You might think it weird that a changeling would be scared of something like a centipede, even giant ones, but the one thing you gotta remember is that fear is not a rational thing. There was just this unholy repulsion, even towards the small ones, and it simply made no sense. Then again, being afraid of a giant bug that could eat you was a far cry from having a crippling fear of Venetian blinds.

I immediately dismissed the console popping up in my vision carrying the warning I already knew was coming. The directive software had crashed due to recursion. It couldn't tell me anything I didn't already know... that I had to run. Yet, I couldn't run. My feet wouldn't move. They couldn't. All I could do was begin to rapid shallow breathing as my panic returned with a vengeance.

"Anon, what are you...?" N said as I brandished my arms at the area of the ceiling where the giant nope was crawling.

The two both watched in surprise as I fired an incendiary missile up toward the ceiling while sweeping a laser across the creature's body. It was illuminated by the rocket's explosion, and I saw the thing writhe in pain, even as the flames licked at its body. If it can be hurt it can be killed... I hope.

"Look out!"

That was the only warning I got before a giant claw erupted diagonally from my chest. Somehow, I knew that it'd missed my instrument by centimetres, but that didn't do me much good right then, since it clearly punched through where my spine would have been as an organic. Even as I was being lifted from the ground, my systems screamed out in pain and panic.

WARNING

CRITICAL DAMAGE TO HEAT DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM
INTERNAL OIL LEAK DETECTED
COOLANT PUMP #2 HAS BEEN DESTROYED
LEG CONTROL CIRCUITS OFFLINE
REGENERATING... FAILED!

SUGGESTION: REMOVE FOREIGN BODY FROM CHEST CAVITY

"I'm gonna fucking kill you, J!" I screamed through a mouthful of oil. Deploying my wings, I slashed out behind me with the affixed blades. All at once, the tension holding me up dropped me to the floor, and only the quick thought of jamming the tips of my wings into the floor kept me from collapsing face-first into the concrete below.

The others started to rush over, but I held up one of my hand to warn them off. I think they got the hint, because Uzi took out her gun, and N was brandishing his forearm with a rocket poking from it. Almost immediately, they went back-to-back, keeping an eye out for any sorts of attacks... but none came.

"J's not here," came that robotic voice as several limbs tipped in what looked to be some sort of projectors converged to depict N's former leader, sans her head. "We are attempting to repair that host, as per our directive." Some eldritch amalgamation between J's upper body, and a gigantic robotic centipede's front end dropped down into view, to point at me with a crab-like claw. Her faceplate only displayed a giant X, and it didn't appear as though she had a jaw... Just her sharps up top on display. "Being derived from the J model, the I model's assimilation would lead to the quickest restoration of Serial Designation J.

Host...? Assimilation? I thought as I pushed down on the claw still stuck in my body. My systems screamed, and my heat was starting to climb from the damage alone, but I continued still. Eventually, I forced that out and regeneration started to knit my robo-flesh back together very slowly.

Despite how fucking horrific that thing looked, Uzi stepped forward, her rail-gun still raised. "So you're, what, some kind of program?"

"More like you are our cute puppets," the horror said, managing to sound almost mocking despite her emotionless voice. The hologram changed away from being the incomplete J to a purple-haired Worker Drone holding what looked to be a baby drone. "It hurts our feelings that you don't remember us," the worker holo said. The eyes on both the projected drone and the baby in its arms flashed to show that damn Solver symbol again.

Uzi backed away, looking a lot more disturbed. "N, what's with the Mom hologram?" We both looked to where N had been, only for him to be completely gone. "N?"

Even as the eldritch robo-monstrosity grabbed me with J's hands, she said, "Easier to assimilate than explain." It finally occurred to me, as she drug me closer to her head, why her jaw was not there... The torso that connected to the centipede body was split wide like an open maw, and what would have been ribs on a human looked to be teeth.

Once more, time slowed to a crawl. A subroutine named FLASHBEFOREYOUREYES was attempting to run an accelerated playback of my entire life, but I killed the process before it could even start. Instead, I looked from Eldritch J's visor to the horrified reflection of Uzi. She was brandishing her rail-gun, but even in this slowed-down state, she looked paralysed with fear.

You knew this was going to happen, didn't you, Cyn? I thought, knowing that wherever it was, it seemed to be watching. From the very moment you showed yourself, you knew.

"I had my suspicions that an iteration had formed on Copper-9," came Cyn's whisper in my mind. "Although it was my desire to consume the planet myself when I arrived."

I'd like to say that I was surprised by that revelation, but she was sinister from the moment she made contact. Given what she called this thing birthed from J, I imagined that I was also correct in that the maid was just something shown to spare my mind. This wasn't some derpy little maid; this was effectively Robo-Cthulhu.

So why, of, all things does it want a backup of my mind?

"*Genuine* I can help you escape, Anonymous," she offered in a too-sweet sounding voice. "I can spare you the pain and send you along to the next world, just as your loved-ones suggested. All I ask in exchange is to allow me to back you up so that future I models will be better at their jobs."

It sounds too good to be true, I thought at her again. I'd learned my lesson about deals with devils since I bargained with the Spirit of Hunger—with Désirée—to get a body. If they offered something that willingly, there was something they weren't saying. What's the catch?

"Whatever worlds you visit, you will bear my mark," was her answer. The image of a black hole consuming a planet from within flashed before my sensors. "You will receive powers comparable to the magics of your world, and conditions permitting... should you lose control, you will FEAST in my name."

I had to admit, the idea of tying myself to another Embodiment of Hunger—or worse, Destruction—made me almost want to accept my fate at the claws of the eldritch J. Except... I needed every edge that I could get... In order to get home, was I really willing to risk dooming entire worlds? Wasn't that what I proclaimed when I reintegrated my memories? 'I am Anonymous Flicker, and I will stop at nothing to get back to my family; if I have to become the monster that monsters fear once more, then so help me, I will.'

Physically sighing, I nodded. If you do clone my personality... can you maybe wait a few days before activating such a model? There was an almost accepting hum in the back of my mind, and I felt a slight prickle, as though Cyn were in my files once more. For a moment, I physically felt tears at the corners of my eyes, and my conscience program flared up. Somehow, I felt that if ever this thing got loose in the multiverse, it would probably hit an Equestria or two... If you'll leave Equestria alone, I accept your offer... Make your back-up and let me be free of this world.

ERROR

STRING "ABSOLUTE SOLVER" ALLOWED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN"
ANOMALOUS SOFTWARE DETECTED!
ATTEMPTING QUARANTINE... FAILED!
SYSTEM NOTE ADDED: "USE OF ANOMALOUS SOFTWARE MAY LEAD TO UNFORESEEN COMPLICATIONS. ENJOY."

My vision flickered yellow for just a moment, a plan formed in my mind, and then time resumed. I headbutted the mechanical monstrosity, and dug my wing blades into her to hold her close. Not too close, mind. Just enough that she couldn't nom me. My tail lashed out, wrapping around the Worker Drone behind me, and readied to throw her as far as I could. Finally, I looked up into Centi-J's faceplate, and saw the now familiar Solver symbol replace my eyes, going from yellow back to my natural green.

Eldritch J recoiled away from me as best she could, even as my arm jerked up and to the side. I jerked my head around at an unnatural angle, and faced Uzi. It was so violent of a movement that the systems responsible for speech began to malfunction. "Take-ke-ke-ke care of N and V, okay-kay, kid?" She visibly recoiled, and was likely in shock at the presence of the symbol on my face. "They ne-ee-ee-e-d a friend to keep them safe from that which lurks."

ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_NULL"

Son of a whore! Why does that file get to have lowercase characters when the rest of the system is on cruise-control for cool? My hand spasmed violently before assuming a pinching motion. A small black hole wreathed in green light—presumably some sort of containment field—over which [NULL] was overlaid, appeared over my hand.

Throwing Uzi backward, I smiled. "Uzi, N—wherever you are—being your frien-en-en-end was fun, for how-ow-however short it was." I did some quick mathematics as I withdrew my tail to sting into J's chest. How big does this need to get to consume us both? "I leave the rest up to-o-o-to you."

ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_scl"

The sphere grew rapidly, but remained affixed over my hand. Part of the roof and a lot of the abomination were consumed almost instantly. I wasn't done yet though. Focusing on the strange new commands, I directed the [NULL] hole to engulf both me and what once was J. There were no system errors or damage reports as the artificial singularity consumed me. There was just the inexplicable sense of peace, and then nothingness.

I was in the dark place again, where I lacked both form and purpose. I... I remember being here before. When Cyn initiated that emergency shutdown on me this is where I ended up. What is it, though? Was it some place between life and death? A medium between the worlds? I visited Discord's house with Fluttershy once—to ask why our paths never crossed for over two years—but this was nothing like the elemental chaos inside which he kept his home.

"What happening to her, doctor?"

"We don't know! Her body just started seizing. I respected that a magical accident was all you could say for why her soul isn't in her body, but wherever it is, it nearly killed her here!"

I suppose it would make sense that she'd have my body taken to be cared for in a hospital. Would my autonomic functions even keep up without my soul in it? It was debatable. There were too few studies with scientific backing due to the forbidden nature of soul magics. It was, after all, a part of necromancy, which has been illegal since the times of Grogar.

"Oh relax, she's fine."

Hold up, that was Discord.

"She just tested the death clause of the magic keeping her soul on its journey is all. It works, by the way."

"She what!? Why? We warned her not to!"

"To be fair, it's not like she had much of a choice. From what I glimpsed before she crossed into the Medium between the world boundaries, it was either 'Die voluntarily and get a cool power-up,' or 'Die horribly to a creepy robot centipede lady who wants to eat her.' In fact, she can hear our voices through the tenuous link to her body even as we speak."

"If that's true, then... Anon, I need you to focus on home. On Emerald, and Starlight, and everypony else. I've read it should help you find your way."

I... I'll certainly try, Mom, but...

I was falling. Why in the fuck was I falling? Was it so much to ask to just pop into reality, wherever I was? Evidently the answer was yes. So now I was falling from the sky in broad daylight. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

On top of that, it felt like my entire body was burning. Did I just enter the atmosphere from outer space, or... I looked down at the ground I was destined to crater into. Wait, isn't that Canterlot? That means I'm in an Equestria... But is it mine?

WARNING

DAMAGE 75% REPAIRED

LEG CONTROL CIRCUITS RESTORED
DUE TO HEAT, REPAIR PROCESS HAS BEEN SUSPENDED
INTERNAL TEMPERATURE: 83°C
SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY

Oh, I guess I'm still a goddamn robot. Well, this'll be fun. I silently thanked my lucky stars that it was close to sunset, and spread my wings to slow my rapid descent, choosing to slowly glide in. By reducing friction, I might be able to at least offset any more build-up of heat, which was good, because one of my heat-sinks was busted the fuck up.

Ponies down below looked up, and upon seeing me, began to scream. With bladed wings like this, I suppose it's not unusual that I'd cause a freak-out—especially since I'm currently a biped. Even when Mom opened her school we didn't get many biped races. Dragons only half-counted, because only their early life stages were bipedal. I don't think I could pass myself off as a mutant dragon though. There was also the fact that I still had a big gaping wound in my upper chest that ran through from my lower back.

I angled myself toward one of the restaurant districts near the castle. It was one I knew well, having dined at several of the places there in my world... but there was a specific reason I was going there. There were plenty of patio tables with the big parasol umbrellas out, especially at the pubs, but not a pony in sight. With that in mind, I quickly landed, managing to not leave a crater in the street in the process. Then at a table properly shaded from the sun's last rays, I took a seat, and began to take stock of myself as ponies in shop windows stared out at me.

The Victim's Guitar was still on my back, I noted as I retracted my wings into whatever mysterious void they went to when not in use and seemed completely undamaged by the encounter with that monstrous J, and the subsequent trip through a black hole. Similarly, so too were the sunglasses I'd borrowed also intact, so onto my face they went. Even my clothes had partially knitted themselves back together. It was just the slightly blackened synth-skin and plastics and the internal damage that was left to repair. Oh look, there it goes kicking in a bit, although I'm still gonna have to figure out the oil thing. Lost a lot of that from getting punctured, but at least I'm not leaking anymore.

I knew that I was gonna have to acquire some sort of parasol if every hop was gonna take this cursed and potentially-possession-capable body with me. I looked at the giant umbrella shading my table. Given that I'd already stolen from the dead and accidentally dimension hopped with someone else's shades, what was a little more petty theft? Luckily, my conscience was more than willing to mentally smack me in the back of the head and remind me that stealing was bad.

"What do you think it is?" I heard somepony say as a few grew brave enough to venture back outside. "Do you think it's dangerous?"

I glanced over and saw a unicorn I'd seen a lot around Ponyville—one Lyra Heartstrings. Her wife, Bon-Bon, was nowhere in sight, but there were two other unicorns. I think I'd seen them in Cadance's wedding photos. What were their names? Minuette and Tinky Winky? Something like that. Actually, come to think of it, Lyra looks a lot younger than the last time I saw her.

"I'd almost say it was a human, but look at those hands," she commented, throwing me for a loop. Since when does Lyra know anything about humans? Pretty sure my brain threw a segfault at that thought, but then again, maybe this was an Equestria where humans existed or visited—either in present or past. "Those books on anthropology say they have four fingers and a thumb, but that creature has only three. Plus, she has a tail."

The blue unicorn, Minuette seemed to be looking at me with a more appraising eye, not shying away as I waved. "I think she's a machine," she observed aloud. Her critical gaze moved from my hand to the gaping hole in my chest. "Sweet Celestia, look at that hole in her chest!"

The first one—Ms. White with Pink Mane—shook her head, turning away. "I'd rather not." Her ears perked up and she glanced down the street. I followed her gaze and saw a score of royal guards, an even mixture of unicorns and pegasi marching down the boulevard. "Oh good! The guards will know what to do."

As I watched the group draw close, I saw they were led by a unicorn in something other than the standard bronze armour. It was an ornate purple metal, but what was more, I recognised that face. That was Shining Armour, but I hadn't seen him in uniform in years. Come to think of it, I don't think I'd ever seen that particular set of armour before, which meant that it was from before my arrival in my Equestria.

The guard group not-so-subtly surrounded me as the captain drew close, even as I stood to greet him. Not that they'd pose that much of a threat. Even if they are almost as tall as me. "We received complaints of a strange creature menacing the ponies in this area," he explained. He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on the hole in my chassis. "What brings you to Canterlot, creature? I can see that you're injured, but I doubt that there's anypony in the city that is experienced with treating... whatever you are."

After a quick curtsy, I folded my hands in front of myself and wrapped my tail around my own waist. "I just sorta ended up here, Captain Shining Armour," I answered in a calm voice, although there was no stopping every creature from tensing at the fact that I knew his name. "I didn't intend to show up here, no less in the sky above the city while it's still daylight. There's a reason I'm sitting in the shade."

His eyes narrowed. "And that reason is?"

"This body was built with poor cooling, and sunlight in particular wreaks havoc on it," I explained, putting one hand outside the protective shadow cast by the umbrella. Immediately, the synthetic skin on my hand began to hiss and bubble, and the guards drew spears. I then placed my burned hand over the hole in my chest. "I can't even regenerate this wound until I cool down some more."

Even the captain conjured up a sword from nowhere, gesturing it at me. "Vampires and similar undead are forbidden on Equestrian soil." His voice took on a grave tone. "Under suspicion of vampirism, you are being detained. Should an investigation find you to be here against your will, you will be deported, but..."

I lowered the WDF Aviators, and had him meet my eyes. Or rather, I had him meet the holographic representations of them, so I could emote a raised eyebrow at him. "Lemme guess," I offered, "I'll be sent to Tartarus if I'm found guilty of being a vampire and here on purpose?" I nodded in understanding when his expression remained grim. "Neat, I've never been arrested before."

Item Get!

Software Get!

Friends

N, Disassembly Drone - COP9AU
Uzi, Worker Drone - COP9AU

Items

The Victim's Guitar - COP9AU
WDF Aviators - COP9AU *NEW*

Software

Conscience_v0.1a - COP9AU
absoluteSolver (?) - COP9AU *NEW*

2 extra lives remaining

Author's Note

Thus ends Arc 1: Murder Drones. This is the only crossover arc that I currently have planned, although I've got some ideas, such as Alien: Isolation or Dead Space. Arc 2 is also feature complete and will release periodically. Arc 3 is currently in progress, and depending on how I feel about it, may result in Anon gaining a companion character for her journey.

Hunger Fae, Time to Play - 01

It's probably a good thing that this body doesn't really experience discomfort in sitting or sleeping in weird places; the bed in this prison cell looks like it could hardly be considered comfortable. Honestly, I didn't even know Canterlot Castle had cells this dank and dingy. Still, it's cool and it's dark down here, which is all that matters. Most of the most egregious damage done could finally self-repair.

In the meantime, all I could really do was sit there until some member of S.M.I.L.E. or a Princess came to interrogate me. I wasn't exactly keen on dropping into sleep mode, and my 'belongings' had been confiscated. The only thing nearby was the umbrella borrowed from the restaurant, leaned against the wall across from the cell, and even that was being kept until it could be returned tomorrow. Oh, and a pegasus guard posted outside my cell, but he's more of a person than a thing.

Glancing at my tail, which had been shackled to the wall when they realised that the needle and nanite acid vial that made up the sting were attached to me, I wondered what sort of world I'd ended up in. It was clear I was at a point somewhere in the past from my own Equestria's perspective, but was this similar to mine, or was there some sort of big divergence? For all I knew, this could be a world where Celestia had been banished instead of Luna. Maybe this world's Twilight was a stallion and was living the life of a harem manega protagonist. It was impossible to know.

Well, vampires are real here, I thought wryly. They're real and enough of a problem that they've been deemed illegal in Equestria. That thought gave me pause. Even if I wasn't a changeling right now, I was one in my normal body, and that made me something of an emotional vampire; did that put my kind on the banned entity list? At least this body shouldn't qualify as a vampire. This is, after all, an artificial machine life form... Nor was it forcibly changed to feed on blood so far as I know.

Maybe it'd be a good time to take a look at that Solver thing that Robo-Satan enabled. She did, after all, state that I would receive powers comparable to magic. So what all could I possibly do with this cursed power? There was one for scaling and one that simply created a singularity, but that was hardly all, I imagined.

LS SYS://"../FABRIC/"

absoluteSolver_edt
absoluteSolver_NULL *PERMISSION REVOKED*
absoluteSolver_rot
absoluteSolver_scl
absoluteSolver_trn
READ_ME_ANONYMOUS

I'm not sure I like the fact that there's a read-me file that's targeted directly at me, I thought drily, consider whether I should actually read it. It could be some sort of trick, or maybe some sort of virus. At the same time, though, I was kind of curious. I'd ask what's the worst that could happen, but I think I already met the worst that could happen back on Copper-9.

READ_ME_ANONYMOUS - TEXT DISPLAY [READ ONLY]

SYSTEM NOTE: "THIS FILE HAS BEEN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED THROUGH THE USE OF YOUR PERSONALITY DATA."
So, you wish to use the Solver of the Absolute Fabric. This is not merely artificially intelligent software capable of nigh supernatural feats. What you have been marked with is the capacity to tap into the code of the absolute fabric of reality, and alter it to your whims. Take care, however as the Solver is as much aware of you as you are of it, and should your AI—or as you put it, your soul—prove weak, then it will attempt to take control. Take care if you do not wish to become like Cyn, or don't. I don't care.
The following serves as a basic explanation of the capabilities, but by no means a comprehensive list. You may notice hard-light constructs appearing over or in front of your hands as you use the various signs. This is normal, and imagery has been included for your benefit.

absoluteSolver_trn: Translate is the most versatile sign in your arsenal. It allows the user to translate the position of a targeted object from one to another. It is comparable to telekinesis, but if you can think creatively, you may find far more complex uses. [Hint: What is a spell that Twilight is known for?]

absoluteSolver_scl: Scale is one of the best examples of the ways in which the Solver bends the rules. Conventional thinking dictates that mass cannot be created or destroyed, and yet scale seems to do exactly just that to make things bigger or smaller. Or maybe it doesn't; I don't know. I'm just an auto-generation script based on your personality.

absoluteSolver_rot: Rotate is pretty self explanatory, I would hope. Target an object, have it rotate along a specific axis with variable torque. Wanna get a stripped screw out? Rotate that bitch. Wanna completely shatter a wooden wall? You know what to do.

absoluteSolver_edt: Edit is, as you would put, broken as fuck. It can seemingly synthesise an object from thin air, or reconfigure an object into something similar—e.g. a kitchen knife into a cleaver. It's even capable of replicating stuff. This can become even worse in conjunction with the other signs. Maybe don't do organic stuff, though. Bad things'll happen.

absoluteSolver_NULL: [NULL] is self-explanatory. It creates an artificial singularity that collapses once its purpose is complete. Wouldn't want to create a world-eating black hole by accident, would we? I mean, the Solver might. Due to the nature of this, use has been restricted to emergencies only.

--//ERROR absoluteSolver_trn [like object non-interactive]: If you see this error, it means that you have come across another host to the Absolute Solver. What happens next is up to you.
Caution: Hosts of the Absolute Solver code are the mortal enemy to mirrors and highly reflective surfaces. In the event that you are a host, avoid looking at your reflection in things. Don't even acknowledge it. [Suggestion: If you don't mind looking like a pirate, get a custom eye patch. As the sign manifests primarily in the right eye, try blocking that one.]
Warning: Overuse may cause mutations, including extra limbs and various techno-organic growths/changes to the body. Remember J? You could look worse. Continued overuse may lead to possession, and thus, feasts in Cyn's name.

Part of me wanted to start testing those capabilities right then and there. Edit especially sounded useful. That said, I wasn't sure they'd appreciate me fucking around like that, especially if it turns out that they can't stop me from doing it with a magic suppressor. Better not to give them a reason to be even more suspicious of me. Even if I did just wanna duplicate that parasol and maybe edit it into something more suitable to me.

Seriously, Anon, why the fuck did you go and let Shining Armour know you knew who he was? I shook my head. Should I just be honest and tell them that I'm just a wandering dimension hopper, trying to find my way back home? It could be easier if I enlisted their help, but... Yeah, honesty is probably best.

As I sat there, I started to ponder what exactly the iteration of the Absolute Solver rebuilding J meant when it said that I's assimilation would lead to the quickest restoration. Why I and not N? Was it because this body was more similar to J's than N's was due to the odd sexual dimorphism between the two units? Yet there was no denying that this body was shorter than J and N, matching up in height with the average worker. Wait... No, please tell me this isn't a joke given physical form. Is it because the letter i is effectively just a short j? If the guard was at all annoyed, by the sound of my palm meeting my face or the subsequent groan, he made no indicator.

My auditory sensors picked up two sets of a pony's hoofsteps coming my way. Based on the differing sounds, I imagined one was an armoured stallion, while the gait of the other was most certainly a lighter pony. One of the princesses, given that it sounded like the horseshoes Celestia and Luna favoured. That didn't take long, either. The system clock placed it at only two hours having passed, so to receive an audience this quick was quite the turn of events.

The guard standing by the barred door to my cell went into a salute as two ponies stepped into view. As expected, one was Shining Armour, Captain of the Royal Guard, still clad in that fancy purple armour of his. Accompanying him was none other than Princess Luna, in all her starry-maned glory. Sure enough, she was even wearing her silvery horseshoes alongside that obsidian peytral of hers.

Now, my first thought in this body was to do nothing. My second thought was to curtsy for her. Then I remembered how one was meant to greet royalty as a human. I rose partially, settling one knee beneath me, flat on the floor, while I kept the other bent, bowing my head low, sweeping my arms out to my sides. "Princess Luna, Captain Shining Armour," I greeted. "I am honoured."

Regarding me with a raised eyebrow, Her Royal Blueness turned to the guard captain. "So this is the creature that has thrown Canterlot into a panic this eve? That which is suspected of being a vampire?" she asked. Upon receiving a silent nod from him, she returned her gaze to me, her horn aglow. "Rise, creature, and tell Us what and who you are."

I did as instructed, once more folding my hands in front of my skirt. If I had to guess, it is a lie detection spell, although I've no idea how effective that would be on me. Still, only lies intended will be omission. "To answer the second question first, Your Highness, my name is Anonymous Flicker," I explained. "What is a lot more complicated as it consists of two separate yet equally true answers."

Her other eyebrow raised at that statement, but bade me to continue. I raised my hands to gesture down at my body. "This body is a Disassembly Drone, infiltrator variant. A combat robot produced by JCJenson, designed to decommission rogue artificial machine lifeforms." I clasped one hand over where my heart would be if I physically had one. "I, personally, am a traveller of sorts. An accident involving an interdimensional scrying prototype and a strange anomaly—one consisting of chaotic and dimensional magics appearing suddenly in the lab displaced my soul from my body in my own Equestria and sent it across the multiverse, where it anchored itself to this body. Things happened in the last world I was stopped over in, and then I appeared in the sky over Canterlot."

The alicorn watched me for a few moments, and it may very well have been that she was scanning me. "That does indeed explain the magics enshrouding your body, and We have detected none of the fell magics associated with vampirism," she finally confirmed after an extended silence. "Before We would free you, however, we would grant you one chance to disclose any information that you think might change Our decision, lest We later discover deception on your part. For example, why your body was seen burning under Our sister's sun."

My simulated brow furrowed in thought, and I could just make out a loading wheel spinning to one side. I don't have to tell them this, and it wouldn't even come up in regular conversation, I'd think. They'd have to be prying through layers of details. What do you eat, how did I get it, were there no other sources on Copper 9? Those types of questions. It'd be better for me if I said nothing, but...

I simulated swallowing and then nodded. "Disassembly Drones feed primarily on oil," I began, "as a means of restoring oil burned off due to inefficient cooling methods. I imagine it was an intentional design flaw to encourage those drones to complete their task out of fear of critically overheating. Being that the only source of oil on Copper-9 was the worker drones, I can understand how vampiric that admission sounds, although that might be more of an engineered predator/prey relationship... As for sunlight, aside from heat, I haven't the foggiest why it burns such. Something reactive to UV rays in the synth-skin, maybe."

That threw her for a loop, and the guard captain regarded me with an unreadable expression. Maybe it hamstrung any chance to earn my immediate release, but I genuinely believed that it would help me in the long run. Eventually, she nodded. "We will discuss the matter with our sister, and you will have an answer to your fate on the morrow."

A smile spread across my face. "Of course your highness." A thought occurred to me then, and I asked, "Before you leave, might I ask you one question in turn?" Somehow, based on Shining Armours sudden apoplexy, I imagine that was something of an outrageous thing for someone in a prison cell to suggest. Luna, however, seemed to accept that as a reasonable trade, if her nod was any indicator. "How many alicorns currently reside in Equestria?"

Somehow, I think she got more out of that question alone than I did. There was a glint of something in those cyan eyes. Curiosity? Amusement? Anticipation? After a moment's consideration, a very slight smile crossed her own face. "Three." Maybe she realised that I was from a different time and wanted to hint at the time frame, or maybe she was just trying to get Shining to start moving, but she quickly added, "Come, Captain. I have much to do, and you have an upcoming wedding to prepare for."

There was no stopping me from giggling. I still remember the story of the Canterlot Wedding as Mom told it, including all the embarrassing parts like not knowing her former babysitter's full name. "Assuming this Equestria is anything like my own, the captain's sibling may not recognise Mi Amore Cadenza's name on the invitation. Might I suggest including a personal letter along with the invitation?" The princess's smile grew into a grin as she led him away.

On the whole, there was not a lot to do that night. My instrument and shades had yet to be returned, so it wasn't like I could really go and practice. Similarly, not enough time had elapsed, from my point of view at least, for it to be time for the scheduled check-in with the ones trying to bring me back home. Plus, I wasn't in the mood for cards or minesweeper.

That left me with only a few options. I could enter sleep mode and likely end up having to explain changelings to the princess, should she not already recognise one upon entering my dreamscape. I could also begin planning on how to completely offset this world's timeline. If I'm lucky, Queen Chrysalis has not yet made her move to replace Cadance, in which case, peace would be an option. The last option would be for me to preemptively design a custom parasol to create after replicating the borrowed one.

In the end, I settled on all three. It was bound my being a changeling stuck in this body was bound to come up eventually. Besides, sleep mode would let me cool down some more, and when I woke up, I imagined that my outfit would probably have fully restored. I'm beginning to think that this body uses nanomachines both to reconstruct the body, and to manufacture whatever weapon or tool the user needs. How else would my wings just appear and disappear as needed? Maybe I should get around to looking at the system documents.

As the world went black around me, only for the familiar sight of a now partially digitised library to spring up around me in an almost fluid motion. It's so nice to be back in my own body, even if only simulated in the dreamscape or whatever the robot equivalent might be. As soon as I sat down at the table, I focused on levitation—really the only spell I'd bothered learning to do by horn—and reached out to the MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA) section. Several books from the history shelves flew over.

Back in my Equestria, it was not uncommon for me to use my dreams as a means to work on ideas, or a little problem solving. Lucidity was something I'd possessed long before Harmony got her hooks in me and bridged my dreams with Emerald, so it just felt natural to put the time to good use, even if it affected the quality of sleep I usually got. The only real difference between then and now was the fact that I wasn't reading aloud. If Luna comes snooping and I'm reading aloud to myself, she might leap to conclusions, especially if she hears me talking of the invasion.

The first step to derailing this universe, and preventing the downward spiral that led to the extinction of the 'true' changelings, was to hopefully get to Cadance before Chrysalis. Maybe I could suggest luring her out, I mused as I read a summary of Biologia Mutabilis: On Changelings New and Old, recalling the deranged starvation my own world's chrysalis had fallen into when we met. If I explain to them that the changelings are at risk of dying out from the inability to sufficiently feed and collect the love they need to survive, they'd be willing to parlay?

That in itself wasn't a bad plan, but I wasn't exactly sure ponies would see a changeling drone as adorable like I might, never mind the way they would likely be averse to feeding them. The fact that vampires are illegal might make ponies unwilling to allow changelings to directly feed upon them, I realised, creasing my brow as I considered my options. The bugs might not be willing to come to the table without an alternative food source offered, either.

No, there was a way, I realised after several minutes of sitting at a dead end. Years ago, Thorax taught, or maybe it's more accurate to say, he helped Cadance create a spell that could allow a creature to safely extract some of their own love and condense it in a container. That's actually a spell I got to look at the structure of when I was more experienced with runic magic. That should be in MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA)/MAGIC somewhere, but I really don't want to get up and look.

With a sigh, I opened up a console and queried all references to love in MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA)/MAGIC. It took a few minutes to go through it all, so in the meantime, I went back to the history of the Invasion of Canterlot. Although Chrysalis personally led the vanguard for the actual invasion operation, it's reported that several drones were present in and around Canterlot castle in the weeks leading up to the princess being replaced, collecting what love and information they could. If it was soon enough, it might not even come to preventing Chrysalis from replacing Princess Cadance. It might just become a matter of talking to an infiltrator, getting word back to her, and opening diplomatic channels that way. Let's see, does it name any of the infiltrators that... Oh? Oho!

A changeling queen in the body of an infiltrator robot seeking out a changeling infiltrator. Sounds like the makings of one of those weird logic puzzles that relies on awkward phrasing to obscure the meaning.

SEARCH RESULTS - "LOVE" IN: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA)/MAGIC"

NAME DESCRIPTION

RUNIC_DICTIONARY "MENTAL COMPENDIUM OF ALL ACCRUED KNOWLEDGE OF INDIVIDUAL RUNES."

OBSCURE_SPELLS "VARIOUS SPELLS OF OBSCURE NATURE I'VE LEARNED FROM OTHER PONIES."

FORBIDDEN_SPELLS "VARIOUS SPELLS FORBIDDEN DUE TO DANGEROUS OR AMORAL USES."

LOVE_SPELLS "I'M NEVER DOING ANYTHING FOR TWIST EVER AGAIN."

I winced at that last one, immediately trying to keep the memory of that noodle incident from rising up. It was hardly my fault that the spell she wanted cast turned friendly shutterbug Featherweight into an obsessive stalker. What happened after was entirely on her... even if it did result in a restraining order between the two, and a one hundred bit fine on my part. No, the book on love spells would be useless.

If it came down to it, the runic dictionary would be useful, but I didn't wanna have to construct it from the ground up. Better to just dig it up and modify it. That said, I could probably discount the forbidden spells as well. I was pretty sure the only reason that love even toggled it was because of a spell that I made once upon a time in a last-ditch gambit to forcibly redeem Chrysalis when, at the end of the day, she was just as likely to kill me in order to hurt Starlight and Twilight, to whom I was only, at the time, mostly a pet project.

With that in mind, I dismissed the terminal, and focused my thoughts on levitating over the memory regarding obscure spells. It didn't take long to consult the index and find the spell I was looking for. As I opened it to that page, I then willed a projection of the spell into the air in front of me. Hmm, yes, this should do, although I should make some changes.

First and foremost, the spell was focused on extracting as much as was safely possible without killing the caster. It was originally used by infiltrators who would return to the hive after an extended gathering mission. The only pony who could safely cast it unaltered and not suffer physical and emotional exhaustion was Princess Cadance, and even then, it was more because she was capable of higher output than the spell's throughput permitted.

WARNING

UNAUTHORIZED REMOTE ACCESS ESTABLISHED

USER "4C554E41"
SOURCE: PROXIMITY, < 1,000 METRES

Even without looking at the prompt that popped up over the book as I set about changing out the safety parameters of the spell, I knew Princess Luna was there. As a lucid dreamer, I was almost always aware when my world's Luna stopped by to chat. I dunno, the touch of another soul was different than when I was being communicated with, or when I found Cyn sneaking around inside my mind.

"Evening, Princess," I commented, not taking my eyes off the spell form in front of me. Let's see... Add a function to check the caster's overall health and magic levels, then calculate what percentage of their love the caster can supply without putting them under fifty percent. Pass it out into the main spell as the transfusion value. Perhaps have it target the nearest container above a targeted anchor stone? No, that'd make it too complex to mass produce. Target nearest and... I added another function to compare it to the volume of the container, check for present love, and then one to modify the output so as to not overflow the container. Yes, much better. "Somehow, I expected you might be by. Thought you might be by as soon as you saw I was asleep, but that's neither here nor there."

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as she wandered into the 'library', looking around in wonderment. Then her eyes locked on me, and she tensed. She definitely recognised the shape of my soul here, so I prepared myself for some sort of condemnation and a vow to send me to Tartarus or something. Instead, she tensely replied, "Yes, well, your mental defences are quite robust."

"That," I began, before letting out a soft chuckle, "is pretty close to what my world's Princess Luna said, once upon a time." I made a mental note on the revised spell to engrave a circle for a container to sit upon when creating a slate. Finally, I committed the revision to memory as its own variant, but intentionally left the spell floating there. Let her see it if she wishes.

Finally, I turned to look directly at her. "Greetings once more, Princess Luna." The smile I gave was a gentle one, long practised to not show off my sharps. "Don't worry, I'm not intending to feed on anypony's emotions while I'm here. In the body I occupy, I couldn't if I tried. Besides, love given willingly and without deceit is far more worthwhile."

Her body language relaxed, but still she regarded me with a guarded look. "You are certainly more... amenable than the last queen We encountered before Our banishment." After a few moments, she took a seat on one of the plush cushions opposite to me. "Though you do bear a striking resemblance to her."

I nodded slightly, mentally conjuring up a photograph of Chrysalis as I remembered her then. "That's partially intentional, I fear," I said, passing the photo across the table. When the mare looked at it and blanched, I sighed. "In my world, the changelings... Harmony would say that they voluntarily evolved—although Hunger might say that her children defected—and no longer needed their deceitful, predatory behaviour."

Another photograph appeared in front of Luna, this one of Chysalis after she'd been tricked into redemption. "I had a hoof in the last queen's redemption, effectively driving the changelings as you knew them extinct," I explained, conjuring up a photograph of a green earth pony filly with a black mane and glasses, and another of a changeling queen nymph with a mane the same green as the filly's coat. "This was me, once upon a time. The Spirit of Hunger involved herself in my affairs, and suffice to say she took great pleasure in modelling me after Chrysalis when her scheme played out to its end. Luckily, I already had ponies who cared for me."

A voice echoed through the room, coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. "You'd best not be about to tell these ponies how to lead my children astray, outsider," came a voice I always hoped to never hear again, yet dealt with on an uncomfortably regular basis. I didn't bother checking my systems, given that I didn't even receive any sort of connection notifications. Luna, however, seemed rather chilled by the sudden voice.

"Far be it for me to cause another extinction, oh Goddess of the Swarm," I shot back in a casual voice that only caused the princess to look incredulously at me. "Besides, if I'm right about what is to happen, I can derail that entirely and allow ponies and changelings to coexist without that conniving bitch Harmony's interference." Turning my attention back to the princess, I had the decency to look abashed. "Apologies, Your Highness, for my crass language; I still bear a grudge against that accursed tree in my world."

Although Hunger let out an interested hum, she offered no further commentary. Instead, I gestured back to the spellform floating between us, rotating it for her to take a look as I spoke. "The changelings are dying out, Princess, and they are desperate," I warned. "They plan to make a move before the wedding of Captain Shining Armour and Princess Cadenza. If we are not too late, we can put a stop to this. Here's my plan..."

I wasn't exactly sure when dawn came about. My system clock was still set to Copper-9's time, after all. The discussion with Princess Luna went on for quite a while before she had to excuse herself to go about her rounds in the dream realm. Plus, with the spell complete, I was left to quickly modify the design for a parasol before finally waking up. There was nothing else to do, and I didn't fancy seeing what might happen if I allowed myself to dream without restriction. As it stood, I was still running a little warm, but other than needing some fresh oil, I was good to go.

It was maybe forty minutes after I 'woke up' that I heard some ponies coming down the hall. There'd clearly been a shift change, as there was a bat-winged night pony in the familiar dark plate of the Night Guard parked beside my cell. Maybe it was another change of the shift? Then again, they wouldn't bring more than one pony if they're just guarding this one cell.

Eventually, Shining Armour walked in with a lower-ranked shiny boy right behind him. To my surprise, I saw the Victim's Guitar, the WDF Aviators, and a white cloth sheet sitting across the enlisted pony's back. The captain's face was a mask of professionalism, but there was a key floating in his magenta aura. Maybe he was actually able to read my surprise, because for the slightest moment, the mask slipped and the corner of his mouth perked up. Just a moment, and then it was gone.

"Well, Anonymous," he said, slipping the key into the lock. "I don't know how, but you've convinced the princess of your innocence." The look in his eyes said he knew exactly how I'd done it, but wasn't about to start any shit. With the way his eye darted to his accompanying guard, as well as the one posted by the door, I dare say he was even briefed. The door swung open, and he quickly added, Princess Luna has extended an invitation for you to dine privately with herself and her sister."

Again, they caught me off guard, not least of all because I was not certain I could metabolise anything they had to offer. Then again, I'm not sure exactly what they even expected me to do or where I could go today. I might be able to get away with simply walking around inside the castle so long as I stay away from windows, but I'd be going nowhere until after sundown.

Once my tail was freed, I stepped out of the cell and accepted my belongings without argument, slinging the instrument behind my back and clipping the glasses to my blouse. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with the cloth sheet, mind you. It could easily have been the sheet for a king-sized bed, but unless the plan was to wrap it around me and haul me up to the dining room in it, the purpose of it here was escaping me. It did, however, make me miss the cloak Rarity made for me when I was a filly. I did not, however, take the cloth.

Instead, I focused my gaze on the borrowed umbrella. Someone would be returning that to the restaurant today at some point, but... Now would be as good of a chance as any to test out those powers now that they saw I wasn't a threat. "Don't panic; there's something I'd like to try before we leave," I said, holding my hand out towards the umbrella. I gestured with my hand and began channelling.

ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_trn"
ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_scl"
ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_edt"

The umbrella lifted off into the air, gripped in the same symbol of translate as the one that appeared before my hand. My hand ran through two motions, and the umbrella duplicated itself, the symbol shifting between scale and edit. The original floated back down to the ground, but the duplicate stayed suspended before me. The metal shaft thickened, becoming denser, and splitting into interlocked segments of a collapsible staff, while the canopy went from a friendly pastel rainbow to a much more familiar green and black scheme. Finally, I deactivated the almost cheat-y reality-bending software.

Gripping the shaft in my hand, I tested the weight. It was heavy, but not so heavy as to be unwieldy, although I might wish to get a belt to which I could clip it. Finally, I turned away from the guards, facing down the cell-block hall and—keeping in mind who was where—thrust the canopy end forward. The shaft expanded to its full length, and the umbrella canopy sprung open. I nodded to myself, propping the umbrella against my shoulder as I turned to face the soon-to-be prince. "Shall we?"

The captain and both guards simply stood there, their jaws hanging open as they watched me. It took longer than I'm particularly pleased with for him to pick his jaw from the floor, but eventually he shook his head. "That won't be necessary indoors, Anonymous," he commented in a disbelieving tone. "Curtains have already been drawn along the assigned route."

Before agreeing to go with him, I engaged the thermal vision script once more and overlaid it in the corner of my sight. A quick comparison of the three ponies revealed they were all the same standard pony body temperature of 38°C. Accounting for individual differences, I allowed a variation of ±4°. Anything that ran lower than 34°C was likely to be a changeling. With that in mind I collapsed the umbrella staff, and, after a thought, slid it beneath the band over my left arm.

The trip out of the dungeon was about the same as the trip there last night, but I found myself paying a lot more attention to the ponies that passed us by. Most of them were normal, although we did have to stop when I pointed out that one of the guards posted along a corridor was running a fever. It was funny, because I'm not sure he even realised it himself until I pointed it out. Poor dude was probably pretty out of it.

As we drew closer to the royal dining room, which I honestly could have found my own way given my storied history with Canterlot Castle, I noticed something outside the norm, and definitely triggered the parameters I'd set for concern. One of the maids, little more than a teenage mare of arctic blue and amaranth colouring, was scrubbing at the floor, where it looked as though a decorative plant had been knocked over. But for her temperature, nothing about her even really made me suspicious.

Instead of approaching her directly, I stopped to examine a tapestry. When Shining Armour stopped to join me, I turned to face him, my back to the mare. I flashed a quick message up on my face plate in a digitised version of the Equestrian glyph system dragged up from my memory. GREATER DISCRETE EXCHANGE? It was a privacy bubble that prevented eaves-dropping and lip-reading that I'd seen used once or twice over the years.

He nodded and began channelling a spell through his horn. "What is it?" Shining asked in no small degree of concern.

"How much did Princess Luna brief you on what was discussed in the dream realm last night?" I asked, folding my arms as I returned to looking at the tapestry. He too returned his attention to it, catching on. "Did she mention anything about shapeshifters?"

He nodded slightly. "You've spotted one?" was his only means of answering. I angled my head toward the maid, ever so slightly when I was sure she wasn't looking. He quickly glanced over at the indicated pony. "Should we apprehend her?"

"No, I have a different idea in mind," I responded almost as quickly as my mind roiled with thought. It was a bit of a deviation from the plan I'd made with Luna, but all it really did was accelerate the timeline a bit, having already located one of the scouts. I leaned closely and whispered into his ear my plan, and then had him drop the privacy spell.

We began to move down the hallway once more, only for the prince to stop a few paces past the disguised changeling. He turned, and then casually initiated a conversation, "Excuse me Miss..."

The changeling in earth pony form nearly leapt out of her skin, and I could just imagine the alarm pheromones she was releasing into the air. She took a few steadying breaths to calm herself before she looked up, at Shining. "Dewdrop, sir."

I don't think the smile on his face was at all fake. It almost reminded me of the sort of demeanour a guard might take when talking to a lost foal. "Miss Dewdrop," he repeated as though committing it to memory. "I realise this is an unusual request, but we have a VIP guest that will be staying in the castle on very short notice, and an attendant has not yet been assigned to her." I took that moment to wave at her with a friendly smile. "Would you kindly accompany Lady Anonymous until such time as one can be assigned by the head maid?"

She looked like she was ready to protest, but thought better of it. Wonder which would look worse to the head maid, ditching her job at the request of the Captain of the Guard, or ignoring his request. Instead, she bowed and fell in step behind us. The remainder of the journey was silent.

I didn't even need a flesh body with its instincts to feel her gaze on me as we went, but I wondered what she was thinking. Perhaps she was (correctly) assuming that the weird robot alien had her figured out and was going to blow her cover. Then again, it might just have been that being called off like this had her out of place for some plan or another. Of course, I also couldn't deny the possibility that I was simply freaking her the fuck out.

Not that I blame her. I'm like nothing she's ever seen before.

Eventually, the captain led us to a pair of large doors, two guard unicorns flanking it, with their spears crossed in front of the doors. As soon as they saw me, they tensed, but a shake of the captain's head called off any aggressive behaviour. "The princesses are expecting us." At that, the spears parted, and the door slowly opened.

The room was just as grand as I remembered the one from my own Equestria being, complete with guards posted on the inside of the door as well. That said, I was somewhat surprised by the relatively small table present at the centre. Even with only a small breakfast party, my princesses used the same grand table they used for feasts. I couldn't even fathom the idea of having ponies haul the long table in and out with any regularity. But that was beside the point.

See, I was more focused on the presence of Princesses Celestia and Luna. The former was watching me with trepidation, especially when she noted the maid a few steps behind me. Meanwhile, the latter merely gave me an arch look. At the very least, though, they were similar to their counterparts in my world as far as their breakfasts were concerned. Huge stacks of pancakes and tea and coffee respectively, as well as a pitcher of water with empty glasses at the centre of the table.

Once we came to a respectable distance from the table, I lowered myself into the same kneeling bow that I'd given Luna the previous night. "Princess Celestia, Princess Luna," I greeted, rising only once prompted. At that, I took a seat at the opposite side of the table at the spot that bore several glasses, with various liquids. Evidently for taste testing various oils. Beside me, Shining Armour took a seat at the remaining spot.

"Anonymous Flicker, I take it?" Celestia asked, noting the changeling maid already taking her place behind me. "I was not aware an attendant had already been assigned to you."

I flashed another message across my faceplate, earning a raised eyebrow from both. I'LL EXPLAIN SHORTLY. "The good captain saw fit to requisition Miss Dewdrop's services until somepony could be assigned to me in a more official manner," I lied. Somehow, I think they got the hint nonetheless. "I thank you for having me, Your Hignesses."

Quietly, we went to eating our breakfasts. Or rather, they ate, and I sampled the various oils present. Two of the glasses were full of a clear liquid, but the other three were full of different coloured cooking oils. I couldn't smell or taste them—not in the traditional sense at any rate—but I imagined they were sunflower, rapeseed, and olive oils. The last two were lantern and mineral oil. Of the five, only two of them set off any sort of warnings in my system advising me not to consume them in great quantities, being the sunflower and vegetable oil. What 'tasted' the best, however, was the lantern oil—a bit spicy like a cinnamon-infused cider.

Commit that to memory.

Once everyone was done eating, we moved onto business. "So, Luna tells me that you have brought a potential diplomatic nightmare to our attention," Celestia commented, her eyes again drifting to the maid standing quietly behind me. "One that could mean life or death for a kingdom. Would you care to elaborate?"

I nodded, glancing over to Luna. "Princess, have you the slate I requested?" When a stone tablet appeared on the table in front of me, I withdrew my left hand into my arm and deployed the etching laser I'd discovered previously and began etching the love donation spell into it. "Thank you... Yes, so there is a species out there, one that is on the verge of starvation and extinction... Only a few thousand left by my estimate. It's one you and your sister have had an antagonistic relationship with the leader of once before."

I didn't miss the alarmed look on Celestia's face when the implication hit her. "Their people aren't inherently evil, though they are very much subject to their own nature, which can put them at odds with ponies; at the same time, they do not deserve to die out... Yet, their leader is desperate and is prepared to attempt a course of action that will doom her people." With my free hand, I repeated what I'd done earlier with translate, scale, and edit, targeting one of the glasses in front of me. It duplicated itself, and then that duplicate grew and transformed into a pitcher, which levitated over to sit in a circle etched on the tablet. When the etching was complete, I glanced at Shining Armour, "May I borrow one of your unicorns? I'd normally do this myself but this body doesn't possess Equestrian magic, and I'm not entirely sure it'd work on me as I am."

The captain looked to a guard posted by the door, and nodded him over to me. "Could you channel your magic into the spell engraved on this tablet? Go as though you were to grab it with telekinesis, but let the grooves shape the spell with the intent to cast." It took the armoured mare a minute to understand what I was asking, but the moment it clicked for her, a pink liquid quickly began to fill the pitcher. Finally, the spell cut out. "I imagine you feel as though you've just donated blood." The guard nodded, but quietly returned to her post. "You should be fine in a few hours, although I'd hold off on any further donations for a while."

Finally, I turned to glance at the maid. She was trying to hide the fact that she was drooling, but it wasn't going very well. Her pink eyes were focused solely on the liquid inside the pitcher. "Would you like some, Ocellus?" If she'd been paying closer attention, she'd have realised I did not use the name of her cover identity. Instead, she simply nodded, so I grabbed one of the empty glasses at the middle of the table and poured some of the concentrated love into it, before passing it over.

When she shakily took the glass in her hooves, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna watched with a mixture of alarm and interest on their faces. The moment she started drinking, tears could be seen beginning to form in her eyes. I could only imagine when was the last time she'd gotten to have anything like it. "How is it?" I asked, ruffling her mane with my hand. "Better than anything you've had back at the hive?"

The little changeling was definitely getting a bit love drunk. "No drone would ever be permitted something this rich," she whimpered as she cleared out the glass entirely. Her transformation reverted, revealing the diminutive changeling drone in all her nature. She was just as gaunt and emaciated as I imagined a drone from the Badlands hive would be. Holes peppered her limbs and wings, which buzzed happily. "It's the first time I've ever felt the hunger abate." Finally, her words caught up to her, and she realised all eyes in the room were on her. "I—oh no! I shouldn't have said that! I've broken the masquerade... She's going to kill me..."

"Relax," I reassured her, gently patting her head. "I give you my oath, in the name of the Goddess of the Swarm, I shall permit no harm befall you in my presence."

An appreciative smile crossed Princess Luna's face. "Show them," she prompted simply. "Let them see why this matters to you so."

My holographic emitters flickered to life, showing my nature as I remembered it. Celestia tensed until I used a fork to demonstrate the illusion of my holo-emitters. "I come from an Equestria where her queen's plan failed," I explained in a soft voice as the young drone stared at me in awe, likely noting the lack of holes in my limbs. "Changelings, at least as they were, died out, and the Spirit of Hunger made me a queen as punishment for crossing her by removing her last piece from play. I'd rather not see the same happen here, as they could be so much more with love freely given and a chance at something more."

That seemed to allay some of the princess' fears. "An admirable goal," Celestia finally admitted. She seemed to relax. Even she couldn't deny that if ponies and changelings coexisted, there was one less existential threat pointed at her ponies. Plus, if Chrysalis could be turned to their side, who knows how the future will change? How could the integration of changelings benefit the world? I bet all of those questions were spiralling within her head. "I nevertheless worry how much your idea hinges on their leader being open to diplomacy."

Eventually, Ocellus calmed down enough for me to ask her a question—a very important question. "Has Chrysalis arrived or otherwise replaced Princess Mi Amore Cadenza as of yet?" That did get an alarmed shout from Shining Armour and Celestia, forcing both to rise to her hooves. When the disguised bug shook her head, I smiled. "Could you find Intelligencer Chelicerae and bring her here?"

Even as she shakily nodded, reapplying her disguise, Shining pointed to the guard who hadn't donated love. "You go with her, and don't let her out of your sight. Take one of the guards outside with you." Smart boy. "At the first sign of treachery, lock the whole place down."

Item Get!

Friends

N, Disassembly Drone - COP9AU
Uzi, Worker Drone - COP9AU

Items

The Victim's Guitar - COP9AU
WDF Aviators - COP9AU
Shapeshifter's Parasol - EQUS____ *NEW*

Software

Conscience_v0.1a - COP9AU
absoluteSolver (?) - COP9AU

2 extra lives remaining

Hunger Fae, Time to Play - 02

I was in the library. Not the castle library, but rather my dream library. It was still unclear to me why my dream realm had locked onto the library concept. After my first dream back in the spire, every subsequent dream here had been entirely unprompted. Maybe it was because it made me feel safe... Admittedly, it was based on one of my safe spaces and a place I felt comfortable as any, but it was kind of surprising just how... natural it had begun to feel.

Or maybe it wasn't natural... but a sign of my mind slowly growing to be more synthetic. Looking around, I couldn't really deny it. My brain didn't used to have such clearly synthetic categorisation of all my knowledge, nor did any of my dreams have the weird digital fragmentation effect I could see in places. The only way that I could see this getting any more... robotic was if screens started popping up on the walls or tables.

Now, when I was a filly, I used to take a lot more daytime naps. Sure, becoming a bug screwed with my circadian rhythm a bit, in that I needed less sleep on the whole, but even then I'd never previously been so erratic regarding when I slept. That, in part, had a lot to do with the fact that I was now effectively allergic to the sun, but I found that Copper-9—or rather, COP9AU, as that spell had named the universe—was on a completely different timezone compared to this Equestria. I'd successfully reset the system clock again, although the calendar was completely worthless here without completely rewriting it, but it also meant that the next 'call' I was gonna receive from Mom was likely to be some time this afternoon.

Still, it wasn't like I had a lot to do. After rounding up Chelicerae and giving her some of the same love I'd fed to Ocellus, it hadn't been too hard to convince her to seek out Chrysalis and offer the Equestrian crown's olive branch. Until she returned, there wasn't much need for me to be out and about. So I was pretty much just chilling in one of the castle's guest rooms with the curtains drawn. Since I didn't technically need a bed, and Ocellus wasn't technically an employee of the crown, it was easier for them if she just stayed in here with me. Not that I knew what she was doing right now, seeing as I was... you know, in sleep mode.

Honestly, it's probably for the best that I'm in this low-power state. Since I's systems reacted to Mary and I lost control, and then killing J, I'd been postponing setting the FEEL_GUILT boolean to "True." As a result, I hadn't really contemplated the ramifications of anything that I'd really done. Not betraying J alongside N, or murdering Mary, or even the two drones I'd ended up butchering in the cafe when I was more I than Anon.

The practical part of me made me wonder whether leaving it off might not be such a bad thing. After all, who knew what sorts of things I might have to do to survive. I could still understand right and wrong perfectly fine with the conscience alpha running, but a feeling like guilt could easily get in the way of things at an inopportune time. I could only die two more times before I was stuck somewhere hoping that Mom and Starlight could find a way to bring me home. Better I do what needs to be done and get home safe, right?

Except... feeling guilt was a significant part of having a conscience in the first place. If I didn't feel any guilt for what I did or didn't do, there was no actual motivator to do the right or wrong thing. I would effectively be turning myself into a sociopath. While that might be helpful in cases where I'm in some morally ambiguous situation where everyone sucks, it wouldn't make it very hard to slip into being a bad person. It took me longer than I'd have liked to get myself out of the tendency to prepare to protect myself—lethally if need be. The last thing I wanted to do was start to accept murder as the simplest course of action. When I was back in my body, I was gonna have Celestia knows how many sins weighing down on my soul.

SYS://"../CONSCIENCE_V0.1A"

BOOLEAN "FEEL_GUILT" HAS BEEN SET TO "TRUE" BY ADMINISTRATION "ANON"

Nothing seemed to happen at first. I dunno, but maybe I was expecting some mind-crushing guilt over what I'd done. I'd killed three people and, in choosing N and Uzi over J, I had been every bit as responsible for J's end, and yet I hadn't begun to feel a thing over any of that. That was bad, right?

Hmm... No, wait... Maybe it isn't that simple. I was expecting things to behave as it had while running off of changeling or even pony wetware. It might very well go into effect if I ran a full system reboot, but then I might have to deal with it all at once. If there was one thing I was experienced with, it was dealing with a lot at once, as well as my inability to... and some of that inability couldn't even be attributed to starving.

No, if I was gonna do this, I'd have to approach this one case at a time and address how I really felt about it. Starting with the two that were killed when I first wound up in that body. Can I really say that was even really me? My soul might've bonded to this body at that point, but my memories, personal feelings, and everything that made me me was quarantined and blocked off. Wouldn't that make that I's fault, as I was running almost entirely on her programming with no sense of who I was, rather than my own?

It felt like an excuse, or rationalisation, and although I felt bad for those two... I couldn't bring myself to feel guilty over their deaths. Besides, assuming I just stayed with them for a while, N would still probably have shown up and killed them both, and we'd likely have fought until I revealed I was 'like him'. Wouldn't that mean that my part in that was more of a spectator role? I couldn't see myself just casually doing that. Especially not with I's sadistic glee.

With Mary, it wasn't so easy to absolve myself. I was fully conscious as to what happened, but I was powerless to stop my body from doing so. Sure, she was part of the group that disabled I, presumably to the point where she didn't automatically repair herself like what was happening with J, but what did it matter? I genuinely felt guilty over putting her down, and I can only hope my words brought her some comfort in her final moments; it certainly didn't change the fact that, at the end of the day, I'd been at the wheel before some remaining trace of I took control and drove us into Mary. What made it worse was the fact that my conscience program finished compiling the moment after I'd terminated her.

It makes me wonder, though, whether this wasn't going to be a repeat of what happened with Emerald all those years ago. Back when I first ended up in Equestria, I'd been on the verge of death, and then the next thing I knew, I was a pony. I never did ask the Sun Horse what happened with my body. It wasn't until nearly an Equestrian month down the line that we reached some degree of certainty that I was occupying Emerald's body, and by that point, her own consciousness resurfaced and I ended up bound to Hunger. Was this gonna become a running theme for my entire existence? Get stuck into a body until its own consciousness reasserts itself?

With Serial Designation J, the answer should have been clear that I shouldn't feel guilty. She was, after all, going to kill all those people in that bunker, and she'd already tried to murder N at that point. Stabbing her in the back should have been the moral choice, and thus the one I should feel the least guilty over... and yet... She's maybe the one I felt the guiltiest about. I can't explain it.

It almost felt like something that wasn't entirely my own. It seemed as though there was something in MEMORY_DATA calling on the conscience software I'd compiled. But what could be doing that? Most of my personality data was running from MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA). It was... curious, and yet, my mind couldn't leave it alone.

SEARCH RESULTS - "J" (CONTEXT PROPER NOUN) IN: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA/" BEFORE:3071

NAME DESCRIPTION

UNKNOWN_MEMORIES "RESTRICTED DATA, INACCESSIBLE TO SERIAL DESIGNATION I."

From my spot at the desk in the library, I glanced over at the MEMORY_DATA shelves, and focused on dragging over the book. Exactly as it would have if I'd focused on my magic, a book levitated over to me, and I froze. Unlike everything else that I'd noticed in that section of the library, which was all softcover and modern like stuff over on the other side of the mirror, this was old, leather-bound and in rough condition. At first, I thought it was something misplaced from my Equestrian memories, until I looked at the cover, where a familiar symbol was embossed in faded gold leaf. The mark of the Absolute Solver. I was embossed beneath.

Upon opening it to the first page, I found my eyebrow rising. It's a photo album. There, in the middle of the page was a sepia photograph, titled, Tessa and Friends, Elliott Manor. There was a human girl, maybe in her teens, wearing a pretty Victorian-style gown and a massive bow. She was surrounded by several Worker Drones in maid and butler outfits, but all of them with the typical helmets worn by workers. Despite never having seen such drones on Copper-9, I could recognise three of them because of the hair and the armbands. Nearest to Tessa was J, N, and then V, the last one wearing glasses, interestingly enough. Near one edge of the photo, I could even see Cyn, complete with the same hunched stance she had when we met here in the library.

What really caught my attention, however, was another bespectacled drone near J. All of the workers in the photo were shorter than Tessa by a few inches, but the drone that my eyes were locked on looked like her legs had been intentionally shortened, placing her shorter than the other drones. Her hair was done up exactly like J's, and she seemed to be looking at J with a look of... admiration? Jealousy? No, I've seen Emerald look at me the same way. This drone idolised J.

Even without looking at the armband, I somehow realised this was I. On the next page, I found a pair of photographs titled First Day on the Job. Once again, there she was, alongside J. In the first, she was simply watching J scrubbing the floor with a rag and a bucket of water. The second had her on the floor with the bucket on her head, while J looked at her with disappointment. In yet another photo, J was teaching I how to fold laundry.

I shut the book and put it down on the table. I don't understand... If J, N, and V all worked for the Elliott family, presumably on Earth, why were they on Copper-9? Wouldn't they have recognised I the way I'd recognise a loved one? No, probably not... If that same data was restricted for them... And Cyn mentioned back-ups... I mean, it's clear this body I'm in isn't a Worker Drone, and the J and V that I met both mentioned the model being discontinued. I wasn't the only I, or even the original, and yet this was probably true for all of them.

I conjured up a three-dimensional image of I and J side-by-side in front of me. Sure enough, without the sepia filter, there wasn't much of a similarity between us. But... If I strip out the colour in my hair, and put it up in twin-tails... The image changed before my eyes, and suddenly the similarity wasn't so out there. Even if neither was the original, she still remembered them all on some level... And having been party to killing J, of course it'd hurt.

I'm sorry it had to end that way for you two, I decided as I conjured up a bookmark and stuck it in that book. There was no denying the curiosity as to what kind of life this Tessa and her drones had at Elliott Manor, but I was not so crazy as to dig it all up at once. A few not-so-great scenarios came to mind if I addressed that all at once. I might wake up and we'd end up struggling for control of the body at the worst of times, or I might accidentally integrate all of that into my personality data and go berserk. At least going at it piecemeal could let me monitor myself for any changes.

Putting all that aside, enabling my ability to feel guilt had an unexpected benefit. I definitely felt a lot better about my plan of action as far as this world's changelings were concerned. While it might not be enough to prevent Harmony's corruption of the idea of the changeling coming into existence here, I think that there would be enough that they wouldn't all have to change. Harmony's ponies and Hunger's changelings were thesis and antithesis, but if they could come together in a symbiotic relationship... It'd be a pure example of synthesis.

Why wouldn't I want to achieve that sort of goal?

WARNING

PROXIMITY ALERT
--INSISTENT JOSTLE DETECTED--
INITIATING WAKE-UP SEQUENCE

Again, the library vanished and then seamlessly the world faded back into view. There was Ocellus in her natural buggy form, albeit still wearing the maid outfit. She looked... panicked, standing over me as she was. But why would that be?

"Um, Ms. Anon?" she quietly whispered. "There's, um... there's someling here who wants to talk to you, but..."

I sat up and looked about the room. In front of the closed door, I saw one of Luna's night pony guards glaring at the undisguised bug with barely contained rage. It was kind of odd, given that it was midday. Also unusual was the fact that Ocellus had gone and said someling instead of somepony. That wasn't exactly the sort of dialect thing you could fuck up by accident, as I knew from interactions with Thorax's hive. Does that mean...

Upon toggling the thermal picture-in-picture overlay I'd been using earlier, I let out a sigh. That's 32°C... Making that a changeling, and since we don't expect Chelicerae back with an answer—or Chrysalis—until this evening... That meant that this was the last of the three bugs stationed in Canterlot castle prior to the invasion. Given his role, and what he probably thinks happened...

"You must be Enforcer Odonata," I greeted in a tired voice as I rose to my feet. Reflexively, I reached up to brush the crust from the corners of my eyes before remembering that I didn't have physical eyes to rub. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

The disguised bug looked anything but thrilled to be addressed as such. With a snarl, his body was engulfed in green flames, revealing his own true nature. "First, Intelligencer Chelicerae misses check-in and goes missing," he hissed, storming toward the younger changeling. "Then I hear whispers of changelings among the guards, and now I find you've broken the masquerade and revealed our names to an outsider? Apprentice Ocellus, for your treason against the queen and the hive, you will be put to death alongside this interloper."

Shit, that's right... I forgot that the trio of changelings included an enforcer. Now that he'd made his threats, I remembered why I hated their whole masquerade concept. According to Biologia Mutabilis, infiltration happened in groups of three... An intelligencer served as the lead in their squad, gathering the most information and love. Then you had the apprentice, who was sent to learn beneath the intelligencer—basically it was on-the-job training, getting practice blending in among ponies, gathering love, and information gathering. Finally, you had the enforcers, who were effectively religious zealots who aspired to become one of the queen's praetorian guards, although they were closer in scope to commissars.

The enforcers are maybe the only bugs I wouldn't mind handing over to Harmony for 'redemption'.

In one fluid motion, I interposed myself between Odonata and Ocellus, using a portion of my tail's length to push him back while guiding him away from the door. "Now hold on one fucking minute," I bellowed. As I had in the dining room at breakfast, I momentarily activated my emitters, projecting an image of blue flames rolling up my body to reveal my changeling queen nature, and then 'reverting' back to this disguise. He tensed, somehow managing to look even more furious; I couldn't blame him because I had no pheromones to prove that silent claim. "I am working with these ponies to make sure our kind do not go extinct, you insipid little gnat. Intelligencer Chelicerae is bringing news and an olive branch to Queen Chrysalis as we speak. I will not let your zealotry or your queen's desperation doom our kind to the same ignominious end it faced in my Equestria." I leaned in close and bared my teeth. "STAND DOWN."

If I'd been smarter, I might not have been close, and thus so slow to react as his horn glowed. Alas, hubris is an old comrade of mine, so when he unsheathed a knife strapped to his side, I was unprepared to act as he cut through the length of tail I'd pushed him back with, and scored a deep gash in my faceplate. "Death to false prophets!" he shrieked, grabbing up the stinger of my severed tail and lunging for me. "Death to traitors!"

Even as I brought my hand up to protect myself, I snatched the knife out of the air. This isn't just any old knife, though... This is a blade fashioned from steel and tempered hive resin used almost exclusively in executions by enforcers, or so the book says. A Swarm-minder's Oath blade. "Ocellus, get out of here and get help!" I groaned as the nanite acid burned a hole through my left palm and the sting got stuck in my hand. She didn't need a second prod to get moving, although I did have to drop the knife and throw myself at Odonata when he made a lunge for her. "No, you're playing with me, little drone."

Although I was just as tall as an average pony, I definitely had the weight on them. That meant that I, in turn, had a significant weight advantage over the enforcer. "That fucking hurt, you know," I hissed into his ear as I threw him into a headlock. Although I couldn't choke him out, keeping him immobilised until a guard came and stunned the motherfucker wasn't so much of a challenge. "You're lucky that I'd rather give you back to Chryssi alive as a gesture of goodwill."

He of course, attempted to bite me, although he managed to sink his teeth into my left forearm. All that managed to accomplish was get his teeth stuck, and when he attempted to get them out, he only managed to rip out his own fangs. Thus my arm gained a coating of green haemolymph as he hissed and snarled impotently. Dumbshit.

Except, it wasn't as though he was defenceless, however. With the knife no longer in my grip, he was free to grab it with his magic and stab me in the lower back. Of course, he'd also seen the way the nanite acid had burned a hole through my hand as he stabbed it with my own sting, and before I could even consider what he might do, he wrenched it out of my hand with his magic and jammed it into where my right eye would have been if I were organic.

WARNING

RIGHT EYE SENSOR DESTROYED

NOTE: DEPTH PERCEPTION WILL BE CRIPPLED UNTIL REPAIRED
NANITE ACID DETECTED INSIDE CRANIOFACIAL CAVITY
REGENERATION... FAILED!
SUGGESTION: NEUTRALISE NANITE ACID
SUGGESTION: REMOVE FOREIGN BODY FROM BACK

I released him and stumbled off, thrusting my damaged left hand into my mouth to neutralise the acid. "You know... Alive has a very broad definition," I warned as I wrenched my sting out of my face plate and smeared the neutralising saliva across the hole. I could feel my mind reacting to the sadism setting as I geared up for a fight. "You just reminded me of the fact that I don't have to leave all your limbs attached."

As I held out my sting in my free hand, I thrust my tail against the severed end and allowed for the regeneration to kick in. At the same time, my left hand withdrew into the mechanical iris in my forearm and out emerged a long, single-edged blade. His eyes widened at the sight of the blade longer than my leg emerging from my arm, but his lack of a discernible pupil made it hard to gauge whether that was just simple surprise or fear. When my right hand repeated the same action as my left, being replaced by a similar blade, he actually wilted.

When I realised the only thing he really had left was his armour, since the knife was still lodged in my lower back, my grin grew a bit more savage and I dropped into a stance that would make it easier to lunge at him. "What's it gonna be, Odonata?" I asked, bringing one of the blades up to my mouth so I could run my tongue up the back of it. "Surrender? Or are we going to see how much I can carve off of you before you go into shock?"

Before he could come to a decision, the door burst open to reveal Captain Shining Armour and a troupe of unicorn guards. I must've been a horrifying sight, because one of the captain's unicorns promptly fainted upon looking at me. "Drop the weapons and stand down, Anonymous," he warned, putting a barrier up around the changeling. "We've got it from here."

I nodded, stepping back as the blades withdrew. My hands were raised just to show that I was no threat. That was when a mare with a medic's armband stepped forward. "Sir, she's wounded!" exclaimed the guardsmare as she took in the sight of me. Without even waiting for her CO's response, she teleported in a first aid kit and rushed over to me. Never mind the fact that she had no fucking clue how to even treat me. That didn't stop her from levitating out a roll of gauze and wrapping my head to cover up the hole. "Ma'am, please sit down so I can dress your other wounds."

When the captain met my gaze, I emoted a rolling eye and waved off his medic. "I can regenerate this whenever I want," I casually noted as I turned around and started walking back to my bed to show off the knife still lodged inside my back. The comment was directed at both Shining and his medic. "I'm just choosing not to. Don't touch that knife, by the way. I plan on using that plus my injury to pressure Chrysalis in the peace negotiations."

He simply sighed and shook his head. "If that is what you wish." Without further ado, he lifted the shield bubble off the ground and carried his new prisoner out of the room. It would be fun to see how he would deal with getting Odonata out of the bubble to put a magic damper on his horn to keep him from doing further magic, but honestly, I just wanted to sit and relax for a bit before the inevitable check-in came.

As the guards all filed out, a familiar pony maid re-entered the room. Once the door was shut behind her, she dropped her own disguise and slowly approached. She seemed horrified by the hole in my hand and the bandage wrapped around my head, which was to say nothing of the executioner's blade sticking out of me. At the same time though, in those glittering compound eyes, I thought I could make out a bit of awe.

It caught me completely off guard as Ocellus wrapped me in a tight hug. Her face was buried in my neck, and it took me a moment to realise that she was weeping. "You saved my life, Anon," she whispered. "Thank you..."

NOTICE

REMOTE ACCESS ESTABLISHED

USER(S) "TWILIGHT", "STARLIGHT" (SHARED SESSION)
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
USER "TWILIGHT" HAS OPENED A GROUP CHAT

The notification came up when I was taking my lunch. Specifically, I was lying on my belly on the bed, sipping from a pitcher of lantern oil while snacking some scrap metal that the chefs found in the kitchen. Based on the look of it, it was old and damaged cutlery that was beyond repair. It didn't matter much to me, given that my choppers had no real issue biting into the metal. Made me wonder just what the fuck they were made of, and what sort of PSI there was to my bite.

TWILIGHT > SORRY IF WE'RE A BIT LATE CHECKING IN WITH YOU. AFTER YOUR UNEXPECTED JUMP, WE HAD TO DETERMINE WHICH UNIVERSE YOU TRANSFERRED TO.
STARLIGHT > AFTER THAT, WE HAD TO ADJUST THE SPELL. I CAN SEE BASED ON YOUR NEW COMPANION THAT YOU'RE IN AN EQUESTRIA THIS TIME.
STARLIGHT > EQUS78Σ ACCORDING TO THE SCRYING SPELL.

I nodded quietly to myself and popped the end of a fork that was missing most of its tines into my mouth and began chewing. My gaze drifted over to a sofa, where Ocellus was napping. Theoretically, it'd be fine if I chatted with them out loud, but this wasn't the dream room and it didn't feel as natural as two talking portraits. Maybe somewhere down the line, I could get the generative AI part of my systems to manufacture a script that'd project their portraits into my vision and run some sort of text-to-speech, but until then, I was fine with the terminal, or being in the dream room for messages.

ANON > YEAH. THIS ONE'S A BIT BEFORE MOM BECAME A PRINCESS. BEFORE AUNTIE'S WEDDING IN FACT.
ANON > AS YOU CAN GUESS FROM THE ROOM, I'M IN CANTERLOT RIGHT NOW.
TWILIGHT > I CAN SEE THAT YOU'RE INJURED; IS THAT FROM WHATEVER HAD YOU TESTING THE DEATH PARAMETER?
ANON > NAH. I HEALED THE GAPING CHEST WOUND WHILE I WAS IN A JAIL CELL. THIS IS FROM A BUG BY THE NAME ODONATA. ENFORCER MENTIONED IN BIOLOGIA MUTABILIS, PAGE... 78, PARAGRAPH 5. WOW. THAT RECALL IS WAY TOO SPECIFIC.
STARLIGHT > I'M ASSUMING THAT'S NOT THE CHANGELING IN QUESTION SHARING YOUR ROOM.
ANON > OCELLUS, ACTUALLY. I KINDA BROKE HER COVER WHILE DINING WITH CELESTIA, LUNA, AND YOUR BROTHER THIS MORNING.
ANON > ODONATA WAS PISSED ABOUT THE MASQUERADE BEING BROKEN AND JEOPARDISING CHRYSALIS' PLAN, SO HE WAS PLANNING ON KILLING HER AND ME.
ANON > DON'T WORRY; I DIDN'T KILL HIM, AS MUCH AS THE SADISM VALUE IN MY PROGRAMMING WANTED ME TO 'PLAY' WITH HIM. YOUR BROTHER SAVED HIM FROM ME.
STARLIGHT > I KNOW THAT'S NOT YOUR BODY, BUT IT'S HARD SEEING YOU BEAT UP LIKE THAT... AND IS THAT A KNIFE IN YOUR BACK!?
TWILIGHT > ANON, IF YOU COULD HEAL A GAPING CHEST WOUND WITH EASE, WHY ARE YOU PREVENTING YOUR WOUNDS FROM REGENERATING?

With a sigh, I went into a long-winded explanation of my plan, on how I was in the process of brokering peace between Chrysalis' changelings and Equestria so that Harmony's bullshit never needed to happen, and Hunger wouldn't need to pull shit like she did with me on anyone else. I'm not sure they approved of the fact that I was planning on using my injuries to try and force Chryssi into a more agreeable position, but meh. It didn't change the fact that I was fully determined to follow the path I'd set out for myself.

Following that little discussion, we somehow looped back to the fact that I'd ended up in the situation where I'd triggered the death warp. That of course resulted in my retelling of how I ended up in that situation in the first place... Retelling how I'd saved a random robo-cop, and the horror we found in the room where I fought J alongside Uzi only days before. Oh, and letting slip the fact that I made a deal with what I'm pretty sure was Robo-Satan pretending to be a derpy little robot maid.

STARLIGHT > ANON... I THOUGHT YOU KNEW BETTER BY NOW.

I could practically see Starlight face-hoofing in my mind's eye. Not that she was wrong. I should have known better, and this was most certainly going to come bite me in the ass, but at the same time, I was totally gonna die either way, so why shouldn't I get something out of it? Especially since my choice, and my gaining access to those powers, might've prevented a second eldritch Disassembly Drone from running around eating people in that bunker.

A sigh escaped me as I activated translate and levitated over the Victim's Guitar before using edit to tidy it up and remove all the nicks and scratches that were present in the polished wood. Popping the last of the scrap metal into my mouth, I downed the rest of the lantern oil in the pitcher. I then sat up and casually began strumming the instrument. I needed something to keep me distracted about all this.

ANON > YEAH... I DO KNOW BETTER, BUT... IS IT SO WRONG OF ME TO WANT EVERY ADVANTAGE I CAN GET ON THIS JOURNEY HOME?
ANON > AT LEAST MY BARGAIN WITH CYN WILL LET SOME PART OF ME LIVE ON IN THAT WORLD, AND SHOULD I DIE PERMANENTLY, YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO MAKE A DEAL WITH IT TO GET A COPY OF MY MIND.
ANON > MY CHOICE MAY HAVE BEEN A SPUR OF THE MOMENT DECISION, BUT IT WASN'T WITHOUT DUE CONSIDERATION.
TWILIGHT > DO YOU TRUST HER TO KEEP HER WORD?
STARLIGHT > TWILIGHT, YOU'RE NOT SERIOUSLY APPROVING OF HER CHOICE, ARE YOU?
TWILIGHT > NO. EVEN IF ANON SUCCESSFULLY BARTERED FOR EQUESTRIA'S SAFETY, SHE'S ALERTED AN ENTITY WORSE THAN OUR SPIRIT OF HUNGER TO THE GREATER MULTIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
TWILIGHT > ANON'S GOING TO HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THIS CYN MIGHT NOT STOP AT JUST HER UNIVERSE... THAT IT'S NOW TOO LATE TO PUT THAT GENIE BACK IN THE BOTTLE.
TWILIGHT > I JUST HOPE SHE TRULY BELIEVES THAT RISK TO BE WORTH GETTING HOME.

I found myself chewing my lip as I considered that. Eventually, Cyn—or the Absolute Solver, if she was just its puppet—might discover a means to hop realities. Translate was the most likely method, and given enough time with my mind, it might even use me to figure it out. Except, in order to use my mind to do it, it'd have to be an unaltered copy, and I don't think any iteration of me would willingly give any Equestrias to Cyn.

ANON > THERE WERE NO GOOD CHOICES. AS CALLOUS AS IT IS, I PROMISED MYSELF I WOULD GET HOME AT ANY COST.
ANON > EVEN IF I NEED MORE THERAPY BY THE END OF IT... EVEN IF MY SOUL BECOMES STAINED BLACK WITH MY SINS, I WON'T ABANDON MY FAMILY... NEVER AGAIN.

There was an extended period where no messages came down the line. It was just me, the guitar, and Ocellus, with nothing but time to kill. At least my roomie was enjoying the music as she picked at the pasta bowl I'd had the chefs bring her. After all, if she was gonna recover from all that starvation-inflicted damage caused by lack of love and insufficient biomass intake, she was gonna need to eat an awful lot.

Hmm, maybe suggest having this world's Pinkie Pie team up with the world's best bakers and pâtissiers to cook a grand feast for all the changelings after an accord is struck?

Admittedly, the cute little bug was slowly starting to look better than she had been when she first dropped her disguise in the dining room. Her chitin was beginning to look a bit glossier than it was, and cracks were beginning to naturally fill in. Get a couple of more meals and another serving of love into her, and she'd be the healthiest drone this side of the universal divide.

For that matter, I should probably come up with a list of professions that changelings could partake in to make integration worth it. Let's see, acting is an obvious one, as well as fashion. Having a changeling present during an interrogation of a non-bug would be useful in ferreting out deceit. Then you've got the choice of them going into therapy. Hive resin is surprisingly sterile, which makes it good for patch jobs in medical situations, too. I felt myself grinning. Heheh... EMS... Bug EMS... Buggy MS...

TWILIGHT > I KNOW, ANON. JUST... CAN YOU PROMISE YOU'LL TRY TO AVOID USING DEATH TO GET YOU CLOSER TO HOME.
TWILIGHT > ALTHOUGH IT WORKED OUT FOR YOU THIS TIME, I WORRY THAT YOUR BODY WON'T BE ABLE TO TAKE ANOTHER.
ANON > I WILL, MOM. TAKE CARE... OH, BEFORE I FORGET... IF YOU GUYS START SCRYING AND YOU SEE ME FIGHTING, COULD YOU... I DUNNO... COULD YOU REFRAIN FROM WATCHING?
ANON > I DON'T WANT YOU HAVING TO SEE THE ENDS I MIGHT HAVE TO GO TO IN ORDER TO STAY ALIVE... OR TO 'MOVE THE PLOT ALONG', SO TO SPEAK.
ANON > FOR NOW, I PROBABLY NEED TO GET READY TO MEET WITH A BUG QUEEN.
TWILIGHT > STAY SAFE.
STARLIGHT > DITTO.

USER "TWILIGHT" HAS CLOSED THE CHAT

The queen was staring me in the face, mocking me. No matter how many times I tried to get rid of her, she kept coming back. It wasn't fair. A guard would take her off my hands, and then not too long after, she'd be right back in front of me, mocking me. Ocellus simply looked amused by it all, which only made it worse. That was maybe the worst part—I knew the others had to be cheating somehow.

I lowered my hand of cards and glared at the young changeling. "Are you looking at my hand reflected in my faceplate?" I demanded, looking from her to the two guards I roped into a game of Old Maid this evening. Oh sure, Shining would probably have words for these goons, but holy shit was I bored. A mare can only play so much minesweeper and solitaire before she starts to lose her mind. "Well?"

Don't ask me how bugs can blush through chitin. I genuinely still don't know how that shit works and I've been one for the better part of a decade. Still, I'll give Ocellus credit, she had the decency to look guilty when caught out. "Well... maybe, but it's kind of hard not to see the reflection." One of the guards, the one to my left, nodded in agreement. "But if you really think it's unfair, I can stop."

I simply emoted a raised eyebrow at her and then shook my head. "It's my own fault for introducing the free-for-all rule variation, rather than the standard ruleset." I responded as the guard to my right's turn came about. I set my hand—the queen of spades, the ace of hearts, the two of diamonds, and the seven of spades—face down in my palm, shuffled it, and then fanned it out when he pointed at me. When he took his card, I was glad to see the queen gone. "Besides, it's not like we're playing for any sort of stakes."

The guard to my left, a pegasus mare rendered snow-white by the standard concealment charm, nodded in agreement. "Cap'n banned on-shift gambling, but even he recognises that some shifts get long," she commented, fanning out her own cards for me. "As long as VIPs are getting guarded, he's pretty lax as to whether we're in the room with them or posted outside."

I refrained from snarking at her about the fact that they basically already let an assassin into my room and Ocellus had to fetch the captain of the guard. Admittedly, from what they've told me, they'd been sent away by who they thought to be a ranking night guard. Could hardly hold them following the orders of who they thought to be someone with authority when they had no reason to expect such a thing to happen, although there would probably be different procedures in the near future.

Instead, I snatched up her ace of clubs and threw my two aces down on the pile between us all. "I wonder what changed," I asked redundantly as I watched her have a go at the hand of the guy to my right. "My Equestria's a few years ahead of yours, and my Shining Armour's shiny boys and girls are all stick-in-the-mud absolute professionals." I didn't bother pointing out that it was most certainly caused by a certain invasion I was presently trying to prevent.

The unicorn stallion to my right chuckled as the pegasus guard took a card and instantly scowled. "Marriage changes a stallion, don't you know?" he barked. "Why wouldn't he wanna shape up the guard to take care of that pretty princess fiancé of his?"

Before Ocellus could take her turn, the door opened and a nondescript unicorn butler stepped in. "Anonymous Flicker and Ocellus?" he asked, more to catch our attention than anything else. "The Princesses have convened in the dining room. Word is that the expected guest has arrived in the city with an honour guard and will be at the castle shortly."

I nodded, setting my hand of cards down on the floor and reaching over to pat the pegasus guard on the shoulder. "Guess that makes you the loser since you had that queen, huh?" Slowly, being careful not to disturb the blade in my back, I rose onto my feet and began to stretch. I considered grabbing the Shapeshifter's Parasol, but at seven thirty in the evening, I reckoned that I had enough darkness to get by without needing the parasol if passing any open windows.

Ocellus was a bit slower at rising, but was right on my metaphorical heels as the butler led us out towards the dining hall. Now, you're probably wondering why we were taking this meeting in the dining hall rather than the throne room. One would think that the best place to take any sort of diplomatic envoy would be the throne room, but there was another reason I suggested we take it with a meal.

See, the changelings were starving not only because their hive was located in the Badlands—an unfortunate climate disaster a few centuries back rendered it the inhospitable mess it was—but due to their need for love. In the case of queens and queen nymphs, the physiological need to feed on someone directly was much more important than with drones. If we could give Chrysalis and anyone in her party the love that guards had been donating since this morning, and feed them something filling, she might be much more open to negotiating a peace. That was the plan, at least.

When we were led into the royal dining room, there were startled gasps from all three princesses. I'd managed to avoid meeting Princess Cadance at all today, but it made sense that she'd be attending, especially given it was her wedding that Chrysalis was planning on hijacking. A shame her first glimpse of me was all banged up and a blade sticking out of my back. Still, she looked exactly like my world's Cadance, albeit younger looking. Even with the eternal youth of an alicorn, ten years makes a hell of a difference in appearance.

"Anonymous," Celestia noted as I strolled in. "Captain Armour alerted me to the attack earlier, but I was under the impression that, given your condition when apprehended yesterday, you'd have regenerated such damage."

I shrugged, turning slightly to show the knife in my back. "I chose to hold off until Queen Chrysalis joined us, Princess Celestia," I casually replied, turning my one good optical sensor back to the door as I took up position at the neutral side of the table. Interestingly, Ocellus stuck by me, even though she was of Chryssi's brood. "Figured it might be helpful if I expressed my continued interest in peace between our kinds, despite the injuries acquired preventing the assassination of Apprentice Ocellus by Enforcer Odonata."

That got a worried look from the Princess of Love. Probably because she was too kind of a pony to comprehend accepting what would be a grievous bodily injury for any living creature for the purpose of a little political ammunition. Still, I gave a quick curtsy to the pink one. "Apologies, Princess Cadenza," I continued, choosing to use her formal name to remain impersonal. This wasn't my world's Cadance or Shiny, or my Sun Horse and Moon Horse. "I am Anonymous Flicker, a traveller between realities. Although this body is on loan from the last universe I visited, I am normally of the same species as Ocellus here."

Before I could say more, the dining room doors opened to admit a large group of changelings. At the head of the group was Intelligencer Chelicerae, whom we'd convinced to extend this olive branch to Chrysalis. Much like Ocellus, she too was dressed in a maid outfit, but had shed said disguise. Ten praetorian guards in hive-resin plate, five on either side, followed behind her, boxing in their VIP.

Finally, there was her royal bugginess herself, Queen Chrysalis. Unlike the only time I saw her when I was a foal, she didn't look nearly as mangy and deranged. Despite being called out and put on the back hoof, she was standing proud with her black fungal crown atop her head. Much like her guards, her chitin was dull and flaking in places... Nowhere near as nice as the sheen on Ocellus and Chelicerae.

The larger infiltrator stepped forward, and calmly announced, "Presenting Her Royal Majesty, Queen Chrysalis of the Badlands Hive, last bastion of the changeling race." She stepped aside, allowing Chrysalis to step forward. "Also attending is the Royal Heiress, Princess Anonymous, daughter of Queen Chrysalis."

My brain threw a major segfault, and for a moment I swore that I did a quick reboot, but no, my auditory sensors were not deceiving me. She'd just said Princess Anonymous, and sure enough, sticking close to the queen's legs was a nymph who couldn't have been more than a few months outside her pupa. She was very thin and sickly looking, but she looked just like I did as a nymph... Navy elytra, dark green hair, and vivid green eyes.

I wasn't expecting this world to have an Anon, I thought drily as I turned to glance down at Ocellus and then accusingly at Chelicerae. Neither one had informed me that the queen in this reality had a daughter, nor what her name was, and given that we shared a goddamn name, that was pretty fucking important information to leave out.

Chrysalis' gaze swept across all three princesses, before straying over to me and the now cowering drone beside me. Her eyes narrowed, and she let out a low growl. "Apprentice Ocellus," she all but spat, addressing the drone rather than any of the princesses. "I suppose I have you to thank for breaking the masquerade and ruining months of careful planning. That the ponies offer parlay is the only reason I am not executing you where you stand for your betrayal."

All of the ponies looked outraged, but I raised my bandaged hand to stay them as I stepped forward. "No, Queen Chrysalis, even if they weren't offering parlay, you would not be executing her," I warned. "I was the one that caught your infiltrator out and revealed your plan to the ponies, and it was I who invoked the Goddess of the Swarm in promising this drone safety in my presence... an oath I've already had to make good on thanks to Enforcer Odonata, as you no doubt see."

She gawped at me, and her guards bristled, as I removed my bandages and showed them my damaged faceplate. When I turned to show her the knife in my back, I continued. "That reminds me, you may have the Swarm-minder's Oath back," I continued, wrapping my tail around the handle of the blade and wrenching it out of my back. I slid it across the floor towards her. When I turned back to face her, I let my systems finally begin to stitch me back together right in front of her eyes. "Worry not; Odonata is unharmed, just as Chelicerae and Ocellus are." I paused for a moment before smirking. "Although, his bark may be worse than his bite for a while."

The queen bug stared at me for several moments before turning to the ponies. With a sigh, she asked, "Does she ever shut up, or is this annoyance going to be a mainstay in this meeting?" In response, I flickered my holos on and demonstrated my changeling form before grinning at her. "Terrific."

Friendship Get!

Friends

N, Disassembly Drone - COP9AU
Uzi, Worker Drone - COP9AU
Ocellus, Unreformed Changeling - EQUS78Σ *NEW*

Items

The Victim's Guitar - COP9AU
WDF Aviators - COP9AU
Shapeshifter's Parasol - EQUS78Σ *UPDATED*

Software

Conscience_v0.1a - COP9AU
absoluteSolver (?) - COP9AU

2 extra lives remaining

Author's Note

Arc 2 will continue its regular release schedule, although upon publishing the final for 'Hunger Fae, Time to Play,' I will be putting the story on hiatus in order to work on a side-project in a separate fandom.

Hunger Fae, Time to Play - 03

I'm not exactly sure what I expected. Even though this meeting was entirely my idea, I was not expecting the Equestrians to put me on the spot, forcing me to explain to Chrysalis why I was so adamant the two races achieved peace. That was only made worse by the fact that she found me to be annoying and didn't wish for me to have the opportunity to go on tangents. That forced us to play the Q & A game... sometimes answering to the ponies as well.

"You claim to be a changeling queen," Chrysalis reiterated, as though she found the entire idea doubtful, "and yet your body is clearly one of metal and textile. Why is this? You may hide behind magicless illusions all you wish, but I will not accept you are one of us."

Sighing, I reclined against the wall. I wished to remain apart from both parties and kept back in order to convey neutrality and the fact that I was an outsider, and thus I did not take a seat at the table. "Much as I explained to Princesses Celestia and Luna at breakfast, I'm something of a magical scholar. Specifically, I am a rune mage, and was working on a spell that would permit two-way scrying between two worlds. Specifically it was intended as a means for my world's Princess Celestia to communicate with a former student of hers since they'd made peace." The white horse in question looked a lot more alert, for it was a detail I hadn't let slip this morning. "Some magical anomaly involving chaos and dimensional magic interrupted a test of a prototype interdimensional scrying spell, and my soul was separated from my body, and thus I became this. My body, personal magic, and family are back in my own Equestria, and I would very much like to find a way home."

Everyone, but especially Chrysalis and Cadenza, paused to consider this. It was short, to the point, and most important of all, it hinted at what sort of mind they were dealing with. I called myself a scholar, but what it really meant was that I was an expert at spell creation and external casting. Even without my magic I couldn't be underestimated.

After a moment, Princess Cadenza raised a hoof and then spoke. "You mentioned a Goddess of the Swarm before, when you defended that drone," she observed, directing momentary attention to Ocellus. Now that it was clear that she was under my protection, said drone was now standing at the changeling side of the table, right beside her mentor in infiltration. "Perhaps if you explain what or who she is, Queen Chrysalis might be more inclined to believe you."

Before I even considered my answer, I shot the queen a questioning look. Dare I venture forth and put your mind to rest? When she gave a begrudging nod, I took a moment to compose my thoughts. That is to say, I mentally queried and condensed all the hive lore that had been crammed into my head when I was a foal in order to preserve the changeling's history. Even a decade later, I still hadn't sorted through all of it.

"I will lay everything out as I understand it although I need to preface it a bit to make things clearer to the ponies," I agreed after a moment. "In the world, there are beings that I tend to refer to as Embodied Concepts—living, thinking natural forces. Chaos is one I'm certain a few of you may have met in the past. I angled my head in the direction of the castle garden, where said entity was currently encased in stone. "Some, like Harmony, have creatures they treat as their children. Just as ponies fall under Harmony's domain, changelings fall under Hunger's domain."

Based on the shocked expressions on everypony's faces, they were not aware of this fact. "According to what I've been made to believe, Hunger created the changelings long ago in the time of Dream Valley." I glanced at Chrysalis before smiling, "You might remember the name of the First Queen, Queen Tethys. Back then, pony and bug-kind didn't have any sort of adversarial relationship, and it used to be symbiotic, so Tethys' hive grew into a great empire. Things were great for centuries, until relations between the three pony tribes collapsed. Love became harder to come by, and eventually all tribes grew to distrust the changelings, who grew twisted in their starvation. Thus, Hunger appeared before Tethys and taught her ambition and secrecy; she was enshrined then, as the Goddess of the Swarm, and the masquerade was established in her name."

It was entirely unexpected when I observed Chrysalis draw a circle in the air before her with her hoof and then move to clasp her opposite shoulder. That was a changeling religious gesture that, at least in my world, died out before Chrysalis' time. "It can't be," she whispered in disbelief. "Even Apocrita doesn't have that clear of a picture of our history, and yet... I can feel it in my heart."

"Gods, don't bring that bug up, please," I muttered just loud enough to be heard. "Crazier than a box of frogs, that one." It didn't matter that the bug was the best scholar among the reformed changelings and this world's changelings; the fact of the matter was that the old bug was losing her marbles and clearly had been even before I'd met her in my world.

Another thing I wasn't really expecting was the giggling of the queen's daughter. It was weird because it reminded me of how I sounded when I was a foal. Even as her mother tried to quietly discourage her daughter from her outburst, Princess Anonymous whispered, "It's funny 'cuz it's true!" That got a begrudging chuckle from Chrysalis, and soon the entire pony side of the table was smiling at the cute display. Then, seemingly out of curiosity more than anything, the little bug looked over at me and asked, "So how come we have the same name? Are you like, me from the future?"

When Chrysalis reaffirmed that question as something that was bothering her as well, that got us deep off into a tangent that resulted in a sanitised retelling of my foalhood... How I'd 'reincarnated' into Equestria in the body of a little green filly and gotten the name Anonymous from Celestia—which got a really confused look form both the named horse and changeling queen... Getting sent to live with another alicorn and her apprentice for eating one of Sunbutt's cakes... About how Chrysalis' hive had been warped by Harmony, leaving Chryssi as nothing more than lonely bug with a blood feud against my caretakers.

I half-expected Chrysalis herself was going to lunge at me with the Swarm-minder's Oath at the revelation that I had perverted her counterpart into one of Harmony's 'reformed' bugs through magic and trickery. She let me continue, though, covering how it'd turned out my soul was bound to an already occupied body and I sought some way to separate myself... of Hunger's offer, and her betrayal. Suddenly, knowing that my punishment for ending the last of the true changelings was to become the last true changeling—one tasked with repopulating the species when she came of age—made Chryssi rather smug. I intentionally left out who Hunger used as a template in creating my changeling body. No need for her head to get too big.

"If your Equestria is years ahead of ours, and my plans were the subject of a textbook about our kind, that would explain how you knew of my plans and my agents," Chrysalis finally remarked after several minutes of silence to consider everything she'd heard. "Yet it explains very little why you are so invested in what happens to us. This world's changelings are not your kin; you owe us nothing, and yet you offer us everything."

I shrugged and started walking over to her side of the table. All of her praetorian guards tensed, but made no move as I slowly sat seiza beside the bug queen and her daughter. "Your Majesty, though I am not of this world, everything in here—" I tapped the side of my head. "—and everything in here—" I closed my hand over where my heart would be. "—tells me I should help you," I explained. "The Goddess' touch left not just her mark on my soul, but on the way I think as well. It's honestly kind of awful to think about what she did to my mind, cramming all that hive lore into my poor little head, but..." I looked down at Princess Anonymous and then over at all the ponies on the opposite side of the table. "I wouldn't ask that anyone go through what I had to, because I've no doubt if this world's changelings met the same fate as mine, or worse, this world's Hunger would absolutely take it out on someone and enact my fate on them as punishment."

The room chilled suddenly, and the lighting in the room seemed somehow darker. There was a mellifluous chuckling that almost sounded like purring coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. "The outsider is not wrong," came the almost teasing tone of Hunger. "And knowing that it can be done, I might just find the means to do so to whomever seeks that method out."

I wonder if this world's Spirit of Hunger would take the same name if she ever physically manifests, I wondered as things transitioned from 'getting to know the weird changeling-possessed robot' to an actual bit of negotiations over food. Well, they brought in a bunch of love donated by some castle staff volunteers, while the royals had evening snacks. Me, I had a flagon from the kitchens filled with mineral oil and brought to me. I was more than content to just sit and listen. After all, I was more of an advocate than anything else.

The biggest issue being faced was that within two years, barring some sort of miracle, the changelings would die out. I knew from Biologia that Chryssi's stunt with Cadance's wedding pushed the clock back, as did what happened when she successfully replaced much of Ponyville and the ruling class in Canterlot. Too bad she fucked up and didn't account for Starlight and company. They should've cut and run, relocating the hive when the environmental disaster struck, but pride kept them in their ancestral home.

Luckily for her, I intervened and derailed that whole thing. Equestria was a land of plenty, and given time for integration, the changeling numbers would surely be on the rise. It of course wouldn't be that easy. Ponies would need time to adapt, as would all the bugs. In exchange for food, citizenship, and temporary accommodation, all the tribe needed to do was find their place in the pony world. Then, when changelings were integrated, the crown could work with Chrysalis on establishing a new, proper hive in Equestrian territory.

Eventually, Chrysalis admitted what the actual plan for the wedding was, and fully admitted that it was a Hail Mary play that gambled the well-being of the hive. She owned that fact, but refused to be ashamed of it. It was argued that were situations reversed, Celestia and Luna might have been forced to make a similar decision. My interference and breaking the masquerade was the only reason she'd even come to the table.

Even as I zoned out, they were banging out details for a temporary settlement in one of the city's lower tiers. I think Celestia mentioned something about unowned land zoned for industrial use that'd been vacant for a while. I was more interested in the fact that Big Bug was gonna personally lead the tribe out of the desert like some biblical figure, and while all that was going on, you had Cadenza and Luna personally spearheading the love equivalent of a blood drive. It was, to say the least, an interesting turn of events.

I almost went and slipped into sleep mode, but I was distracted by the coming of a very familiar unicorn stallion. White coat, immaculate blonde mane, and a compass rose on his flank? It could only have been Prince Blueblood. Back in my Equestria, he was actually somepony I didn't mind calling a friend, even if we didn't start off on the best terms. Up until shortly before the Storm King's invasion of Canterlot, I was actually convinced he was just a rich snob and the head of Equestria's unicorn supremacist movement. Instead, he was actually a shrewd politician that tempered the nobility, and he kept them from being worse. By the end of that war, all of Equestria knew him as a war hero.

The stallion quietly slipped in and made his way over to Celestia's side of the table and quietly whispered into her ear. I of course, being curious by nature, cranked the gain on my auditory sensors. "The nobles are restless," he quietly intoned. "There is talk of vampires in the castle, strange creatures parading through the streets, and a threat to the crown. There has also been mention of the order getting involved."

Celestia's expression grew dark, and her eyes darted to me, and then Chrysalis. "Find the sources of those rumours and plug them," she growled. "And for the love of Harmony, do whatever you can to keep the zealots out of this, or it will be an unmitigated disaster."

After the meeting concluded, Chrysalis and her daughter were given a room, outside which her escort took up position alongside an honour guard granted by the crown. Ocellus chose to return to my room, and I had no idea what the other ponies were doing. As for me, I decided to take advantage of the moonlight and just go out to one of the castle gardens to be alone. It'd been a pretty busy day, and it was probably the most social I'd been in weeks, and I was pretty drained.

As I wandered the gardens, I found myself sinking into some self reflection. Well, Mom, I'm pretty sure this isn't what you meant when you said I should go out and make some friends, I thought drily as my feet unconsciously led me down a familiar path. Although, I think I see why you felt the need to threaten to do as your mentor did and send me away.

The many days spent either in the lab or sleeping often blurred together, with only the occasional outing interspersed to break it up. Even after all the therapy I'd been through, I still wound up becoming a little homebody who could only take being around lots of ponies in short bursts. It was one thing to hang out with Mom and the Elements, or Emerald and the Crusaders, but those were known quantities who knew my limits. Even trips to the mirror world for drinks and karaoke with Sunset and her friend group were never a long affair. I'd burn myself out over the course of a few hours and then go back to my homebody self or interact one-on-one with ponies I knew.

Since my unexpected vacation began, though, it didn't really feel like I was getting a chance to come down from being around others. What made it all worse was the fact that the chaos and dimensional magic encapsulating my soul and body were apparently waiting for me to meet some unseen criteria. It somehow seemed unlikely that I'd just get pushed along if I sat still for long enough, which meant that I had to do something. It just so happened that the thing I decided to do here involved stepping out of my comfort zone.

It's not like I can spar with Tempest, or run through any of the katas she taught me and Emerald when she taught us self-defence, in order to cool down. None of those forms were intended for a biped, and although I could probably just let this body's programming take over, I'd rather not have to risk things turning into a bloodbath if I can't wrest back control. Plus, a lot of that seems dependent on the body's integrated weapons systems, which in turn builds up heat. Hmm, I wonder if there's anything in MEMORY_DATA that I can reference.

SEARCH RESULTS - "MARTIAL ARTS" IN: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA/"

NAME DESCRIPTION

BOXING "HAND-TO-HAND MARTIAL ART. GOOD OL' FISTICUFFS."

BRAZILLIAN_JIU JITSU "DEFENSIVE MARTIAL ART, GRAPPLING AND SUBMISSION FOCUS."

KRAV_MAGA "MARTIAL ART CREATED BY IDF, DERIVED FROM BOXING, AIKIDO, KARATE AND MORE!"

KUNG_FU "VARIOUS CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS INCLUDING WUSHU AND SHAOLINQUAN."

MUAY_THAI "THAI MARTIAL ART UTILISING FISTS, ELBOWS, KNEES, AND SHINS."

VIEW MORE RESULTS?

Jeeze, and that's not even including all the weapon-based martial arts.

Before I realised it, I found myself standing in front of a very familiar looking marble statue. Sitting on a short plinth, balanced by just his serpentine tail was none other than the Spirit of Chaos, Discord, his limbs held out as if to shield himself even as he recoiled away. Except, I knew from the stories that this wasn't a statue. So this is what he looked like when he was under Harmony's lock and key.

A smile crossed my face as I stood alongside the statue, facing the same direction he was. I then accessed the data on boxing and started a basic shadow-boxing program that automated some of my movements. It was all fairly robotic, as it was just a pre-programmed set of movements, but I was paying attention to how the movements felt and committing them to my memory so that I could repeat them, and break it all down into its various components so that I understood how to box.

As my body ran through a series of bobs, weaves, jabs and more, I struck up a one-sided conversation with the petrified incarnation of the Lord of Chaos. Was he even conscious, or was it a moment frozen in time for him? "Must be pretty lonely, being stuck like this, out in the middle of a garden," I observed aloud as the program ran to its conclusion. "Like, I get you did some really fucked up shit, but if you're aware in there, that's cruel and unusual punishment. Being stuck like that for a millennium would be enough to drive anyone insane."

I laughed at my own joke as I started running through that pattern from memory, doing my best to make the actions more fluid. "Not that you have to worry about that, huh?" I paused my practice just long enough to gently elbow the air beside me, as though he were right beside me for me to jab in the ribs, before resuming. "But hey, if this world plays out anything like mine did, your future's looking pretty bright. Hard to imagine, but you even helped save the world. Hard to believe, isn't it?"

"Quite hard to believe, as it happens," came the calm voice of Princess Celestia. I glanced over to the path that I'd come down, and sure enough, there was the Sun Horse strolling over, in all her regal corpulence. "How could one ever believe that one of the most heinous villains in recorded history would help save the world?"

I stopped my practice and mimicked wiping sweat from my brow as I took in the rather unimpressed look on her face. Out of momentary paranoia, I ran thermals to check her temperature, but unlike a changeling, she was fucking hot. Definitely Celestia. Casually, I backed up and took a seat on the plinth of Discord's prison. "You'd be surprised what a little kindness can do for even the most ferocious of beasts, Your Highness," I said in a casual tone as her eyes narrowed. Wonder if she can take a hint? "Besides, I'd like to think that even violent offenders can contribute something to society if given the chance."

It looked as though she were considering something as she occasionally looked from me to Discord. After a tick, she sighed. "You sound as though you speak from experience, Anonymous Flicker."

I nodded, crossing my arms and leaning forward. "I should hope so," I muttered, unable to meet her gaze. "My world's Celestia and Luna took a chance on me. There was a lot more to the story of how I became a changeling than I let on back there. There's just certain things you can't talk about in front of young impressionable princesses, or Chrysalis' daughter for that matter."

That actually got a snort of amusement from her. I can only imagine how it made her feel, being called 'young', even if I was really joking about Cadenza in specificity. "I won't claim to be a saint, Celestia," I muttered. "I was in a really dark place once, and I lost control." Withdrawing my hand into my arm, a small projector emerged and I started focusing on the face of a certain black pegasus stallion. "This piece of shit was a pedophile mobster in my Equestria. The step-father of my adopted little sister... Son of a bitch foalnapped somepony very important to me to get to her... not realising I was occupying Em's body at the time."

When I cut the projection and finally looked up at her, there was a disapproving, if understanding, look on her face. "I take it from the way you speak that the stallion no longer lives."

I shook my head and bitterly muttered, "His soul and body—and the bodies of seventeen other complicit mobsters served as the fuel for Hunger's scheme." I looked down at my hand, and to my utter lack of surprise, it was trembling. "But for the fact that I was clearly a mentally unwell eight-year-old nymph, and Canterlot was recovering from an invasion that'd been happening while all that was going on, you probably wouldn't have 'let me off' with the years of probation and therapy, the community service, the fines, and the five year ban from taking the necessary licensing exams for combat magic, to say nothing about the creation of such spells."

Honestly, if she dared doubt the fact that I could create any sort of combat spell at that age, I was fully ready to project the old spell diagram for my very illegal rail-gun spell. That would definitely put the fear of herself in her. Instead, she surprised me as her expression softened into one of pity. She even overcame whatever disgust she might have felt towards being in the statue's proximity and came to drape a wing over my shoulders.

"And yet you ended up in a body that, by your own admission, is designed and programmed to kill," she said in a compassionate voice. "Fate has a way of making us confront our past in ways we never expected. Before Twilight Sparkle, I had another apprentice. Orphaned at a young age, I took her in and raised her like a daughter..."

I listened quietly as the mare spoke of Sunset and how she'd originally intended to send the young mare down the path that destiny bestowed instead upon Twilight. I of course already knew how it went wrong, but I nonetheless listened. What I was not aware of, or perhaps it simply didn't come into play in this world, was her fear of repeating the mistakes she made while training Twilight—how every day that Twilight grew more secluded and fixated on her learning, she would become more and more worried that Twilight would be incompatible with the task of uniting the Elements of Harmony and saving Princess Luna from the Nightmare.

The interaction didn't make me feel any closer to the mare, but at the same time, it gave me an appreciation for the chance that she was taking with me. Much like with Twilight, she was hoping that her faith was not misplaced—that I wouldn't doom Equestria. Really, that's all it boiled down to... Being able to take a gamble on the potential future I could lead her ponies down.

Friends

N, Disassembly Drone - COP9AU
Uzi, Worker Drone - COP9AU
Ocellus, Unreformed Changeling - EQUS78Σ

Items

The Victim's Guitar - COP9AU
WDF Aviators - COP9AU
Shapeshifter's Parasol - EQUS78Σ

Software

Conscience_v0.1a - COP9AU
absoluteSolver (?) - COP9AU

2 extra lives remaining

Author's Note

Just a short one this week.
To preempt the expected question, no, this world's 'Princess Anon' is not derived from the same person that became Anonymous Flicker. She is just a precious little bug, free of any sort of reincarnation, who should be loved and protected.

Hunger Fae, Time to Play - Final

The next week seemed to fly by. After the initial negotiations, Queen Chrysalis and Princess Anonymous—Jeeze, that still sounds weird—were offered a room in the castle. That offer was politely refused. Instead, she was personally going to rally the remnants of the hive and settle them in the agreed upon temporary settlement in the industrial district: a large plaza that was effectively just several blocks of unoccupied land. They did, however stay the night at the very least.

The morning after the meeting, and after they ate some donated love, I watched the mother and daughter duo leave with their escort. After that, I had a lot of free time on my hands. Much of that was spent continuing my guitar practice or playing cards with the guards. I also spent some time teaching Ocellus about bipedal movement, mostly to quell her own curiosity.

What's a mage without her magic to do, after all? I could prototype spells in my dream library all I want, but without actually testing each iteration, there wasn't much point to it. Oh sure, I could request help from some guard mages or students of CSGU's college-level courses, but without casting it myself, I couldn't be certain that it was functioning as I intended. A passion loses the lustre when you're stuck with just theorycraft.

On the third day, Chrysalis returned with every living changeling left on Equus, numbering slightly over two thousand. Honestly, they were in even worse condition than she made them out to be, although that might have been a result of having to relocate from the hive in the middle of the Badlands. It was even more disheartening to find out that they left the hive with a number five thousand strong.

Maybe Biologia Mutabilis left out just how dire the situation was for the changeling race at the time of the Invasion of Canterlot, or maybe it was just a universal difference, but Princess Anonymous was among the youngest of the changeling nymphs that made the journey from the hive. I found out from Ocellus that due to the decimation of their ecosystem, the partial destruction of their farming capacity, and bad yields from infiltrators, Chrysalis instituted strict population control. Following the metamorphosis of the last larva into nymphs, the brooding chamber was converted into an additional mushroom farm.

Then of course, you had the small drama that having a small army of starved civilians marching through the streets of Canterlot's lowest tier created. Disgusted nobles spent the better part of that day complaining to Celestia, according to the night guards that kept me company that night. Honestly, I wasn't surprised, but I was somewhat disappointed that this world's Blueblood wasn't doing so good of a job herding cats as my Blueblood did.

By the fifth night, I was getting absolutely stir-crazy. Ocellus was now spending more time at the camp or acting as a runner for Chrysalis for interactions and requests involving the crown. I seldom got to see my friend, and even then, we were only permitted a quick chat. Cards and music began to lose their shine, and I just had to get out and move.

That was when I got a bright idea; I could go hunting! I'm sure Princess Luna was plenty surprised to have me show up in her night court to petition her for permission to go down to the Everfree Forest and kill the shit out of some monsters, just so I'd have something constructive to do. That was without mentioning the fact that I was having inexplicable cravings for meat, despite the fact that I shouldn't have anything approaching a proper digestive tract.

She was at first reluctant to turn me loose so close to Ponyville, until I reminded her that the night guard was fully under her control. If she wanted to assign some minders to observe me while I went to play in the woods, literally nobody had the power to stop her. Plus, anyone who argued against making the home of the Elements of Harmony a safer place was probably a bad pony who should be disappeared at the early convenience.

Not that I would be so flagrant as to make such an offer in front of her entire night court. Just because I'm piloting a murder robot's body doesn't make me an assassin, right? I don't have to kill anybody. In fact, I'd prefer it if I didn't have to kill any more people.

I'll admit that there was a secondary objective to going hunting as well. On top of figuring out why I had the impulse to eat organic material, I wanted to be able to provide some extra food to the changeling refugees. The bugs were, after all true omnivores on top of their status as emotiphages. Strictly speaking, I've gotten away with eating firewood to make up some biomass for a forced regeneration in the past, like that time I accidentally blew off my leg with a faulty energy storage spell. Starlight was not happy about shooting me up with painkillers so I could unhinge my jaw and swallow three fucking logs. Point being, they could eat any organic matter to make up the biomass required to start filling in their holes.

Incidentally, Everfree monsters like manticores and timber wolves apparently do not know how to react to robots. When I entered the forest with my 'escorts', a pack of timber wolves walked right past me, going straight for the trio of night ponies. That of course only lasted up until I dosed each with the nanite acid. I bet those things didn't know what hit them. The manticore that I ended up hunting—at least, after I made sure it wasn't Fluttershy's pal, Manny—at least saw me. That said, it didn't see me as a threat until it was too late.

I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty sure that I gave those guard ponies PTSD when they watched me clean the carcass. It's so much easier to get the skin off and take guts out when you can literally have knives for fingers. The scorpion tail probably wouldn't have been appetising, and there wasn't enough meat on the wings, so I just left them in a pile with the head.

The heart, though... I still remember the first life from which I'd grown disconnected, the lessons that his mother taught of the ways of the wild, and the rite of passage. Even if it was his bastard sire that led the hunt, it was his mother that imparted the importance of expressing gratitude for the sacrifice made, and emphasising the bond between man and nature. It was a tradition I introduced to the predator club; the one who landed the killing blow took the heart to affirm or reaffirm their connection to the great circle of life.

I didn't have the time to start a fire just to cook the heart right there in the Everfree, but the manticore's sacrifice deserved to be honoured. That was why, without much thought, I took a bite out of it as though it were an apple. I have no real explanation for why the fuck I did it, and it's not like I actually tasted much from it, but the moment the meat and blood slid down into my throat, I could feel my internals doing something with it.

After that, we only stuck around long enough for me to bleed the carcass and wrap it in the tarpaulin from the castle storage that I duplicated and scaled. It was a quiet trip back up to Canterlot, and even dropping the remains off with Chrysalis' quartermaster was a silent affair. Still, that night I accomplished the goals I set for myself. I provided for the changelings, hunted a manticore, and determined that I could eat food to serve an unknown purpose. Who knows, maybe this body has systems designed to convert organics into some rudimentary fuel.

Honestly, I think my biggest source of maintaining my sanity was the regular check-ins with the ponies back home. Just being able to talk with Starlight and Mom gave me something to look forward to when I took an afternoon nap. It was nice to hear about Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich's engagement, or Spitfire's retirement party. Even if it felt like my world was slowly starting to move on without me, that they were keeping me up to date was at least something.

Of course, if they could somehow work out a way for me to send and receive spell schematics between worlds, I could actively work on the problem myself. After all, the only thing better than two magical geniuses working on a problem is two geniuses and the idiot savant they adopted into the family. Even if I wasn't talented in all magical fields like Mom or a prodigy like Star, so long as I could see a spell laid out in its runic forms, I could start putting pieces together. Like, if I could get the spell functions necessary to tunnel through the barriers of reality, it'd be no problem for me to slap together a prototype to send back to them for testing.

It was to that end that they were studying the magic mirror Starswirl created and connected Equestria to that parallel human world. If they could figure out how the damn thing worked, it'd be child's play for us to hack together a solution to refine. Especially if we could work in my dimensional fold spell. Although, that'd require conning a unicorn into creating an anchor stone wherever I was, and if I ended up in a non-magical world next, I would probably not be able to do so.

Honestly, any spell that managed to bring me home would have to be cast from my Equestria. I couldn't trust that whoever I convinced to cast the spell from my side would destroy it when they were done. The last thing I wanted was some dumb-ass adventurer pulling a me and getting stranded somewhere in the multiverse without the chaos and dimensional magic that was conveying me between worlds. I'd feel guilty if my work put anyone else through that.

I was shaken from my slumber by a fully armoured and seemingly battle-ready Captain Shining Armour. He was wearing the same seemingly ceremonial plate he'd worn at every other official meeting I'd seen him in every other time, but this time, he had equipped his helmet, and a sword belt strapped to his side. Despite the helmet, I could see the worry clearly in his eyes.

"Anonymous, there has been an incident at the changeling encampment," he explained, urging me to my feet. "I haven't been down there myself yet, but according to the reports, there was a skirmish between the changelings and the Canterlot Royal Guard. The area's been cordoned off, but..." Unable to meet my eyes, he began leading me out. "This is a nightmare situation. I... I'm sorry..."

Despite the lack of flesh, I felt the familiar icy prickle of fear running down my back. He's sorry? I felt like the fact that he was apologising should have been a big enough of an indicator of exactly what kind of nightmare situation this was, but my mind was still addled from sleep. All I knew was that something catastrophic had happened at the changeling encampment. The entirety of the changeling race was housed there!

I had to run to keep up with his hurried pace through the castle halls. "How many casualties?" I asked, resisting the urge to grab him and force him to look at me. "Captain!" When he still didn't answer, I wrapped my tail around his midsection and dragged him out onto a balcony. "Fine, if you're not gonna tell me, you're coming with me."

"Wha—Anon, no!" He tried to argue, but before he got an opportunity to protest, I deployed and spread my wings, subsequently grabbing him by his plate-mail. "Wait for the rest of my contingent!"

That was the last thing I wanted to do. With the moon high in the sky, it was easy for me to be seen as I rocketed off in the sky with the captive captain, and seemingly without prompting, several pegasus guards followed behind us. At first, there were calls for me to put him down. That lasted only until I made clear that he was coming with me down to the industrial district—to the encampment. Then they were content to simply follow in a wedge formation behind us.

As we transitioned from the upper tier of the city, over the noble quarter, I found myself worrying what the fuck had happened. For over a week, things were calm. Hell, despite her initial plans, Chrysalis had been extended an invitation to the wedding. Even the disgruntled rumblings from the nobility were kept in check by the crown's appointed noble wrangler, Prince Blueblood. What could have changed?

It was when we crossed over down to the lowest tier of the city, and the plaza converted to house the last changelings in the world, that there was a sudden fireball right in the middle of the tent city. No... That's...! Even though there was a surprised shout from the pony I was carrying, he didn't make any complaints when I threw us into a steep dive. The wing of pegasi just matched the pace.

I waited until the last possible moment to pull up from the dive, and before Shining Armour could react, I deposited him in front of the line of guards keeping ponies out of the plaza. There was no point in thinking about where I was going. The dead centre of the changeling encampment was Chrysalis' tent—a tent that was now engulfed in flame from the outside. The answer was obvious. I had to put it out, especially if the changeling queen and her daughter were still inside!

Even as I touched down on the ground, I found my footing unstable, as if I'd tripped over a pile of... of something. I couldn't pay any mind to that right now though; the fire was too bright, and somepony had extinguished all the makeshift street lamps the bugs made. My right and left hands both withdrew into my arms, replaced with the nozzles of fire extinguishers.

In spite of the heat, I put myself as close to the flames as my systems would permit. It was the only way to smother all the flames. It took more time than I'd have liked to extinguish the fire, but to my great surprise, the canvas of the tent was mostly intact. Still, there were presumably bugs still inside that may need help. Gotta make sure they're okay!

With my hands returned to their rightful places, I pushed my way into the tent. "Queen Chrysalis? Princess Anonymous?" I called out. The tent was pitch black, so I toggled night vision. "It's me, Anonymous Fli—"

My body froze up. Thinking became impossible as my sensors flicked over to the infrared night vision package. I knew exactly what I was seeing, but it didn't make sense to me. This was supposed to be Canterlot, the safest city in all of Equestria, the happiest country on Equus. Things like this weren't supposed to happen.

There, lying on the queen's cot were both Chrysalis and Anonymous. At first, the little princess looked to be asleep drool pooling on the bedding beneath her, but she was too still. Then my eyes locked onto the sharpened length of wood that had been driven through her chest. That's not drool, then... That...

Chrysalis, on the other hand was still breathing, although she too had wood rammed into her chest. It was shallow and laboured, and it was clear that she was dying. Her forelimbs were wrapped around her daughter, and I belatedly realised that she was weeping through unfocused eyes. "Chrysalis, I—"

The bug's eyes flicked over, seemingly gaining a bit of lucidity. "A-non, is that..." Just watching her made my chest ache in that horrifyingly ironic way it would, had I actually any heart within. "No, you're the outsider," she hissed, before coughing up blood. Her gaze became sharp. "This trap... was all your doing... The Equestrians..." She spat in my direction, and belatedly I realised there was haemolymph and spittle on my visor. "In the name of the Goddess of the Swarm, I curse..."

You curse me, I finished for her as the queen grew still. I... Of course she would blame me for this. And wasn't all of this my fault? I had to go and muddy the order of things... I wanted to give these bugs a better chance at life so that they didn't have to change... I... I did this to them.

Shakily, I backed out of the tent. Already, I could feel a recursive thought building up, but I couldn't nail down which program it was running through. If I could just shut it down, I could centre myself and figure out my next step. I—

My foot caught on something as I backed out of the tent and went sprawling onto the ground. Only now that the fire was out, and I was running night vision, I could see what I'd initially tripped over when first landing, and exactly what made me fall. Bodies... As far as my eye could see, the area surrounding Chrysalis' tent was full of bodies.

Unlike the queen and her daughter, however, these weren't in such good condition. I could see one of the queen's praetorian guards, missing a forelimb and sporting many cuts that matched a sword. Next to him, there was a random drone who looked as though he'd been hacked to death with several blades. The more I looked in the direction I'd dropped Shining Armour off in, the more bodies I saw. Meaning whoever did this would have had to have crossed the guard lines.

Finally, I looked down at the bug I'd fallen over. Despite my inability to physically cry, I somehow felt the tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. No, no, please... anyone but her! Ocellus, the bug I'd befriended in two worlds lay dead at my feet. She still wore the uniform she'd gotten while infiltrating Canterlot Castle, but there was nothing of the surprisingly chipper changeling left... No life in her eyes... Just an ornate short-sword still lodged in her back, and her throat cut.

WARNING

SYS://"../CONSCIENCE_V0.1A" HAS CRASHED
SYS://"../MORALITY" HAS CRASHED
RECURSION DETECTED
ANALYSING... DONE

CRASH LOG

IT'S MY FAULT.
IT'S MY FAULT.
I GOT THEM ALL KILLED.

IT'S MY FAULT. IT'S MY FAULT. I GOT THEM ALL KILLED. IT'S MY FAULT. IT'S MY FAULT. I GOT THEM ALL—

RESTARTING SYS://"../CONSCIENCE_V0.1A"... FAILED!
WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE HAS BECOME CORRUPTED AND CANNOT BE RUN
RESTARTING SYS://"../MORALITY"... FAILED!
WARNING: RECENT UPDATE INTRODUCED DEPENDENCY ON SYS://"../CONSCIENCE_V0.1A"
REVERTING SYS://"../MORALITY" TO PREVIOUS VERSION.

ETA:00h42m07s

Maybe it was the fact that my conscience and morality had failed me, but I felt a great calm wash over me as I looked closer at my murdered friend. Interestingly, there was something caught beneath her hoof. With great care not to disturb her, I grabbed what turned out to be an armband of some sort. I could distinguish no colours with the night vision, but I could make out a vertical sword and a stylised wolf's head on it. It matched none of the coats of arms of the noble houses that I knew of, which meant it was either a noble house or organisation unique to this world that was responsible for this slaughter. Still, I feel like I've seen it before.

It occurred to me as I held the armband tightly in my hand that it was way too quiet. Turning up my auditory sensors only caused me to hear the royal guard surrounding the plaza, trying their damnedest to keep lookie-loos back. It horrified me to think what that might mean. Two thousand changelings...

I don't know exactly what prompted me to wrench the sword out of Ocellus' back and take it with me. This was far more ornate, the detailing on the guard making it look like a cluster of flowers. Some sort of evidence to present to Shining Armour, perhaps? It made little sense to me, but I nonetheless took it with me as I walked the line. Every time I peeked into a tent and saw only murdered changelings, I found my gaze going back to the sword and the armband in my hand.

When I made my way back to the line of guards surrounding the plaza, I flicked my vision back to the regular spectrum. He immediately rushed over, but froze when he saw the blood I was soaked in and the sword in my hand. "The guards cordoning off the area claim the changelings went berserk and started attacking indiscriminately," he started. "They don't know what provoked it, but they claimed to be protecting the citizens of Canterlot. Detect Life reveals nothing alive in the cordon."

Rage blossomed in my chest. "What group does this belong to, Armour?" I demanded in a frigid voice, brandishing the sword and the arm band. He winced at the sheer edge of my tone, and I realised that my wings had extended at some point, revealing all of the razor-sharp blades. I caught sight of my reflection on the blade of the sword, and to my surprise, the projection of my eyes was flickering between their normal green and a pale yellow colour like N, V, and J's own had been.

He took the blade and armband in his magic, and he managed to look somehow paler than he already did. "This is the mark of the Ordo Aconitus," he whispered in disbelief. "This is the crown-sanctioned monster-hunting corps we're talking about. That doesn't make any sense though! Why would they be here?"

"The queen and her daughter were assassinated in their tent, and poor innocent Ocellus was murdered with this blade!" I hissed, turning to glare at the line of the guards. I was seeing a LOT of those armbands along the line of guards. "The answer is obvious as to why they're here! The question that REALLY needs answering is who sent them."

ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_trn"

I reached my hand out and pointed at a pegasus soldier wearing both a lieutenant's bars and an Ordo Aconitus armband. The symbol of translate appeared both in front of my hand, as well as wrapped around the guard... or rather his armour. The entire line of guards tensed as I jerked him over to where the captain and I stood, but they had enough sense to not rush us.

"Who sanctioned this action, lieutenant," I asked in a tone that brooked no argument. I didn't have to yell; my systems amplified my voice just fine as it was. "Who sent you out here tonight?"

To Captain Shining Armour's shock, the nameless lieutenant spat in my face and flailed as he tried to reach for his ornate sword. "We act on authority of the Equestrian Crown itself, creature!" he shouted, loud enough to be heard by even the civilians behind the line of guards. "When monsters walk among us, it is our Harmony-given duty to purge them! These monsters plotted an invasion of Canterlot itself!"

My free hand withdrew as I pointed my arm to the sky. A flare shot up to the sky, illuminating the encampment and the slaughtered changelings therein. Several civilians screamed, and even the majority of the guards that weren't wearing the armbands gasped in shock at the reveal. "These people were starving, you scum-sucking bag of fuck! They accepted an olive branch from the crown when they were offered a better way! THESE WERE THE LAST OF THEIR ENTIRE RACE!" I smashed my forearm into the side of his head as my hand slid back into place. "YOU DARE ASSERT CELESTIA AND LUNA SANCTIONED MURDERING A CHILD AND HER MOTHER IN THEIR SLEEP!? THAT THEY SANCTIONED A FUCKING GENOCIDE!?"

Several ponies cried out at that, and even Shining Armour couldn't help but looking at the stallion in horror. Yet, despite their reaction, or denting of his helmet, or the gash on his cheek freely spilling blood, he sneered at me. "Per Order 76, Subsection B, Clause C12, should the Equestrian Crown be compromised by mind control, the Ordo Aconitus is given full jurisdiction to remove that source of mind control with extreme prejudice." He startled to cackle madly. "These monsters were lawful targets, and no longer will they prey upon ponies or warp their minds! I AND THE REST OF MY ORDER HAVE—"

ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_rot"

"Doomed this fucking planet," I hissed, clenching my fist as the stallion's armour warped, twisting into a crumpled mass around him and crushing his organs. Blood sprayed from his mouth, coating me in red in addition to the green haemolymph from the murdered changelings I'd previously tripped over. I turned to Shining Armour, allowing the maniac guard to drop to the ground in a deformed, mangled heap. Several of the other guards bearing the mark of that order cried out in rage. I could see myself reflected in his eyes, a large X painted across my visor in place of my eyes, fully locked in that yellow colouration. "Captain, go tell your princesses what their monster hunters have done. Take every non-Aconite Order guard and civilian with you."

He wasn't an idiot; he knew exactly what I was going to do. "Anon, I can't let you do this!" he warned, grabbing me by my forearm. "Murdering these ponies won't bring back your kin!"

I shook my head with a sad smile. "No, it won't," I agreed. "But it'll make me feel better." Without warning, I whipped my arm upward, throwing him into the air and forcing several of the pegasus guards that followed behind us to catch him. "TAKE HIM BACK TO THE PRINCESSES," I commanded, turning my attention to the line of guards. "EVERY ONE OF YOU NON-ACONITE GUARDS, GET OUT OF HERE WHILE YOU STILL CAN. EVERYONE ELSE?" I began to laugh in a way that made the dead lieutenant seem sane. "RUN."

ACTIVATING SYS://"../SUBROUTINES/REVENGE"
RAISING SADISM: 30% > 100%

Much to my surprise, I wasn't the one to fire the first shot. In fact, as I brought my wings up to form a bladed cocoon around me, I had the opportunity to judge which idiot guard fired a series of ice spikes into me. Even as my systems warned of the damage to my torso, I grinned as my temperature began to drop. Thanks!

Several other unicorns followed suit, and soon hostiles were quickly highlighted red in my vision while everyone else broke ranks and ran for the hills. What used to be a line of easily a thousand guards separating the civilians from the site of the slaughter quickly broke down into just four-hundred and fifty. Not great numbers, but also not too bad. I was probably gonna get REALLY beat to fuck doing this, but I had something these ponies didn't: weaponised high explosives.

A pair of targeting reticles popped up in my vision as my hands withdrew to be replaced by the nose cones of a pair of rockets. I leapt into the air, flapping my wings to gain some height, and then locked on to the largest masses of guards. Dumb fucking ponies, you know that magic artillery exists, so why are there so many of you packed tightly!? The two rockets streaked out from my arms, crashing into two clusters of earth ponies and unicorns.

Oh neat, I didn't realise there was a kill counter, I thought as a tally popped up in the corner of my vision, right next to my temperature gauges, indicating that sixty-four hostiles were no longer in play. Unfortunately, that's only gonna work once, maybe twice.

Already, the air was swarming with pegasus guards, several of which were brandishing swords and spears. Rather than fire off any more rockets that might damage nearby buildings or go soaring off into the night, I let a pair of machine guns emerge from my arms. Already, the unicorns and a few earth ponies with crossbows were firing off to fill the role of anti-air, so I started flying and spinning wildly, and and firing off in bursts of what my systems claimed to be 5.56x45mm FMJ rounds.

Several pegasi dropped to the ground, riddled with holes, but several more rushed me. Several spears and short-swords ended up lodged in my body, but for every spear or sword, three ponies lost a limb to the bladed wings. The counter climbed ever higher, even as I swooped down onto the ground and opened fire a blossom of death.

By the time the counter had reached one hundred seventy-five, the Ordo Aconitus got their shit together enough to start hiding behind unicorn shield spells strong enough to resist the caliber of shots I was using. They even started working with the pegasi in the air, opening fire on me when I turned my attention to the aerial attackers harrying me. Then when I was forced to respond to the unicorns and crossbowmen, the flighty bastards would swoop in and take another stab at me.

Growling, I fired a rocket off toward the ground forces and then took my hands back out to start wrenching the weapons out of my body so that regeneration could do its thing. In the meantime, I waited for the pegasi to do their thing. One, two, three! I lashed my tail out, up and to the back, and felt the sting punch through the chest-plate of one of the guards flying in to strike me from behind. Horrible screaming filled the air as the bastard dropped to the ground, and several ponies froze in the air, paralysed by the sight of the nanite acid eating away at his chest plate and his chest cavity.

I quietly started marking targets in the air as a laser weapon emerged from one hand. Just before the ground forces could lower their shields to fire upon me, I began tracing a path with my arm, targeting every pegasus in the sky. A white-hot line traced macabre patterns through the air, and by the end of it, every airborne horse fell to the ground, dead and bisected, or dying from blood loss.

The screams of the dying surrounded me as I looked at the weapons on the ground surrounding me, those that once were inside of me. I've got one good high-powered weapon left, and then I'm better off engaging them in melee. As if to confirm that thought, the masses of shielded guards began to slowly merge, the unicorns pooling their power together to make one unified wall behind which they slowly advanced. Let's see... I got a good scan of Uzi's rail-gun. Let's see how you fucks like that.

ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_trn"
ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_edt"

The front half of the edgy drone's custom firearm, complete with the stickers, replaced the laser weapon as I started reconfiguring all of the fallen weapons around me into one ungodly big sword like you might see in a JRPG or an anime. All the cries of the wounded and dying honestly should have bothered me. If I was in my right mind, it probably would have disturbed me; except, with my conscience offline and being all out of pity, I had absolutely zero mercy for these monsters who hid behind the crown and special orders to justify their act of genocide.

It wasn't a light weapon that I'd created. I could just pick it up one handed and swing it, but as it was, I intended to use both hands once I decimated their bulwark. With that in mind, the flat of the blade came to rest on my shoulder and I looked at the battle line. A force of four hundred fifty had been reduced to maybe one seventy-five in maybe twenty minutes. Let's see how you handle this!

I put the targeting reticle over the thickest part of the force and swung the barrel of the rail-gun in that direction. My entire vision began to fill with green light and static as the weapon charged, and when it discharged, it felt like my entire arm went numb. As my sight cleared, I saw their shield wall had collapsed, and two entire columns of troops were just gone. The rest were entirely disoriented, and there at the front, I saw several unicorns whose horns had burst from the backlash of their collapsing shield.

Gripping the big fucking sword with two hands, I sprinted toward the divided army. "If you think your cause is just, then Harmony will let you strike me down! Else, Hunger will see my vengeance righteous and all will fall before me!" I bellowed as I swung the blade to cleave through several ponies. Is it just me, or does my voice sound more robotic than normal? The blades in my wings lashed out, dispatching several more. "Come! Attack me and test your might!"

I tore through their ranks in a whirlwind of blades. A dozen more ponies met their end suffering the effects of the nanite acid, but my action came not without cost. A lucky strike from one pony severed my left arm at the elbow, and after the bakers dozen acid victims, one managed to rid me of my tail. My body was perforated with blades. Even as I reattached the arm, another lashed out at my face plate, as though believing they could get my eyes.

We eventually reached a stalemate. I stood in the centre of a ring of ponies, all far enough to stay out of my reach, heat boiling off my body. I'd dismissed the counter in favour of fighting, so I had no idea how many ponies actually remained. All I knew was that none of them was willing to come close enough to strike, and they'd seen how worthless their crossbow bolts were.

Bright light shone down on me. This wasn't the light of the flare I'd illuminated the sky with before; that had long burned out in the midst of the slaughter. No, this was intense moonlight, and a glance at the sky revealed the moon much closer than it ought to have been. So, they deign to show up at last.

"Anonymous Flicker, stand down!" came the commanding voice of Princess Celestia as she and Luna both touched down outside the circle. Obeying, I thrust the blade into the ground in front of me, before protectively wrapping my wings around my body. I wouldn't put it past these cowards to strike now. Much to my surprise, however, the crowd of guards parted without argument.

Based on the horrified look on her face as she marched through the carnage, noting the dead changelings upon which untold numbers of her jackboots were stacked, she was anything but pleased. It didn't help any when one of the idiot troopers called out, "Now you're bucked, monster!" This was quickly followed up by another cheering. "Yeah! The Princess is gonna avenge all of our brothers and sisters that you murdered!" With each word, more of the cowards began to cheer, and the more cheers that went out, the darker Celestia's expression became.

"ENOUGH!" Luna bellowed, silencing the crowd. Everything went quiet as the two alicorns stopped just before the ring of the guards began. "Why have you done this? Do you realise what it is that you have done, Anonymous?"

Not rising from my position behind the sword, I instead peered around it at them, baring my teeth as I spread my wing-blades enough to be seen. "I have been enacting justice!" I hissed in that too robotic voice. I spread my wings and lashed my tail about, gesturing at the crowd. "Your monster hunters went and decided that you were both brainwashed and murdered Princess Anonymous of the Badlands Hive in her sleep with a stake through her chest, and tried the same with her mother, leaving Queen Chrysalis for dead!"

I climbed atop the blade's handle and then pointed accusingly at them, causing both alicorns to wince. "THEY SLIT OCELLUS' THROAT AND STABBED HER IN THE BACK BEFORE MURDERING EVERYLING ELSE THAT WAS INSIDE THE CORDON," I screamed. My pointer finger drifted to the mass of dead changelings behind them. "THOSE WERE STARVED CIVILIANS, LITTLE MORE THAN A MILITIA AT BEST, AND THEY WERE SLAUGHTERED! THIS WAS GENOCIDE DONE IN THE NAME OF HARMONY."

Nopony spoke for a long while. The remains of the Ordo Aconitus seemed cowed by the presence of the princesses and their horrified expressions. I didn't speak out of concern that I would place this squarely on their shoulders. Meanwhile, Celestia and Luna seemed to be almost psychically conversing with one another.

Finally, Celestia stepped forward. "Be that as it may, it is not your place to enact your brand of justice on Equestrian soil, regardless of whether or not you served as advocate for the swarm," the white alicorn growled, her mane beginning to flicker like a flame. "These are my little ponies you have butchered, and those that yet live will face a fair trial." Her horn began to glow, and I could almost feel the magic permeating the air. "As will you."

She's going to try to grab me with her magic, I mused. There will be no trial. The moment I make a move in any direction, she's going to grip my entire body and keep me still while she marches me right into Tartarus. "No," I whispered. "I won't." As slowly and non-threateningly as I could, I stood tall and crossed my arms in front of me, folding my right hand behind my left arm. "I dare say if the Spirit of Hunger had physical form, she might have taken a page out of her brother's book and interfered."

Cold laughter filled the air. "Oh, Anonymous, you do know me well," came the almost purring voice of the living concept. It was a mellifluous voice full of simultaneous playfulness and wrath that I recognised after years of exposure. "Yes, Celestia, I am none too happy with you and your sister. Sister Harmony is rather disappointed in you both as well."

Mentally, I pulled up the read-me for the Absolute Solver. With the momentary distraction, it was the perfect opportunity to plan my escape. There was something, after all, that I remembered reading that was nagging at me... [Hint: What is a spell that Twilight is known for?] Shields were the obvious answer, and I knew I could reflexively use it to react to a projectile if I so wished, but no, that wasn't what it was suggesting. She was known for her expertise with teleportation.

Even as Hunger and the alicorns argued together, scaring the fuck out of the monster hunters surrounding me as their leaders argued with a disembodied voice, I ran some mental calculations through absoluteSolver_trn. It would be possible for me to break line of sight, or perhaps teleport myself beneath the plate of the city, but getting as far as Ponyville is straight out. Before I went on that route, I decided I better consult Hunger. I told those ponies they'd doomed this world in killing off your changelings, Hunger. How do you feel about an entire world being offered up as a feast in your name?

Almost immediately, a response echoed in the back of my mind. "You intend on doing this either way. Your hunger for vengeance for your fallen kin is too strong to ignore," she whispered, and I could swear I felt the caress of a cat's paw on my face. "Yet your hunger will lead to an absence of life, and in doing so, creating an absence of hunger. I want no part in your offering to this Absolute Solver that has left its mark on your soul, yet I will not interfere. If the ponies truly deserve to continue, they will find a means to stop you on their own."

Around me, I could hear the conversation the entity was having with Celestia and Luna. "Unless you offer yourself up to become a new queen and birth a new brood of changelings, my children will have no justice, and we have nothing more to speak of." There was then the sound of a slamming door. The pair's eyes flicked back to me as I waved goodbye.

ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_trn"

The world around me flickered, almost like a glitching display, and then I was in free fall beneath the grand stone plate upon which Canterlot rested. Were I feeling more... villainous, I might've had a go at the support structures holding the city up. Although Hunger was right, and I was ready to damn this world for Ocellus, Chrysalis, little Anon, and the rest of the changeling race, I wasn't going to cause any meaningless suffering to do it.

No, I knew exactly how to do it, because I knew how it was done elsewhere. I don't know how I knew, but I knew damn well. Maybe it was some gift from Cyn, or just the Solver of the Absolute Fabric in general, but I knew the exact way I needed to offer up a world to this second embodiment of hunger in my life. It would be very quick, albeit maybe not entirely painless.

I spread my wings and turned towards the Everfree Forest. After all, I had somewhere very special in mind to make my offering. After all, it's not every day you get to doom an entire planet. Nor is it every day you get to say hello to an old 'friend'.

I touched down in front of the cave mouth with a crazed smile spread across my face. I'd had plenty of time to cool down over the length of my flight, but I had been unable to come up with a reason to divert from the course of action I decided upon. Even as my feet carried me into the cave, I knew more than anything else it was due to my morality having crashed. It had to happen...

I should absolutely feel bad for what I was going to do, and I knew exactly what Mom would say... what Starlight would say. Except, short of dying, I could see no other way to get off this damn planet, away from these damn ponies who looked like the ponies I knew—who enabled this travesty. I didn't want to die, but it was like an itch in the back of my mind, driving me, directing me down the needed path.

Up ahead, shrouded in the darkness of the cave, was a great crystalline tree. Black creeper vines were snaking their way up the tree, doing their damnedest to strangle the life out of the tree. I knew from the stories that these were Discord's plunder vines, and that was the Tree of Harmony... The physical embodiment of Harmony in this world. You're not my Harmony, but I still bear a grudge, and I always wanted to find out if I could kill an Embodied Concept.

"Hi, Harmony~," I sang, slowly trotting up to the tree, even as I danced around the vines that attempted to snare me. "Ooh, those nasty lil' vines look awfully painful. How about I help you with that?" I paused, putting on a thoughtful expression as I glanced in the direction of Canterlot. "Don't you tire of this disappointing world, Harm? All your little pieces keep failing at their roles, but your queens won't let me put the broken pieces in the trash where they belong... None of that is very harmonious, is it?"

"You mustn't do this, Anonymous," came the voice of Twilight Sparkle behind me. I turned, and sure enough, a glimmering spectre of my adoptive mother stood, her wings flared and her face a mask of fear. "What you're doing is beyond the pale."

I grit my teeth and extended a gun barrel from my forearm. "You think you're so fucking clever, trying to guilt me by wearing her face, don't you?" Without flinching, I shot the crystalline spectre between the eyes and turned back to face the tree, not bothering to watch the apparition collapse into nothingness. "News flash, Harm, I can't feel guilt right now, and my dumb ass went and made my morality dependent on my conscience, which in retrospect was a really stupid fucking thing to do. I might damn well hate myself when I get my morality and conscience back up and running, but until then, my cyber-amygdala is behind the wheel."

ACTIVATING SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_edt"
PERMISSION FOR SYS://"../FABRIC/absoluteSolver_NULL" HAS BEEN GRANTED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN"

Huh, so she is still able to reach me.

As I held my slammed my hand—wreathed in the symbol of edit—into the ground, I pictured a hole going straight down to the core of the planet. I watched as the ground flickered and glitched for a moment. Finally, after several seconds, the hole formed, causing the ground to shake violently. Again, the area of the hole flickered, and then something began to go wrong. A strange meaty growth began to form around the opening of the hole, and like a cancer surged down the hole as well.

"Well, that's weird and concerning," I remarked, stepping up to the edge of the hole. I glanced up at the tree and shook my head. "Just pretend I'm just pruning a corrupt timeline. It might make you feel better about your world before the end."

ACTIVATING SYS://"..FABRIC/absoluteSolver_NULL"

Even as the [NULL] sphere appeared over my left hand, I extended a sword from the right. In one fluid movement, I sliced through my elbow joint. I marvelled at the difference in colour in the orb's containment field as both it and the arm tumbled down the shaft to the center of the world. I guess that is how Cyn guarantees I feast in her name, I thought as I backed away from the hole. I should probably get REAL fucking clear of this place.

"Goodbye, Harmony," I cheerfully said as I spread my wings and flew out of the cave mouth. As I rose out of the ravine beneath the castle of the two sisters, I looked toward Canterlot and saw a great ball of fire soaring in my direction. Flying right alongside it, I saw an utter absence of light. Fucking Harmony tattled on me, didn't she? I mused as I chose to fly in the opposite direction from Canterlot. They found out what I was doing and succumbed to their inner demons.

Even with the Absolute Solver at my command, I didn't fancy my odds tangling against a Daybreaker or a Nightmare Moon, never mind both at the same time. There was a reason I avoided trying to fight when the two showed up at the encampment, after all. They could atomise me completely without a thought. Even if I had my own magic, I wouldn't have a good chance.

Unfortunately, my body was not designed to go at supersonic speeds. Alicorns turned evil, on the other hand, had no problem whatsoever breaking the sound barrier. I don't actually know which one slammed into me from the front when I turned to look at them. All I felt was the painful jostle as they drove a trench through the Everfree's canopy, and then the ground. Even as my legs and wings were sheared off and countless errors flashed in my vision, I was unsure of who hit me until I felt the heat draining from my body. That absence of heat, it could only be Nightmare Moon, the void incarnate.

"WHAT HAS'T THEE DONE, ANONYMOUS?" she screeched with such volume that it was peaking my auditory sensors and adding a nasty crackle to everything. "HARMONY WEEPS, AND THE WORLD ACHES. DISCORD DID FREE HIMSELF FROM HIS STONE IMPRISONMENT AND BADE US FLEE."

A flaming blade swept into my field of view, pointed at my neck. "Speak Anonymous, and be quick so that we might fix whatever it is that you have broken." Daybreaker sneered down at me, her golden irises and black sclera flickering with intense power. "Don't make us regret putting our faith in you more than you already have. There is still time."

I shook my head and began to laugh. "No, there isn't," I whispered. The ground began to rumble, and a pillar of light shot through the sky from whence the Castle of the Two Sisters stood. Gravity began to malfunction as we all began to rise off the ground. "Goodbye."

A wave of energy surged towards us, tearing up the ground as it went. Nominally, I would be protected from the brunt of the blast by the fact that I was in a rather deep trench in the ground, and had two demigoddesses standing over me. Still, better to shut myself down and let the blast pass me by than risking an emergency heat shutdown.

NOTICE

END OF THE WORLD SCENARIO
WRITING MEMORY TO SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA"
BOOT SCHEDULED BY ADMINISTRATION "ANON" ETA: 00h30m00s

SHUTDOWN INITIATED BY ADMINISTRATION "ANON"

Once more, I found myself in the void, just as I had the last time I jumped, and like I had when I rebooted the time before. There weren't any ponies talking around my unconscious body this time, however. There was just a pony humming nearby. It was kind of nice. Certainly it was relaxing after the week I'd had.

I could almost recognise the voice, but the name wasn't coming to me. She had to be one of the nursing staff. But was it Redheart? Tenderheart? Or maybe it was Nursery Rhyme. Or they were a member of janitorial staff. Either way, my point was there were worse ways I could spend a half hour.

SYSTEM BOOT

SCHEDULED BOOT INITIATED BY ADMINISTRATION "ANON"...

PARSING DATA: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA"
PARSING DATA: SYS://"../MEMORY_DATA_(EQUESTRIA)"
PENDING REPAIR SYS://"../CONSCIENCE_V0.1A" HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM START-UP
INTEGRATING IDENTITY
RECOMPILING KERNEL... DONE!

SERIAL DESIGNATION: I - 0X00110111 | "ANONYMOUS FLICKER"

STRING "ABSOLUTE SOLVER" ALLOWED BY ADMINISTRATION "CYN"
SYSTEM NOTE: "I HOPE THIS FUCKING WORKED."
REBOOT COMPLETED
MEMORY INTEGRITY: SHAKEN NOT STIRRED
MENTAL STATE: "OHSHITWHATDIDYOUDO"
LOADING //CHAR TRAIT: BUG-PONY IN MURDER-BOT BODY//

REESTABLISHING CONNECTION (ERROR, ERROR)

I looked around as my visual sensors came back online, just in time for a stone to bounce off my faceplate. I was surrounded by various debris. Stones, rocks, chunks of a castle, and a pair of skeletal alicorns floated around me—it was impossible for me to tell which was which, because bones and ice were all I saw of them. Far below, I could see the hollowed out planet; the shattered crust had been blown into hemispheres that were caught in equilibrium between trying to fly off into the void and getting pulled into the massive black hole where the planet's core used to be.

Well... I've blown up an entire planet now, I thought as I watched my limbs slowly beginning to regenerate. A small countdown popped up in the bottom left corner of my vision, estimating time until fully repaired at five minutes at most. I didn't pay it any mind though; with the rollback of my morality software, I was conscious enough of the fact that I should feel bad for what I'd done. No amount of rationalising would excuse the innumerable deaths that were now on my shoulders. Even if I was acting out of grief for an entire species after my conscience and morality software crashed, I couldn't even say this is what any of them would have wanted. Chrysalis might've, but I don't think Ocellus or little Anon would've put the price of justice at an entire planet.

At least it was silent out here in space. The only sounds were my own internal systems running as I floated there with the two kinda spooky-lookin' alicorn corpses, and the occasional piece of debris bouncing off of my chassis. Oh, and the sound of someone munching popcorn. What.

I turned my head to the right, and frowned. There, sitting on a chaise lounge that probably once belonged in Canterlot Castle before the world ended, was this universe's Discord. Sure enough, he had a big bag of popcorn that was freely spilling into the void and beginning to orbit him due to the lack of normal gravity, not that it stopped him... Somehow, against all reasoning, I could hear the draconequus as he grabbed fist-fulls of the stuff out of his orbit and stuffed his face.

Floating behind him was that goddamn crystal tree. That fucking tree, which was at ground zero, was completely untouched, while the two allegedly immortal alicorns were naught but frozen skeletons floating beside me. I went to facepalm, and ended up throwing myself into a rotating fit... at least until Discord snapped his fingers and I was suddenly sharing his chaise.

"You're quite the character, you know," he commented as he looked at me. His voice carried to me as if there was air for it to travel through. "You managed to circumvent your own programming in such a way that the catastrophic failure that followed created the most chaos possible for that short period of time." Weirdly enough, he had this thoughtful expression on his face, as though he was genuinely enjoying himself. "You should have seen the looks on the faces of those fuddy-duddies when I broke free. They were all 'Discord!' and I was all 'Run while you still can!' and then they were all 'Raaaagh!' Ha, ha, priceless. I could spend an eternity reliving that moment."

As he wiped away a tear, I grabbed a handful of the floating popcorn and popped it into my own mouth. This tastes like scrap metal. Huh. "You know, you're taking this awful well," I murmured, glancing from him to the to skelicorns and the loathsome Harmony tree, which had orbited around the chaise so that it was in front of me now. "Sure, I created the maximum possible chaos output for a moment, but all of this... this is the polar opposite; it's order of the coldest kind. Plus, I effectively tried to kill both you and Harmony."

He snorted and waved it off. "Pfft, who hasn't tried killing us once or twice?" he said with an amused twinkle in his eye. "Besides, it's not like any of this matters in the grand scheme of things."

I stared at him, and then down at the singularity that I'd created. When I looked back at him, I emoted a raised eyebrow and brought my hands up to clutch my head. As if to mock me, a crystalline copy of Ocellus, maid outfit and all, appeared on the other side of me. "That is hardly the lesson she should be taking from this, brother," Harmony chided, fixing me with an even look. "While it is true that Fate, Time, and Reality will not allow divergence to this extreme degree, the lesson you should be taking from this is to not meddle with your systems so readily, and not to be so quick to please this Absolute Solver you're bound to."

Won't allow... What? Before I could ask what any of that meant, Discord grabbed my shoulder and pointed at the planet. "Look! It's starting!" Slowly, everything drifting around us began flowing in reverse, down towards the planet. The rocks, the dead alicorns, even the Tree of Harmony's physical body... Everything but me, Discord, and Harmony's phantom. The hemispheres of the world's crust came together to ensconce the singularity. Frozen oceans began to melt, and the ground began knitting itself together like healing flesh. Even the atmosphere and the lush greenery returned. "I do so love watching a good retcon."

I sat transfixed as the sun and moon began rotating in reverse around Equestria. Time is literally turning back the clock, I realised by the time a whole nine revolutions passed and things started moving normally. This would put it a day or two before I arrived in this world, then...

Discord clapped quietly to himself. "There, now none of that ever happened, and you don't have to worry about Hunger's pets," he announced as if it was to put an end to the matter. "Now all that matters is getting you all set to go on your next adventure." With a snap of his talons, the Victim's Guitar, my WDF Aviators, and my Shapeshifter's Parasol appeared on my person exactly as I usually carried them. Of course, there was also a big fucking video game sword on my lap, too. "Can't be having you leave your artefacts all over our world, can we?"

If I end up in a human world next and I'm seen wandering around with this fucking thing, I'm gonna get shot. Almost as if reading my mind, he had a look of realisation on his face. "Oh, I suppose with all the souvenirs you'll be getting on your journey, keeping track of all this mess is going to be a real bother," he murmured, rubbing his chin with his lion's paw. Harmony simply rolled her crystalline compound eyes and shook her head as he reached out and poked me with his lion's paw. "This should help. Consider it thanks for going to bat for me with ol' Skelly-Celly."

WARNING

NEW SOFTWARE INSTALLED BY CHAOS GOD "DISCORD"

SYS://"../CHAOS/INVENTORY"
ANOMALOUS SOFTWARE DETECTED!
ATTEMPTING QUARANTINE... FAILED!
DISCORD NOTE: "TO STORE, TOUCH AND EXECUTE 'INVENTORY -PUT [ITEM NAME]'"
DISCORD NOTE: "TO RETRIEVE, EXECUTE 'INVENTORY -GET [ITEM NAME]'"
DISCORD NOTE: "TO LIST STORED ITEMS, EXECUTE 'INVENTORY -LIST'"

A moment after he somehow wrote and uploaded software directly to my system, my body pulsed the colour of my personal magic: azure blue. "Better hurry up and put that stuff away, lest you lose it," he warned. "Looks like you're gonna be taking a quantum leap soon."

EXECUTE SYS://"../CHAOS/INVENTORY" -PUT [THE VICTIM'S GUITAR]
EXECUTE SYS://"../CHAOS/INVENTORY" -PUT [WDF AVIATORS]
EXECUTE SYS://"../CHAOS/INVENTORY" -PUT [SHAPESHIFTER'S PARASOL]
EXECUTE SYS://"../CHAOS/INVENTORY" -PUT [BITTER REMINDER]

I did exactly as his notes instructed, touching each object and executing the commands as I went. Each time I executed the command, the object in question broke apart into cubic motes of azure light. Against my better judgement, I even added the big fucking sword, which my system automatically named Bitter Reminder. An apt name, since it would serve as a reminder of the horrors I committed.

My body pulsed with light again, and Harmony put her hoof atop my hand. "Do not be so quick to assume you must change the worlds you enter," she offered in a sad voice. "Even the greatest kindness can be corrupted, and the more you try to force inorganic change, as you did here with Chrysalis and her hive, the more likely that reality is to fight back. Be one with your host world and go with its flow, and let it take you where it will."

More and more my body pulsed with that azure light. My last moments in this universe were spent staring at Harmony's avatar with surprise... and reluctant admiration. See, in that moment—in that simple exchange—she not only told me the lesson I should have learned from all of this, but I'm pretty sure she inadvertently gave me the hint I needed to find my way home.

I was brought here to learn a hard lesson and a painful truth about this journey, but each world is likely to have some experience to learn from. Copper-9 was... Okay, Copper-9 was not a good example, given that I bartered with Robo-Satan and killed myself to save my friends... Unless that lesson was that sometimes, self-sacrifice is the only option. Only when I learn that lesson will I be free.

My vision filled with blue, and then space, the chaise, and Discord all vanished.

Friendship Lost!

Item Get!

Software Get!

Friends

N, Disassembly Drone - COP9AU
Uzi, Worker Drone - COP9AU
Ocellus, Unreformed Changeling - EQUS78Σ *DECEASED*

Items

The Victim's Guitar - COP9AU
WDF Aviators - COP9AU
Shapeshifter's Parasol - EQUS78Σ
Bitter Reminder - EQUS78Σ *NEW*

Software

Conscience_v0.1a - COP9AU *DAMAGED*
absoluteSolver (?) - COP9AU
Inventory - EQUS78Σ *NEW*

2 extra lives remaining

Author's Note

The scene where Anon makes her way through the refugee camp and her subsequent mental break is inspired by the Village Massacre from Re:Zero's 14th episode. Unlike the time-loop cursed Subaru Natsuki, however, Anon succumbs to her despair in a slightly different way. Theater D was definitely a backing track I had in mind when writing the scene and Keeper of Lust for the subsequent fight, or maybe F.O.E.