12: The Voight-Kampff Test, Revisited

I sprinted down the path for as far as I was able, which turned out to be about fifty feet, before I collapsed to my knees, wheezing.

"Damn asparagus," I gasped. "That stuff is gonna be the death of me."

Twilight's spell had taken care of the nicotine fits, but I hadn't realized just how weakened I'd become since I'd stopped smoking real cigarettes. Without proper tar to hold my lungs together, I couldn't even tail a simple cyborg. At the rate I was going, I probably wouldn't last five days in a Vietnamese prison camp.

I heard the sound of tiny hooves clip-clopping behind me, and wheeled around, still out of breath. Then I relaxed; it was only Sweetie Belle.

"Mr. Rusty, I really don't want to do this again—"

"Were you followed?" I demanded, cutting her off.

The little foal stopped in her tracks.

"What? Followed?" she glanced over her shoulder. "By who?"

I squinted past her, but didn't see anything suspicious.

"You probably wouldn't know it if you were."

I turned back towards the path. Sweetie Belle quickly trotted after me.

"Apple Bloom and Scootaloo are going on ahead to the clubhouse," she said. "We can still catch up to them if we hurry."

"You can," I replied. "I've still got stuff I need to do. I'll get it done a lot faster if you can tell me where that little grey cyborg pony lives."

"Grey sideboard pony? What are you even talking about?"

"The one with the glasses. Pretty sure I saw her come this way."

"Wait, do you mean Silver Spoon?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

I started walking again, and Sweetie Belle quickly galloped around in front of me.

"No, wait!" she said. "You can't do anything to her! I know she's really annoying, they both are, but if you pick a fight with her it's just going to make everything worse! Just let it go, okay? We can just go back to the clubhouse—"

"Can't. She's a cyborg. I need to take care of this."

I walked around her and continued down the path. Sweetie Belle galloped after me.

"Wait!" she called out. She ran around in front of me again, and I stopped.

She hesitated for a moment, looking over her shoulder in the direction that Silver Spoon had gone, and then she sighed.

"Look, if you promise not to do anything crazy, I can show you where Silver Spoon lives."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Crazy? Sweetie Belle, you and me might just be the only sane people in this entire town. Well, sane horse, in your case."

She rolled her eyes.

"If you don't promise, I'm not going to help you."

I reached into my pocket for an asparagus stalk, and felt a slight twinge of anxiety when I remembered that the pack was empty. Whatever else happened today, I needed to make it to the asparagus stand in town before they closed.

"Fine," I said. "If you show me where the little cyborg lives, I promise not to do anything that you would consider crazy."

She stared at me for a long time, her eyes slowly narrowing, and then she sighed heavily in resignation.

"Fine," she said. "Let's go. There's a shortcut a little further on, if we go that way we can probably get there ahead of her."

I followed her up the path a little ways, and then we turned down a side trail that wound through a thick grove of apple trees. After awhile the apple trees gave way to ordinary cedar and pine, signaling we were out of the orchard. When the vegetation was beginning to thin out entirely, Sweetie Belle motioned me to the side, and we ducked down behind a large bush.

About twelve yards ahead of us was the main path, which ended at a tall iron gate set into a stone wall.

"That's Silver Spoon's house," whispered Sweetie Belle. "Her family's not as rich as Diamond Tiara's, but they're still pretty rich."

My eyes scanned the top of the wall. I didn't see any surveillance cameras, but I couldn't rule out the possibility that there were snipers in the main house.

"What's the security situation over there?" I said in a low voice.

Sweetie Belle's ears pricked up in alarm.

"Security?" she hissed. "Wait, you're not going to go into the house, are you?!? You said you wouldn't do anything crazy!"

I scratched my chin, considering. If that little cyborg was involved in a plot to terraform the Earth, it would be crazy not to go in. On the other hand…. a full on assault would be risky. Sweetie Belle was right; it probably wasn't worth it. Better to just wait until the cyborg showed up, and see what sort of information I could get out of her.

"That probably won't be necessary," I told her. "Anyway, you can go now. I'll take it from here."

Sweetie Belle appraised me suspiciously.

"You promise you're not going to do anything weird?"

"Yep."

"You promise?"

"Yep."

She narrowed her eyes and stared at me for several seconds longer. Then, she plopped her haunches on the ground next to me.

"I don't trust you," she said.

"Suit yourself."

We sat there in silence for awhile, watching the path and the house. Birds and insects chittered in the nearby trees. The sun, which may or may not have been equine-directed, continued its slow journey across the sky.

Then there came a soft clip-clopping of small hooves. Silver Spoon emerged from around the bend, walking at a leisurely pace. Her mane was slightly damp with perspiration, but otherwise she looked the same as always. There was no sign of the other one.

"SHISHISHAW!!"

I sprang out from behind the bushes and pounced.

"EEK!"

Silver Spoon cried out, but she had no time to react. Half a second later, she was lying on her back, pinned to the ground underneath me.

"R-rusty Shackleford?!?" she looked up at me, squinting in the late afternoon sunlight, her face a blank mask of confused terror. She tried to wriggle away, but she was small enough that I could easily hold her down with one hand.

"W-what are you doing?!?" she demanded, still struggling. "Let me go!"

I reached down and snatched the glasses off of her face. She shrieked again.

"Aaah! G-get off of me, you foal-fiddling weirdo!"

One of her hind legs tried to buck at me, but she was lying at an awkward angle and couldn't put any power into it.

I slid her glasses into my shirt pocket. Then, I reached into my other pocket and rummaged around until I found what I needed. It was an old refrigerator magnet I'd found on the floor of the Rackleys' basement while I was fumigating.

I knew there was a reason I picked this thing up.

"Alright, cyborg, it's just you and me now," I said, waving the magnet threateningly in front of her face. "And I brought along your old arch-nemesis, a magnetic field. So unless you want to start singing folk ballads, you're going to keep quiet and do exactly what you're told..."

The filly's eyes were now wide with terror.

Heh. Just as I thought, she's scared to death of magnets.

"Now, then, where were we?" I barked triumphantly. "Oh, that's right: you are in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise crawling towards you—"

Suddenly, I heard galloping hooves and felt a sharp jabbing sensation in my thigh. I looked down, and saw that Sweetie Belle had just rammed me with her horn. The horn was blunt and she wasn't very strong, but still; that was probably going to leave a bruise.

"What are you doing?!?" she demanded. "Are you crazy?!? Get off of her!!"

She was standing in a battle stance, with her legs spread apart and her head lowered, her teeth bared at me in defiance. She looked about as angry and menacing as a tiny white unicorn could look, which as it turned out wasn't all that menacing. Still, something about the hateful way she was glaring at me made me pause. I turned back to Silver Spoon, who was now trembling uncontrollably and had real tears in her eyes. I suddenly felt a small twinge of guilt that I couldn't quite explain.

Sweetie Belle's horn sparked up, and I felt a light tickle of electricity running through my body as a thin aquamarine aura surrounded me. The little horse strained every muscle in her body, but she couldn't quite muster enough strength to actually levitate me. Still, the slight upward force was enough to throw me off balance.

"Waaaugh!"

I fell over, and Silver Spoon immediately scrambled to her hooves. Her braided mane was in disarray, and her coat was smeared with dirt. She glared back and forth between me and Sweetie Belle, her lower lip trembling with rage and hurt. Then, suddenly, she turned and galloped away, tears streaming down her face as she ran.

"YOU STUPID BLANK-FLANKS ARE GONNA PAY FOR THIS!!" she howled, and then a moment later she was through the wall, the iron gate clattering shut behind her.

I stood up and brushed myself off, then reached into my pocket for a smoke. I felt a mild panic as my fingers curled around an empty pack again, but I forced it down. I glanced at Sweetie Belle, who was still standing in her battle stance, breathing heavily.

"Welp, now you've gone and done it," I said.

Her eyes went wide with fury, and she spun around and bucked me in my right shin.

"YAAAGH!" I cried out, grabbing hold of my right leg and hopping up and down.

"I've gone and done it?!?" the little unicorn shouted. "I've gone and done it?!?"

She bucked my other shin, and I fell down on my butt, now clutching both legs. She stood there glowering at me, light puffs of steam emitting from her nostrils.

"Just what in Equestria was that about, anyway?!?" she demanded. "You can't just go around attacking ponies like that! What if she tells somepony? Are you trying to get thrown in jail for assaulting school fillies?!?"

Suddenly, a familiar voice cut in from nearby:

"Do we even have a jail in Ponyville?"

Apple Bloom came trotting out from behind the bushes, Scootaloo a few steps behind her.

"Yeah," Scoot chimed in. "I think Miss Cheerilee said once that nopony has been put in jail in Equestria for like a hundred years."

Sweetie Belle appeared to have calmed down a little. She sighed, and plopped down sulkily, her tail still twitching from adrenaline.

"Yeah, well," she half-muttered. "If anypony was going to break that record, it would definitely be this guy."

Apple Bloom trotted around and stood between us, looking worriedly from one of us to the other.

"It was just a prank, right?" she asked, turning to me. "You weren't really going to hurt Silver Spoon, were you Mr. Rusty?"

That weird twitch of guilt came back. I mean, obviously I hadn't been in the wrong, but at the same time these fillies couldn't have been expected to understand that their classmate was really a Nexus-6 replicant. Plus, now that I thought about it, I could see how someone watching might have misunderstood the situation.

"Nah, this thing wouldn't have hurt her," I said, tossing the magnet into some nearby bushes. "At most it probably would have just zapped her a little. I'm assuming her cyberbrain is electromagnetically shielded."

Apple Bloom turned to Sweetie Belle.

"See, Sweetie Belle? It was just a joke. Her..." she glanced at me. "Her cider grain is... is whatever he said."

Sweetie Belle snorted, and blew a loose strand of mane away from her eyes.

"Yeah, well," she muttered. "It was still a pretty mean thing to do. Even if it was just Silver Spoon."

Scootaloo laughed.

"I don't know, I thought it was kinda funny," she said. "I mean, when was the last time you ever saw her totally speechless like that?"

Her eyes went wide, and she started to blubber and babble, in a fairly good imitation of Silver Spoon a couple of minutes ago. Apple Bloom giggled, and Sweetie Belle cracked a smile in spite of herself.

We all looked up sharply as the iron gate swung open with a loud bang. A furious-looking earth pony wearing a suit and tie but no pants came storming out.

"Hey, you little hooligans!" he shouted. "What the hay did you just do to my daughter?!?"

"Yaagh!" I scrambled quickly to my feet.

"Oh hayburgers!" cried Apple Bloom. "Come on, we gotta get out of here!"

We took off running as fast as we could. Behind us, we could hear shouts of what I could only assume was Equestrian profanity, fading away into the distance.