The group of ponies wandered out of the Everfree Forest in a column, heading for a long metal bridge over a bog.
"I didn't expect it to be here..." Shining muttered to himself, stopping in front of the bridge. Stable Minus One just had to be located under Everfree Hill, surrounded by bogs and the largest amount of Poison Joke known to Ponykind, didn't it?
"Don't worry Shiny, Stable Minus One and Phoenix are perfectly safe. Do you really think Twilight would let us go to our deaths?" Cadence rubbed against his side.
"That's what worries me. Why locate it all the way out here, if there's nothing unsafe about it?"
"Do you really think the Zebra's would launch a mega-spell at one hill?"
Shining sighed. "You win, Cadence. Continue."
"Gladly."
Cadence walked out onto the metal bridge, Shining and their guards following close behind.
They ended up crossing in single file, if a Zebra assassin caught them now they would all be dead.
They crossed to the other side without incident, although it did leave Shining wondering why anypony would build this all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere, if there's nothing to hide?
The first door was easy enough to find, a massive stone slab embedded into the side of the hill.
Cadence pressed her hoof to the scanner mounted on the door, and soon enough the door began to grind open, revealing a long staircase leading straight under the hill, into darkness.
The door finished opening with a hiss as the holding bar was pushed back into place and strips of fluorescent lights flickered on along the ceiling of the hallway.
With Shining in the lead, the ponies walked down the hallway and began to slowly feel like somepony was watching them. Cadence stretched her wings in unease as they continued to make their way deeper into the Stable's access tunnel.
There was a loud crash as the tunnel door closed behind them, they were on their own now.
A short distance later, the stone tunnel turned to the left and widened slightly, revealing the unmistakable cog-shape of a Stable door, and as Twilight had promised, a white minus was emblazoned in the middle of the door.
"Well, everypony, welcome to Stable Minus One." Shining turned. "Steel Rain, would you hit the access switch please?"
"Of course." One of the guards walked up to the control panel and flicked the switch.
The Stable door opened soundlessly, showing that it had been oiled and greased recently, despite the fact that nopony had been in the Stable since it was finished. Another small mystery, along with what 'Phoenix' really was.
Shining and the others entered the Stable, finding themselves in a empty, metal box-shaped room with one door opposite them.
They heard the sound of the Stable Door shutting behind them before a coldly synthetic voice suddenly announced "Greetings, Princess and other ponies. If you would please proceed forwards towards the sleeping quarters, I will get you acquainted with life in a Stable."
"Who are you?" Shining shouted at the walls, seeking this voice.
"How rude of me. I am P.H.O.E.N.I.X, Overlord of this stable. Please proceed to the Sleeping Quarters."
The door on the other side of the room slid open and seeing no option but to follow what Phoenix said, Shining, Cadence and the fifteen other guards trotted through the door before Phoenix started to tell them about the Stable.
"This Stable was created with one purpose- like the creature I am named for, this Stable is a place for Ponykind to rise from the ashes of the apocalapse. My advanced systems will mimic Celestia's day and Luna's night down to the last detail on the Stable ceilings through projection technology. Generators will provide a refreshing breeze through wind turbines. The heating systems will recreate the seasons, just like in the world above. We have robots designed to produce cuisine that Canterlot's best chefs wept upon seeing it. The water is provided directly through a massive underground ocean.
It is, in essence, Paradise." Phoenix finished, seeming pleased with himself, despite the fact he was a AI. A true AI.
Shining couldn't help but mutter "But what is the price of paradise?" under his breath. There would be a price to pay, he was sure of it.
"The price of paradise, Captain? There is no price."
Shining cursed inwardly, could this thing hear everything?
The group of ponies rounded a corner, coming face-to-face with a door.
"Please enter to begin the first stage of paradise." Shining could swear Phoenix had cackled at the end. Something was definitely off about this.
The door hissed open in a puff of steam, and the ponies walked into a darkened room.
The lights flickered on, revealing...
A hospital ward.
"Huh?" Shining turned back towards the entrance, only to find it had already shut.
"Please lay on a Transformation Lounger so I can begin your Uplifting."
"What?" Cadence shouted at the walls, her voice distorted. "What is this 'uplifting'?"
"Nothing more than the next stage in the evolution of Ponykind. Now do as I say before I... Get nasty."
"How about no?"
"Oh, you'll regret saying that, pony. Find me. You know the way. I'll even help you by providing you with weapons and a exit. Just... Make this entertaining." Phoenix laughed, a harsh, mechanical sound that was completely at odds with the smooth tones of its synthesised voice.
A clanking sounded from the ceiling, and a crate dropped down from a hatch.
"Arm up stallions, we're going to get out of this mess."
Shining kicked the crate open, revealing a mass of plasma-cannon attached to battle-saddles.
The guards grinned, either Phoenix was massively overconfident in his own abilities or he just wanted to be decommissioned.
That was when they heard the first hoof on the Stable's metal floor.
It was not the usual, clop sound of a hoof, it was more of the clang that robots made, but they had a irregularity about them that signalled whatever was causing them was not a robot.
The guards slipped the battle-saddles on, firing mechanisms locked in their mouths.
"I am giving you a thirty-second headstart. Good luck." Phoenix announced as a panel on the wall slid open, revealing a barely illuminated hallway.
"Go go go!" Shining yelled as he began to charge towards the open doorway, the others following behind.
As the last guard passed through the doorway, it slammed down from the ceiling, sealing the passage behind them.
"Your headstart begins now."
"Everypony, move! We split up at the first junction! Our objective is Phoenix's maneframe or core!"
The band of ponies galloped down the barely lit corridor, oblivious to the hiss as the door opened behind them, unleashing the Horde.
The group of ponies soon found themselves at a junction, a corridor on all sides of the room and a staircase leading up and down.
"Snips, take your group up. Snails, take yours down. Red Hoof, go left, Silver Bullet, go right. Steel, with me and Cadence. Move!"
The various groups of ponies scattered throughout the atrium as the Shining caught sight of the Horde, as they would later be named.
They had been ponies, once.
But Phoenix had obviously 'improved' them.
Gun barrels jutted out where horns should be. Wings were replaced with battle-saddles. Fur was replaced with armour. Hooves were covered in cruel-looking talons.
There were scars under that armour, of that Shining was sure. Phoenix had no doubt replaced everything organic with something mechnical to create his drone army.
He had to be stopped.
Shining, Cadence and Steel ploughed on into the Stable, the clanking and chittering of the Horde never far behind.
After several minutes of galloping for their lives, screams began to echo throughout the Stable as the Horde caught up with Shining's guards.
Shining felt a weight being added to his back as he heard every scream. Phoenix would pay for this.
The group eventually found themselves in what was with no doubt the largest room in the stable, it was bigger than Celestia's throne room!
But what was inside stopped the three with various looks of horror and disgust etched onto their faces.
Brains.[/i ]Tanks full of them were attached to the walls, floating in some orange liquid all linked by vast masses of wiring to a massive black box in the middle, the word P.H.O.E.N.I.X painted boldly onto it's side.
"So you've found me." The brains flashed as Phoenix talked, no doubt something to do with accessing their processing capacity.
"And you see what I am. Did you think I would be a larger version of one of your inferior 'Crusader Maneframes'? Pah, it would take a thousand to rival my capacity for processing. And so I can talk to you for longer..."
A small blast door slammed shut behind them as the AI paused for a moment.
"Everypony's mind who makes me up deserved it. Convicts, P.O.Ws, deserters, cowards..."
"What you've done here... Is simply..." Cadence vomited onto the floor.
"Yes, it may be disgusting et cetera, but I was needed to run P.A.W."
Shining gasped slightly. "P.A.W.S? But... That was stopped last year. Everything about it was destroyed."
"No, the Post Apocalaptic War System was not destroyed completely. The Ministry of Awesome began it, and they tried to destroy me. You think this Stable was sealed to prevent me escaping? I sealed it myself to protect myself. The Ministry didn't want to admit what they did, and so I was placed into a massive cover-up. Have you heard of the projects Centaur and Lancer?"
"No... You can't be trying to..." Shining whispered, if Phoenix had those...
"They are mine. P.A.W.S is mine. After the war, Ponykind will dominate Equestria and beyond once more."
"Not if I have anything to say about it." Steel said as he bit down on the trigger, sending two massive blobs of plasma at Phoenix's core.
The core exploded in a shower of mechanical pieces.
"Warning: P.H.O.E.N.I.X main core has been destroyed. Defensive precautions disabled. H.Y.D.R.A backup cores activating. P.M.V virus released."
Shining turned to the door as it slowly began to slide open.
"Oh, crap. Fire!"
Shining and Steel's plasma cannoned blazed away as they fired through the doorway at the Horde. Shining could see their half-mechanical forms be dissolved into puddles of goo by the force of the plasma cannon's blasts, yet they kept on coming.
Cadence threw various pieces of rubble into the mix with her magic, flattening more, yet they kept on coming.
Eventually, through sheer weight of numbers, the Horde broke through. Steel was shredded into strips in mere seconds in a flurry of razor sharp metal talons.
A harpoon fired out from where a unicorn's horn had once stood into Cadence's face, killing her instantly before the harpoon was hauled back in.
A throwing spike pierced Shining Armour's eye blinding him to his left as he kept on firing.
One of the Horde leaped onto his back and severed his spinal cord and he collapsed to the ground before the Horde swarmed over him.
====================================================================
The feed cut to static as the two Raiders looked on in annoyance.
"Where'd you get that from, Blaze?"
"Old Ministry building, south of Canterlot. Why?"
"Did you get it's location?"
"It said in the video- Everfree Hill, you idiot."
"But where's that?"
"Killing Joke Hill?"
"That ruins that plan."
"Yeah, I planned to go check it out until I saw where it was."
"We'd need flamethrowers..."
"And ridiculous amounts of firepower..."
"And tons of that cure stuff..."
"We'll go look for it tomorrow. Maybe we'll strike it lucky before that?"
"We can hope."
