We had put it down cleanly after the brute had given us what we wanted, one clean slice left it without its head, and it was crushed with one claw down its center. My pipbuck had updated, considering the C.L.A.W. objective complete now that my new companion came inbuilt with one, and leaving the building itself unmarked. The blueprints of the suit however was still in the same building, but it showed up as a second icon over the first, when I tried toggling the main icons on my map off, so I hazarded that they were different in some retrospect.

Now we were creeping through the wreckages of buildings, and an hour had passed in relative silence, before we ended up on the ledge of a short five foot cliff, overlooking an large easterrn warehouse like building that was just to the right of our closer objective, the magic emitter. It was Trixie who initiated a conversation as we scouted out our objective from afar, "You are a changeling correct Aria?"

I nodded, still doing my best to peer at the building, looking out for any guards outside of it, "Yeah, why?"

"How do Changelings feed off of emotions?" she questioned, and I sighed.

"I am not entirely sure myself. But there are two ways a changeling can drain emotional energy and convert it to magical energy. The first is we send out an ambient feelers, or I guess I should say aura around ourselves, that allows us to detect the feelings of others, we then siphon off the excess ambient emotions, slowly refilling to our mentally constrained limits of magic without causing any harm to those we drained."

"What of the other method?" she queried, first thing I had stopped talking.

I took a deep breathe, "The other method, is probably the reason we're nick named emotional vamponies, we bite our victims and draw from their emotional being directly. However this is dangerous as it can lead to severe emotional dysfunction in the victim, and leave them into either committing suicide from their lack of caring for their own lives anymore, or into a severe unbalancing of emotional control as a primary emotion they were feeling at the time vanishes and gets taken up by its opposite."

"Did you feel anything from this unit earlier?"

I shook my head, "No, though I have never felt any emotions from a machine before. Even though several of them could be described as in a continuous murderous rampage against zebras in general."

Trixie looked down, "Oh..."

We were silent for a while longer, as we began our approach, in a hushed voice, I asked, "Here's a question, just where did star metal come from? A memory orb I went through recently said it was rare, yet they had enough to build you?"

She looked to me, "It is an mineral commonly found within rocks in space. It is of an unknown make, however, with the growing age of industry and technology, we were able to discover and collect several large remains of where meteorites that dated before the start of civilization and after the end of the ancients. Most of this facilities star metal experiments have been founded on fragments of this single ore, however other smaller samples have been obtained from time to time. I estimate my mass took about twenty five point three percent of its remaining mass during my stage of construction."

"What about the rest of it?"

"Status unknown but presumed either under heavy automated guard and out of your pay grade."

"I don't even get paid..." I muttered.

"Exactly." Trixie stated, and I rolled my eyes, a habit I had picked up from Grey.

A few more minutes passed in silence before the machine quipped again, "What are other ponies emotions like to a changeling?"

I looked back to her before pulling on the warehouse door, locked, damn, "Sort of like a big fluffy cloud I guess."

she trotted next to be, her hoof reshaping into a clawed hand as she inserted it into the door, melting through the thinner metal as she asked, "A cloud?" she nodded towards the giant grey monotonous curtain that was the cloud cover above us.

"More like the ones in children stories," I said, trying to convey what I could sense, "Take say, happiness, fulfillment, desire, they are like a very warm white cloud, comforting to the touch, its easy to digest, and it leaves you wanting more."

"Where anger, hate, and jealousy are a storm cloud?"

I nodded, "exactly."

We breached the door, progressing forward, momentary silence taking over as we investigated the inside of the warehouse, to my surprise there was a prewar neighborhood inside, houses that looked relatively untouched in comparison to the outside wreckage, if anything only time and grime had taken residence inside the warehouse, with the almost always present rust that covered nearly every piece of stray metal outside in the wasteland. Without anyone in sight, Trixie announced, "Residences of the stars of the Big Grins top scientists, the names of which has been redacted in this units data logs, curious."

"Looks relatively untouched, lets search for supplies." I ordered, anything, weapons, food, water, even a sleeping bag would be useful at this point.

I had to hope that at least some of these doctors took some of their projects home with them and left them there, otherwise I'd still end up fighting practically unarmed, and that was a fighting style that I didn't have much experience in, and brutes made the worst fighting partners.

My senses extended as we went through the first house, everything had been painted in a now faded white and purple, and besides some long expired groceries the best we were finding was a few knives, it was a better take than the pathetic surgical tools I had long discarded in the brutes eye sockets, but not by much. I missed Ambush... An actual gun would be much welcomed by now, instead I had a robotic talking partner that might at any moment turn into another anti-zebra spewing psycho-bot.

The second house proved even less fortunate, a eye cringing neon pink paint of some sort party goer gone wrong as half a dozen skeletons around dozens of long emptied bottles of beer and wine, Trixie had dismissed them with a look of disgust on her face, provoking a question from me, "Know them?"

"This unit can do a dental record check to confirm, but this unit can already tell that the end results would be unimportant."

"How come?" I asked, curiously enough there was still no spark of emotional energy from Trixie, despite her earlier remarks.

"This unit has a distaste for ponies who actively poison themselves for short term satisfaction over long term well being."

"Don't machines have something similar?" My curiosity was growing, I myself had never been a large fan of drugs for much the same reason, they were despicable things, and addictive as love could be, if not more, even if taken in safe doses, symptoms of withdrawal could still happen.

"Affirmative, machines can overclock their units to promote temporary increases to productivity, but machines can have their parts replaced, why an organic would choose to do this is unknown."

I sighed, "some times people need the medicine, other times people want an escape from the life they can't handle. Other times, after using a drug, it becomes addictive and you're convinced you can't live without it."

"Like this unit stated, we cannot comprehend why an organic would choose self poisoning over dealing with the issue involved."

My sigh turned into a groan, "Its a chemical thing." I stated, I was a soldier, not a psychologist.

"Understood," Trixie stated, as if my answer actually solved that question, "I have detected something within the basement, would you like this unit to investigate?"

"go ahead." I muttered, having dug through the pantry and having come up with a few cases of something called 'peanut butter crackers'. I shoved them into a makeshift saddlebag I had crafted from a few bedsheets of the first house. Luckily despite being super dusty and moth eaten, they were still durable enough to carry something of use.

I had added another three knives to my slowly growing collection of melee weapons before an familiar sound of laser fire started going off. I panicked, caught by surprise, instinctively dropping to the floor as the sound went on before being choked out by the sound of metal being torn apart. Slowly I came to the realization that it was myself who was being shot at.

Quickly, I ran towards the door Trixie had left through, coming down the stairs fast enough that I practically leaped from the stairs and managed to stop myself from falling down the stairs by a combination of sheer luck and the sheer length of my legs. Sure enough I found Trixie standing over a pair of plasma and laser turrets that had been forcibly ripped from their spots along the ceiling, I had a shiver go down my spine as I noticed that she hadn't even been touched by the laser fire, or if she did, it didn't even leave a mark.

She nodded to me, "This unit has cleared hostiles from the area. Suggested evidence shows this is the home laboratory of one Doctor Laughter, whose house is also linked to a Dr.Loyalty through this same facility."

I trotted slower, catching up to Trixie as she walked, ignoring the wrecked remains of the turrets, which would prove useless for someone who didn't know much of engineering, like me, I supposed I could of asked Trixies advice, but I didn't quite trust some age old machine that was built for war. Too many robots had tried to get me killed in the past. And unlike the artificial intelligence that was Penance, this one had a maker it actually seemed to have positive feelings for.

When we got to the main laboratory (another door that was opened by the convenient melt-the-lock tactic) I drew a blank. In the room was the strangest set of tools I had seen so far, a large circular multi-leveled furnace dominated the center of the room, numerous pipes and funnels all but flooding the ceiling as each lead down to a single anvil that was surrounded by dirtied glass and dozens of chains hanged around it.

It's a forge for smelting Starmetal. came the answer to my unspoken question, A device that was designed way back before ponies were the dominate race, and war was the reasons for magical development. Very few weapons back then had been made from the illustrious 'stars' that fell to Equis, but among them, the legendary weapons of the era of ceaseless war had been forged, Luuvier the phantom blade, Cellis the unstoppable shield, And Tuvin, the shooting star had been forged.

I thought starmetal had been a recent thing that was being researched in the last war.

A deep foreboding chuckle rang through my mind, Child, there is much you've yet to learn, and much has been lost to time that you have yet to even touch.

Goddesses damn my curiosity, How do you know this then?

unhelpfully, Mr.Phantom Voice mysteriously intoned, Some bits of history do not remain buried forever. History repeats child, and the start of one cycle doesn't necessarily mean the end of the ones before it. despite what your prewar historians believed.

And what does this have to do with me?

The voice loomed, I sense something here that does not belong. Something that must be returned to once it came, It is a weapon that should of been buried with it master as it desired, but instead, its secrets proved damnation to those who disturbed its slumber. Take care, Aria, for I do not wish to become bored so soon.

The sound of Trixies voice rang out to me then, an authoritative tone of a machine alerting its commander, "This unit has discovered something relevant to your interests commander."

She pointed me to a simple black box that made my head, and my leg, more specifically that was bit by the Aqualight, ache.

Xp Footnote: 35% left until level up.

Note(s) Added:
Luuvier The Phantom blade: The legendary phantom blade Luuvier was once used by a being of great power and darkness, it is said that the owner of this blade represented the ferocity of war, the unforgiving nature of violence, and the sancity of loss. No one knows what happened to this blade after its owner was defeated in mortal combat.

Cellis The Unstoppable Shield This shield is said to have come from the sun itself, many a being has blinded themselves on its royal majesty but its true strength lies in its almost unpierceable defense. Its owner was said to be of an avian nature in its begininngs, however, it was last seen in the possession of commander hurricane during the pony-griffon war.

Tuvin The Shooting Star: also known as the bow of dragonslayer. Its original maker was the smith Vauntu Velhammer, a minotaur who used this weapon to save his country from the wyrm known as Hellskiv, ancestor of the Tatzelwurm that used to plague the southern borders of Equestria during the prewar. Those who seek this weapon also know of its other famous act, disarming the immortal owner of Luuvier.

Next Chapter: Summer Smiles DLC 5: Cats are EVIL?! Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours, 59 Minutes