Turns out Dr.Terrible had a lot more resources than I first thought, as Trixie kicked down the front door, my senses flared at several rapidly incoming sources of violence, and in the moody grey of the clouds both a pack of cybertooth tigers and a swarm of new enemies, robotic spiders that were about half our size, erupted out of the ruins. I scrambled up the side of the building as Trixie charged forward, and then I watched as she pretty much pumbled it all into submission, occasionally stopping them from pinning her by firing off a shot into the mass of enemies. Dr. Terrible's voice came on from some wider speaker system as we finished them off, "Ahah, good work my minions, they are dead, right? No? Well then, you don't have a chance to escape Bug and Bot! You may of acquired the stealth suit schematics as well as a C.L.A.W. unit, but you won't be able to get the blueprints of the magic emitter!"

I didn't bother to tell him that we already had it thanks to the Nightmare Nighter we rescued. Instead the two of us progressed back towards the face of the facility, When we arrived, I told Trixie to wait outside, might as well have some secrets and power hidden away. When I had entered again, the feeling of forced peace and tranquility settled over me as I walked up to the leader of the six walking brain tanks that made up the think tank. Most of them were plucking away at various keyboards with various robotic limbs that extended out of a larger limb opposite of their facial screens, and as I went up to Dr.Magic, he turned and faced me, "Ah, Lobotomite, back so soon?"

"Yeah, and now that I have everything you need, what do I need to do?"

The machine paused for a moment, "Up north is a place called the forbidden dome, it is a large.... dome in which you can find The feared doctor Terrible and his master, Doctor Smile. Once they are dead, bring us back your brain. So that we can..." He paused once more, and immediately every lesson in deceit from Grey and the other changelings crawled through my mind in an instant, "Put it back in... Yes. We already downloaded the information we needed off your pipbuck."

"The password for the door you will find in your way to the forbidden dome, is..." he paused again, "Big smiles for big whiles. Beware no one has ever gone to the forbidden dome before, and survived!"

"That's kinda obvious," I said, "After all, I was the first one to get all the tech you needed, no?"

The bearded screen-face turned frowny, "I was saying that for dramatic effect!" Dr.Magic told me off, "Now get moving before you get on my bad side!" without pause he turned around and went back at staring at the map of the big grin, he zoomed out and there existed the words, "Does not Exist." outside the circular walls that made up the facility boundaries on the map.

Quickly I turned to leave, but before I left I was intercepted by a white brain tanked one, Doctor Generosity, if I recalled correctly, and her feminine voice cracked, "Excuse me, but um. Lobotomite, could you be a dear and spare me a few minutes of your time?"

I sighed, "Sure why not."

"I had a few questions for you, to remind myself of a few things that I have long forgotten." the brain bot came uncomfortably close to me, "What is it like to breathe? Circuits replaced so many functions, and I would like to watch, if only for a little bit."

Okay that was creepy, "Um... its uh..." How does one describe breathing? Awkwardly I stretched, and tried, "Its uh... moist, I guess." my throat was wet, from a drink of water earlier, so I guess that was accurate.

"Mmm yeah..." The machine responded, the image of a busy looking mare, turning into a flustered blushing one. I didn't understand, nor did I want to.

"Uhh... breathing is... um... nice?" I also added and the doctor nodded again, for some reason the closeness of the brain-bot was starting to creep me out, and a bead of sweat went down the side of my face. After a few minutes of just standing there breathing, I asked, "Is that all you needed or...?"

"Mmmm. Yeah, thank you for allowing me to synchronize with your bio-metrics..." she said, "Here take these as a bit of gratitude for your time." a slot opened on her, and out came a bit of steaming... laser ammunition? Okay then...

Slowly I levitated it out of the slot she had opened and once it had shut I thanked her and she replied, "Feel free to come back later, I would love to have you do this for me again. I know Dr.Kind would love to have your opinion on something."

Uh...huh... "Alright then... I guess..." I gave my goodbyes to Dr.Gen, and walked my way over to Dr. Kind, the scientist was going over formulas and equations as well as different pictures of animals that were cut apart and reapplied to each other into ridiculous creations like a snake mixed with a giant mole rat, and a dog mixed with a bear.

"Ah, Lobotomite." Dr.Kind said, his masculine voice swapping from one of deep thought to happy surprise with his screen.

"I have a name..." I muttered, but he ignored my comment.

"I've been having a problem as of late, and I was wondering if you could help me," he pulled through various pictures, showing them to me, "After I revived an extinct species and merged it with the power of Doctor Generosity's cybernetics, I've been having troubles deciding what could top that security system that never came to full release."

Wait. He was the one who made the saber tooth cyber cats from hell? "See you found some of the failed prototypes," he commented, gesturing at my makeshift weaponry that were still attached to my legs. I hadn't bothered to remove them due to how useful they were.

"Failed prototypes?" I asked, and shivered, "Those things were freaking hard to kill, I barely managed to get out alive with my first encounter with them!"

"Yeah, but your here and wearing their teeth, no? That means they failed." He commented.

"You shouldn't be doing this to another creature, let alone one that was previously extinct!" I told him, and he chuckled.

"Nothing is too far in the name of science." he said and to that, i disagreed.

"Megaspells were too far." I told him.

"Megaspells ended the war by destroying the Zebra nations." Dr.Kind replied.

"Yeah and as a result Equestria was destroyed by similar technology, and now we have not but a rut of ruins." I argued back, "a world full of dangerous mutations, lethal radiation, rain of sharpened glass, and people fighting each other just to survive. That is one place where science went too far."

He actually paused, as if considering my argument, "Though the breakthroughs in cybernetics and genetic reconstitution and reconstruction are a particularly well applied field, would it get out of these labs could allow us to reinvent medical technology, imagine regrowing or replacing a lost limb, or just adding one or two on just for the hell of it."

"The same technology which is used can also be abused to create a genetic clone army in order to fight wars, wars fought still with sentient people trained for nothing but war." I responded.

He snorted, "Like that would ever happen."

"I am that happening." I responded, and his screen went from mirth to one of shock.

"Wait what?"

"You wanna know where I grew up in?" I told him, "My mother was a tank, a glass tank that provided the nutrients for my father of a test tube to grow and nurture into a full on science experiment. There was thirty one samples and in order to narrow down which was the best of a caste, they took these thirty one foals and tested them, teaching them and culling out those who didn't learn, or didn't learn fast enough." I looked him in the sensors, directly so, "When we turned eleven, we were thrown into a pit against another caste, and we were told to fight to the death. When my class won, just me and the same changeling I had grown up with, the only two survivors of an entire caste of thirty one, out of sixty two if you included the other caste, And we were told to kill each other."

"What happened next?" The monitor was wide eyed, shocked, at my revelation.

"What do you think? There's only one pony in front of you." I told him, and his screen went black.

After a few moments it turned back on, a look of regret on his face, "Sorry, I had no idea. Perhaps you're right, there is such things as science going too far..." He looked over his pictures, "All this time and I never considered the possibility of sentience in testing, that or what sort of pain my experiments could bring."

He picked them up, scooping them all up in one claw, and from within a short sound of laser fire, and the papers were on fire. Quickly, he tossed them into a garbage can, "You said you had a name earlier? Mind if I ask it?

"Back where I was made, I was called Experiment 1993-13." I told him, "Though I prefer Aria."

"Well... Aria. I'm sorry for your loss." He turned around, "Would you mind... Giving me some time to think over this? I need to reconsider some things."

I left him to whatever it was he wanted to do, life choices, or something. The red one hissed ominously at me again, but I ignored it as I left the building.

"What now, Commander?" Trixie asked, as I left the building.

"Well... I responded, "Now we go kill Dr.Terrible and Doc Smiles."

"Agreed." Trixie responded, though if I could tell by faces, she looked uneasy about something.

"Something wrong?"

"Does this unit have a soul?" she asked, "I find myself reviewing over how things were in the past, and drawing numerous comparisons to it then and now, combined with my other sensory inputs leave me with a textbook feeling of loss and regret. As well as anger towards how much the experiments around this facility have backfired over time."

"Mind elaborating?" I asked, my senses stretched outwards, but instead of nothing, there was something slightly there. Now I was curious, but if I pushed it, what was there would vanish, I certainly had to resist the urge to drain it, and replenish my own magic, which had reached the halfway point between my normal levels and empty. But the amount of emotional energy I was feeling wouldn't even fill a quarter of a second worth of magic. but it was still something.

"I looked upon my creators work, and its been tarnished, tarnished by dozens of other experiments that were made in haste, or without consideration of the consequences. Once pure intentions on winning a war now malpractice of dangerous sciences." She sighed, or emulated one anyway, "There was a time where honest ponies delved into dangerous realms for the aspect of getting ahead of the other races in order to make up for what we didn't know. The more I look, the less I see that now, and the more I see a sadistic perverse abomination that it once were. Those brutes, for example. I drew from my database and realized that was an altered version of a super serum meant to enhance the equestrian soldier with no long lasting side effects. But now, with all that I've seen so far, I can tell just how much it has been perverted it has become in the name of power."

I sighed, in agreement, "The wasteland corrupts, and I yet to have seen more than one good thing out of science, that only good thing so far being you Trixie."

"Yeah, but this platform wasn't exactly exposed to over a hundred years worth of systematic decay either." Trixie commented back, and like that the spark vanished.

"True, true." I answered in turn, "But still, you've been nothing but nice and helpful ever since I found you."

"Thanks for the compliment." Trixie motioned to the general wilderness, "Shall we be off, Commander?"

"Just Aria." I reminded her, "and lets go."

Together, we walked down the narrow road towards the gloomy stone of the forbidden dome.

Xp Footnote: 10% until Level up.

Hey guys, if you have any questions for Aria or the gang, I'll take this chance to remind you that you can ask her questions or bug the stuffing out of her, all you have to do is go here(Click me!)