Chapter 4

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of…

I leapt from one rooftop to the other. The city sprawled out below me, streetlights glittering like glowing diamonds in the mist covered streets. The night air was cool, but I couldn’t feel it. My entire body was covered in a living ebony carapace. Nannysprite technology they called it. Millions of tiny nanosprites, all linked together, all telepathically controlled by the large one on my back, it’s needle like fangs piercing my spine, linking my thoughts and nervous system with its own. I scanned the rooftops thought my sprite eyed black helmet, looking for heat signatures I could never detect on my own. I continued my search, effortlessly jumping from one rooftop to the next with my strength enhanced armor. There, two buildings away, nearly a dozen or so heat signatures. Six ponies, two diamond dogs, a minotaur, and two something else. Not sure what, but they were huge, and radiating heat like a furnace. With a grunt of effort, I activated my suit’s chameleon mode, and shimmered into invisibility before silently teleporting downwind of the gathered beings.

I boosted my hearing slightly. Yeah, there he was, Axle Grease. Most notorious gang lord in all of New Buck city. He was standing slightly in front of the other five ponies, facing the minotaur who was flanked by the two diamond dogs, further behind the trio were the hulking forms of the two other heat signatures, hidden by the shadow of a neighboring skyscraper. The minotaur was passing Axle Grease a large briefcase, while Axle Grease was passing a smaller case back in return. If my intel was correct, there was no way Axle Grease could be allowed to leave this rooftop with that case.

I mentally ran through my options. I could try for a snatch and grab. Run in stealthed, grab the case and teleport to safety. But that meant leaving both parties alive, just to do this all over at a later date, when I might not be able to find them. I could take out the leaders with a couple well placed shots from here. But that would risk the case hitting the ground, and the chance that the contents would spill contaminating the whole area. I didn’t have a big enough bomb to take out everyone, well not and be sure all the contents of the case were atomized. Ah, who am I kidding, I knew how I was going to handle this the moment I landed on the roof. I teleported behind the shadow of the stairwell that led to the lower floors. Quickly I told my suit to cease it’s chameleon mode that made me invisible, and then activated the secondary which allowed me to disguise myself as any of my preset aliases. For all intents and purposes, I looked like a naked earth pony, albeit, in my opinion, a very handsome one. Pulling one of my many false ID’s from a rear pocket of my suit, I held it before me as I boldly stepped out of the shadows.

“Everybody freeze! I said, as I walked into view. “Equestrian Special Service. You are all under arrest!” This met with the expected results.

After a moment of stunned incredulity, both Axle Grease, and his minotaur counterpart gestured toward their respective groups, and I now had over half a dozen crossbows, and dart guns leveled at my body. Two unicorns in the rear of Axle’s group were using their magic to maintain a shield around the whole roof top.

“No worries boss,” the taller of the two said. “Ain’t nothing getting in or out of here. The roof is secure.”

Axle Grease set down the case, and slowly approached me, looking me over as he did so. Perfect.

“I have no idea what you thought was going to happen,” he says sneering at me with disdain. “But you are obviously very new at this. Now drop any weapons you got hidden on you, and get down on your knees. Me and my associates have a few questions we’d like to ask you, and we’d BETTER like the answers.”

“Well, it’s pretty plain to see that I’m unarmed,” I say, making a show of turning around in place, “and it so happens that I also have a few ques-“

“ARE YOU DEAF?!? I SAID get DOWN on your KNEES!” Axle roars, losing his temper.

“Okay, in the first place, there’s no need to shout. I’m standing right here. And in the second place… I’m not you’re momma last night!” I shout back before vanishing from sight.

“Where’d he go? Did he teleport?” one of the goons says.

“No way,” the tall unicorn replies, “This place is sealed tight, and he’s an earth pony. He must be invisible somehow, maybe a preset spell he triggered.”

“I’m on it!” The other unicorn says, bathing the area with the light of his horn.

I smile to myself as the light passes harmlessly across my armor. He’s using a magic nullification spell. Too bad my suit is organic, and isn’t using magic of any kind. Not like I knew more than a few basic spells anyway. A deficit I hoped to remedy in the future.

A warning sounded in my mind from the controlling sprite on my back. I didn’t have much energy left in the suit, I’d better make this quick. Nannysprite tech is a wonderful thing, but it’s powered by my body. The little sprites eat all the sweat and dead skin, etc. from my body and use it for fuel. When there isn’t enough to go on, they can, in times of dire need, draw sustenance from the control sprite on my back, which in turn feeds directly from my body though those two needle like fangs sticking into my spine. This is a last ditch option however, because it will rapidly deplete the users energy reserves, and in extreme cases can be fatal. Personally I avoid the ‘life tap’ at all costs. It scares the hay out of me having a giant bug eating me from the inside out, brr. No, best to just finish this quickly.

I dance about invisibly between ponies and dogs with practiced ease, tapping them in passing with my claws, each of which contains a powerful poison. Nothing fatal, but strong enough to put an Ursa Minor down in agony if I needed to. Before long however my poison reserves had been depleted, and I still had the two unicorns, and Axle Grease to go, as well as the two huge beings that still haven’t moved from the shadows. What the buck was that all about? They didn’t even flinch when I put their boss minotaur on the ground screaming in pain. They just stood there.

I got another warning from the bug on my back, only thirty more seconds of stealth before it would have to life tap me. I quickly made my way to the two unicorns, and used the last dregs of poison in my claws to put them down. It was a gamble taking them out first, but Axle Grease was an earth pony, and as long as I was between him and the stairwell, he had no way out.

With both unicorns down, I used my magic to teleport the case that I had been keeping my eyes on throughout the entire fight over to a nearby roof top. With ten seconds to go, I dropped my cloak. I was standing in front of the stairwell, the light of the full moon bathing me in all it’s radiant glory. Axle Grease stared at me in wide eyed terror.

I knew what he was seeing. A shiny black carapace in the shape of a pony. Two oversized luminescent eyes staring eerily toward him. These were the eyes of my control bug, which made up part of my living helmet. It was so disturbing watching them move from my back up over my head, each time I put this suit on.

I spoke, and when I did, mandibles on either side of my muzzle moved in response.

“Axle Grease…” I said in dark chilling tones.

“Uhhh,” the terrified earth pony said, as I slowly made my way toward him.

“You lost.” I said, stating the very, very, obvious.

“Uhhh,” he said once again. By now I was close enough to see him trembling. Trembling so hard he could barely stand. By the Gods, I was eating this up.

“And now, I am going to wring ever last secret from your mind…” I say, grabbing him, and pulling his face inches away from my chitin encased muzzle.

“Ahhhh…” he says weakly, unable to even scream.

“By... eating… your… BRAIN!” I intone, in a voice straight from the depths of Tartaros, all the while clacking my mandibles menacingly.

I watch as Axle’s eyes roll into the back of his head, as he falls to the roof top, unconscious. I have only a moment to grin to myself before something smashes into the side of my head, knocking me halfway across the roof.

“UNACCEPTABLE!” a voice bellows at me, as one of the two figures advances toward where I have landed. The other one scoops up the unconscious form of Axle Grease like he was a baby colt and with a mighty leap sails off into the night.

I shake my head to try to get it to stop spinning, as I feel the vibrations beneath me. A steady thooom, thooom, thooom, as the other creature makes it’s way toward me. Now freed from the shadows, I can make out the creature clearly. It was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, it looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody. Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, it gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.

I read about one of these in a training manual… What was it? Big Hoof, Sasquach, Yeti, no that wasn’t it… I barely dodge in time as a massive fist impacts the space where most of my body occupied a moment before, I manage to focus enough to teleport to the other side of the roof, but the effort causes a spike of fiery pain to lance through my head. Crap, concussion. Can’t risk using magic again, without the risk of permanent brain damage. As the creature turns and sees where I have gone, the memory in my brain finally sparks. By the beauteous black buttocks of the night goddess!!!

WENDIGO! Oh, I am SO bucked!

Wendigo. Cursed cannibal creature of the north. Strong as a Yeti, bloodthirsty, vicious, and able to track it’s prey almost anywhere. I try desperately to focus enough to teleport, but the pain causes my vision to become spotty. It was between me and the stairwell, so that was out. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, I was going to have to FIGHT it. I nearly lost control of my bowls at the thought. Then realizing what I was wearing, I did so anyway. A second later a voice in my head told me that power levels were now at thirty nine percent. I made a mental note that if by some miracle I survived the next ten minutes, that how I recharged my armor at this point was NEVER going to go into my report.

Although all this happened in a matter of seconds, the wendigo was almost on top of me again as I used my augmented muscles to leap high in the air, executing a perfect double flip which would land me behind the beast where I planned to buck the legs out from under him. (That’s buck like an apple tree, not… never mind). Unfortunately what actually happened, was that the wendigo jumped into the air, caught me by my rear leg, and proceeded to smash me repeatedly into the roof like a toddler with his first Wonderbolts doll. My armor did an excellent job of keeping me from going splat, but the concussive force was scrambling my brain like an egg.

Just as I was resigning myself to a rather inglorious death, the roof below us gave way, dumping us down into the apartment below. As fate would have it there was a wall partition between where myself and my dance partner landed. I ended up belly flopped into a large porcelain bathtub, and the wendigo was in the room adjacent roaring in pain for some reason. As I tried to rise to my hooves, a familiar voice spoke to me in my head.

“Got an idea boss.” The command sprite said into my mind. “Wendigo’s track by scent.”

“Yeah, so?” I sent back.

“Wendigo doesn’t have YOUR scent. Only mine.” He sent back.

This was true, the nannysprite suit was completely self contained.

“Get out of me boss, and turn on the water, and go hide in the back room. I’ll take care of the rest.” The command bug said confidently.

I instantly knew what he was planning. I hated it. I told him so emphatically.

“C’mon boss, there’s no other way, and no time to argue… haul hooves!” The bug insisted.

He was right, I could hear the wendigo in the next room, finally rising to it’s feet. I only had seconds.

“I-I’m sorry,” I say through the link, then I quickly shed my armor.

It rests limply in the tub for a moment, then it fills itself out into the shape it would be had I still been wearing it. I turn on both water taps, and plugging up the sink, I turn it on as well. As I turn to leave one of the arms raise from the suit. I clasp it in farewell. As it lets me go I find a small parasprite in my hand. Far too large to be a nanosprite, I realize in a moment what it is. An infant command bug. A child of the one from my back. Fighting back tears I make my way into the back bedroom from the door opposite the one the wendigo has begun to tear off its hinges. I hear a roar of rage, as it steps into the room. Then through the cracks in the door I see a flash of blue, and smell the scent of ozone. Then the floor shakes as the body of the wendigo crashes down upon it.

I slowly open the door. On the floor of the bathroom in an ever increasing pool of water is the still form of the wendigo. In the tub is the charred remains of my nannysprite suit. It fed on as much water as it could, then released all of it’s energy in the form of a massive electrical discharge, killing them both. Numbly I made my way out of the bathroom, down the hall, and through the living room. In the kitchen I found what I was looking for, a bottle of very hard cider. I never had been much for drink, but I needed one now. I sat the little sprite on the counter, and poured myself a tall glass.

“I’ll take one of those,” a voice as soft as midnight silk said over my shoulder.

I turned around, and there before me was Luna, princess of the night.

“W-what are you doing here?” I asked, my mind numb in shock. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t here bef- wait… “This is… a dream?” I asked, as things began to fall into place.

“Yes Johnny. A particularly vivid dream, I might add.” She says as she pours herself a generous glass, and begins to sip.

I look about the room, perfect in every detail. As swiftly as the thought forms in my mind, Luna speaks.

“This is more than a nightmare isn’t it Johnny? It’s a memory.” Luna says, not as a question, but as a statement of fact.

“Yeah,” I respond gulping cider, “a memory from one of my earliest days as an agent.”

“So,” she says, as if she had all the time in the world, and no other ponies dreams to visit. “Nannysprite technology. Want to tell me about it?” she asks casually.

“Ah, that would be after you went on your... um, extended vacation.” I say somewhat uncomfortably. “Celestia threw herself into all sorts of projects after you were gone. Between Discord, you, and other threats to the kingdom, she was frantic to explore as many options as possible to help keep her people safe.”

“Ponies safe,” Luna amended. “People implies OTHER sentient races.” she said sternly.

“Ah, yes, well then, um, ponies safe.” I say, trying not to offend her. “In any event, one of the discoveries that one of her biologists made, quite by accident, was during his research into ways to control parasprites. He found that parasprites communicated telepathically with one another, and swarms of them shared a kind of ‘hive mind’. Also that their size was largely determined by their environment. She had set up a farm governed by some of her most empathic earth ponies who began specialized breeding programs with parasprites. My former suit was one of the results. It’s parent had been cross bred with certain other species to breed in the desired traits. The large bug on the back was the ‘Nanny’ so to speak, and telepathically directed all the millions of tiny ‘nano’ sprite drones, that linked together to make up the suit. I called him ‘Bob’, he was my partner... he was my friend. My only friend...” I say sadly, taking another gulp of cider. Suddenly an odd thought weasels it’s way into my fore brain. “Luna, why exactly am I suddenly telling you classified Canterlot information?”

“My, my, you caught onto that. I’m very impressed. Simply put, you are in a dream, and in the world of dreams, I make the rules. Up until your assignment, I never looked closely at your thoughts, well, no more so than any other pony in my city, but since you are, in essence, working for me at the moment, I took it upon myself to keep an eye on you when you fall asleep. It seems I was justified in doing so.” She says, not at all appearing to be upset. In fact, she seems rather pleased with me for some reason.

“Well, since I seem to be forced to be so forthcoming, I should probably tell you two other things.” I say, pouring myself another cider, and fighting hard to sound casual. By my teacher’s turgid tushy, the last thing I need is Luna wondering what ELSE I may know.

“And what might those be,” she asks in return, sounding equally as casual.

“Well, in the first place, Celestia abandoned all sprite research after a visit to Ponyville some years back. It seems a certain Pink Party pony accidentally pointed out a huge glaring vulnerability in her tech, in the fact that parasprites lost control of themselves when subjected to varied sonic oscillations.”

“Beg pardon?” She says, raising one elegant eyebrow.

“Music.” I simplified. “Parasprites becomes slaves to music. Celestia was quite surprised to see the basis of her latest battle armor being led out of town by a prancing Pinkie Pie proudly playing a parasprite polka.”

“Would you care to repeat that three times very fast?” She asks, a twinkle of merriment in her eyes.

“Not especially, no.” I reply. “In any event, although the Princess covered it well, secretly she was quiet upset, and made up an excuse to cut her visit short. After she left she quickly paying a visit to the head pony of her parasprite R & D department. Then after saying... um... ‘not nice things...’ she told him to scrap the project entirely. Then she reportedly spent the rest of the afternoon in her cake room... in consultation with captain carrot cake and the marzipan militia. By all accounts, she then lost the battle with will power, but won the war against baked goods.”

Luna smiles at me, a crescent of amusement. “I see now why my sister shows you so much favor, you’re verbosity is a breath of fresh air. Hmm, but what of the second thing you wished to say?” she asks, as she raises her glass to her lips.

“Ah, as to that... Well you do realize that when I wake up, I will have to report to your sister any and all information that you have taken from my mind.” I state matter-of-factually. "Threaten me you may, but this is part of my job, and I have no leeway. I'll have to tell her."

“No, actually you wont.” She says sipping her cider daintily. “When you wake up, you will forget this entire conversation ever happened... Just like the last time.” she adds impishly.

“Last time?!?” I say in alarm my head jerking upright, my ears erect.

“Kidding, kidding. I’m only kidding. This is the first time we have talked like this.” she says, throwing up her hooves in mock surrender. “Although, I must admit, you do have some interesting thoughts rattling around in here.” she says with a feral grin.

Thinking of that, my most recent memory returns to me.

“Wait a second. Before I fell asleep... I was tailing a pony. Or rather he was tailing me. I lured him into an alley, and started to question him, then I felt a pain in the back of my head, and everything went dark. I was suckered.” I forced myself to say. No sense denying the truth.

“Perhaps,” Luna says calmly. “But for you to be here means you are still alive. Whoever did this wants you alive for some reason. Have you learned anything new since last we spoke?”

I quickly fill her in on where I had been, and a description of the pony I was following. I tell her my conclusions about the explosives, and was just about to mention the name I recognized on the list when everything started to fade away.

“Looks like you are waking up Johnny. I wish I could do more for you. But if I don’t hear from you in the next twenty four hours, I’ll start a pony hunt for you, and fill in my sister. Good luck Johnny! Oh, and since you won’t remember any of this, I must admit to finding you to be a VERY fascinating pony.” She says, that feral grin returning. Those are the last words I hear from the princess, as I struggle back into the world of consciousness.