Twilight shook in her seat, silently seething as she gave the subject her best 'silent treatment'.

"Oh c'mon, I said I was sorry!" the subject protested, fiddling with the crafts controls as their vessel cut through the darkened blue depths around them. "... are you still giving me the cold shoulder? ... Yeah, you are. Bummer. Mind if I just ramble, then?"

The subject waited for her to respond, eliciting a glower from Twilight in response. Did she think she was stupid? To respond at this point would be completely pointless, and would undo all her actions to this point. Instead of replying, Twilight decided to peer out the crafts two large view windows. As far as she could see from her admittedly limited viewpoint, the craft was actually shaped like that of a dragonfly. The control room she had been plopped down into appeared to be the dragonflys head, with the body trailing off behind them with various propulsion engines built into the tail and the wings.

It really was a truly impressive craft, all things considered. Despite the fact that she obviously didn't follow any safety regulations, or go through the proper patent licensing... How did she do this? All by herself, at that? For one pony to have been able to make something like this, and in such a seemingly short amount of time without even a whisper escaping to create a rumor for other ponies to go off of...

Maybe her friend Death Trap, the strange floating pony she'd been seen communing with helped her? Wait... she had heard another voice, when she was still within the confines of the subjects base. What did she call the voice? Square Tea? Bare Knee? Very Airy? Twilight scrunched her brow, trying to remember the strange ponies name.

"Qwerty," Twilight half mumbled to herself, pondering the implications of a pony having such an... odd name...

"Yes, Miss Sparkle?" the voice droned, a face appearing to her left side.

"AGH!" Twilight yelped, flinching herself away from the sudden intrusion. Which given the fact that she was strapped into a pony friendly seat, was disturbingly little. "I... you..." she stuttered, looking back and forth between the newly appeared pony and towards the tail section of the craft. There had to be another room back there, where the pony had been until this point. There was no other option. "Whered did you come from?" she finally settled for, trying to mask her breathing with a careful sigh.

The pony had a sleet grey coat, with mane and tail that were barely only a perceptible shade darker. She -'at least, Twilight thought, she looks like a mare. something still seems... off though...'- had pupils the same shade as her coat, and Twilight found it a bit of a challenge to stop herself from going crosseyed while looking at her. Her side was turned towards her, so Twilight snuck a stealthy look at her cutie mark. It was common practice, after all to check out ones cutie mark so that they could more properly foster a friendship with them. Her books said so.

What at first glance appeared to be nothing more than unrelated lines and circles stood out to Twilight. It was three lines of numbers, all consisting of zeros and ones. 01111001 01100101 01110011. Twilight suppressed a momentary bout of confusion, what could a cutiemark like that even mean? Were they really good at math? Something about the structure looked familiar to her as well, but she couldn't quite place it...

"I was in standby mode, but then you requested my presence," Qwerty stated in a dull tone, causing Twilights ears to splay at the ponies inexpressive features. It was like she was trying to communicate without emoting, and for an expressions heavy species like ponies this was its own area of offputting.

"I... did?" Twilight muttered, trying to formulate a response.

"Yes, you stated-," she started, leaving her mouth hanging open as one of the most terrifying moments ever happened in front of Twilight. Twilights own voice started speaking from the ponies mouth, parroting back her last words at her.

Twilight sat stock still, slowly turning to look rigidly at Gaige. She appeared to be taking this relatively well, given exactly what was currently occupying the cabin in between them.

"Ummm," Twilight started shakily, trying to gain the subjects attention. "Excuse me? Mrs, Gaige? I have to ask... you are aware that your assistant is a changeling, are you not?"

"What?" the subject barked, taking her attention away from the controls before her. She blinked owlishly at Twilight, before looking back at the newly discovered changeling. "Changeling?" she asked, looking back and forth from Twilight to Qwerty.

She didn't know. Twilight instantly brightened at this, a single changeling would be easy to knock out. After revealing a trusted assistant to be a heinous deceiver, there was no way that the subject would view Twilight with suspicion past that point! After all, she would have just helped her uncover a sinister plot to infiltrate her inner sanctum!

"Qwerty, your mouth's hanging open," the subject stated, seemingly dismissing Twilights words of warning.

"Apologies, mistress, my jaw appears to have jammed," the changeling stated, her mouth still hanging wide open but thankfully having returned to her androgynous own.

"Again? C'mon, I just fixed that like, yesterday!" the subject exclaimed, reaching over to grab the changelings head... AND TWIST IT OFF WITH AN AUDIBLE POP.

She cradled the head in her lap, a series of tools sprouting from her mechanical arm as Twilight looked on in horror. The next few seconds passed with relative peace, the sharp hisses and whirrs emanating from the subject as she worked on the severed head. Twilight steeled her resolve, noting an inconsistency. Even though the subject had almost cruelly torn the changelings head from its body... there were no fluids. No gushing blood that should have occurred from such a beheading. Something wasn't right.

She peered over, leaning as far as she could in her seatbelt as she could. The top of the neck ended in a stump... but there was no blood. There was no spine, no bones, no blood vessels or anything else she was familiar with. It was a collection of metal tubes and circuits. Oh god, it wasn't a changeling, it wasn't even a real pony. Twilight began shaking in place, her gaze tentatively traveling its way back over to latch onto the subject.

"My apologies, Miss Sparkle," the disembodied head stated in Gaiges grip, causing Twilights' eyes to grow wide. "I appear to have been ignoring you selfishly due to my own concerns. You requested my presence, if I recall?"

Twilights eyes rolled upwards into her head, her body jerking as she fell unconscious.

Twilight peered blearily out the window, trying to come up with a way to assuage her previous actions. She had regained consciousness and upon seeing the artificial pony standing beside her -head restored-, she had overreacted. By punching her as hard as she could. She hadn't yet apologized, and really hadn't the first idea about how she should.

Qwerty was still standing beside her, her gaze calm and unaccusing from the unwarranted assault Twilight had perpetrated against her. Why didn't she say anything?!

"I..." Twilight started, flinching as Qwerty cocked her head to the side in response.

"Yes?" she asked, her eyes unblinking. "Have you decided on what it was you requested my presence for?"

"Are... aren't you mad? Even a little?" Twilight choked out, finding it hard to keep her eye contact with the pony next to her.

"Why would I be mad? You have caused me no damage, and have relieved stress from yourself. There has been nothing to get angry over, seeing as you did not do your actions in anger. I can not fault you for being afraid of me."

Twilight blinked, staring at the pony as she realized she wasn't even breathing. She looked just like a pony... but everything was just a little... bit... off...

"What... are you?" she finally settled on.

"I am Qwerty Mark XXIII," Qwerty responded immediately, "Quintessence With Every Real Technical Yearning, to be specific. Apologies, while my mistress is good with a wrench," she waved a hoof to gesture at Gaige, "She has proven to be less than adept regarding naming and acronyms. As it so happens, She named me first, and attempted to figure out an acronym from the letters after the fact. As to more accurately 'what' I am, I am an artificial pony, whose mental structure was copied and constructed from Mistress Gaiges own."

"I..." Twilight started, thinking on what she had said. 'Mental structure'? That didn't sound right... "What do you mean, copied?"

"While I am grade A awesomesauce at robotics and all that junk," the subject spoke up, startling Twilight. "I will admit I haz next to no experience creating artificial intelligence before I came to Equestria. So I made Qwerty here while I was trying to upgrade something else. Up to Mark ten actually went into an entirely different project, as did everything up until twenty. Qwerty here is third gen, so she's so far the most advanced. She seems to be based off my logic -unlike the last two jackoffs,- so she's proven to be quite effective in regard to day to day business. I'm thinking with the next set of Marks I should try biomechanics. Hey Twilight, can I have a couple of your eggs?"

Twilight froze in her seat, trying to process what the subject had just asked her. She couldn't possibly mean what she thought she meant.

"Umm... pardon?" she coughed, a blush forcing its way to her cheeks.

"Eggs, yours. From inside you. Unfertilized. It wouldn't even be that big of an ordeal for you, just a quick sleeping drug, I cut you open and take a single egg out of your ovaries -unless ponies actually healthily produce more than one egg a month, in which case we could go further,- seal you back up, and you'd wake up a bit sore. A day later, you wouldn't even know it!" Gaige exclaimed, sending Twilight a happy looking smile. As if what she had asked hadn't been one of the most invasive things Twilight had ever heard uttered.

She... she didn't even sound like she thought it was that big of a deal... and she WAS asking, instead of just taking...

"I... no. I can't in good conscience agree to that. I have no idea how you would enact such a procedure, but I can't think up a single situation where that would be within the law." Twilight nodded in a self satisfied manner, she managed to get her point across without a tone of an antagonist.

"Oh, ok. Guess I'll put an add out in the local paper. How much do you think would be good for an egg? Fifty pounds of gold sound good? I'll also need to get some sperm samples, maybe I can collaborate with Ponyville Medical..."

Twilight gaped for a moment, lost in the subjects words. FIFTY. POUNDS. She knew more than one pony who would be more than willing to take some discomfort for that amount of liquidatable materials. But how the hay had she gotten hold of so much gold?

"I... but if you did that, you might run out!" Twilight hurriedly reasoned, "Just as a matter of inquiry, exactly how many... pounds of gold would you say you had, approximately?" she asked, hoping her question didn't sound too out of place.

"Pounds?" Gaige parroted back at her. "Uhh... carry the one... Screw it, much easier just to go with the higher numbers. I got just over... seventeen tonnes. Yeah. Seventeen. I hit a vein in the badlands recently, got a whole tonne from that..."

Twilight goggled at her companion, shaken by how easily she tossed around such words. Could she be lying? She didn't sound like she was, but Twilight couldn't be certain. And if she actually had that much precious material just lying around... Her spoken desire for equestrian biological samples might just pan out for her.

"Hey Twilight, How uhhh... 'comfortable' are you with the current situation?" Gaige asked, looking at her sideways.

"I... guess I'm good?" Twilight responded to the oddly timed question. "Why?"

"Oh, I'm just reading some messages I've gotten from some... friends," Gaige said evasively, her lying having worse tells than Applejack. "Yeah, friends. Anyway, I've told them about you and one of them actually had a question. For you."

Twilight peered past Gaiges arm at the screen she had been reading before her. "On a scale from one to..." Twilight stopped, her eyes tracking the rest of the message. Her voice petered out, as Gaige hurriedly turned her viewing portal off. She gave Twilight a sidelong apologetic glance, nervously grinning.

"Gaige... is 'foalcon rapefic' what I think it applies to?" she asked evenly.

"If you think that it is a term to apply to meaning extremely messed up, than yes. Don't mind the wording, I'm just more interested in your answer."

"I don't think I'm comfortable with you telling these... ponies about me. Please refrain from talking about me in the future." Twilight measured her breathing, careful strokes to prevent her anger coming to the surface.

"Oh. Okay. Still care to answer the question, though?" the subject replied with a smile.

"... I... I'd be lying if I found this to be a comfortable situation. I'm continuously assailed with information that no Equestrian has even dreamed of, so I should theoretically be happy. Free knowledge, granted to me without reason or compromise? I could easily spend days writing about the things I've already seen," Twilight gestured out past the windows to a passing fish, its multihued body only offset by a wicked set of teeth that hung from its jaw. "But all this information... it has a sense of taint to it. Like by simply learning about it is wrong, simply because I've gone the wrong way acquiring it. So... I guess I feel comfortable in the fact that you're not outright putting me into dangerous situations... but I know of your exploits. I felt... powerless in Canterlot," she admitted, her gaze dropping to the floor.

"I've never felt that weak. That helpless. Theres literally nothing I could do to stop you if you simply wanted to take something from me, but you just keep... offering me new information. Freely. It's... off putting. Like you're trying to trick me out my goals..."

"What are your goals?" Gaige asked, causing Twilights panicked gaze to snap back up towards hers. "You're trying to get the password, obviously, but why are YOU here? Celestia could have petitioned for a different pony to be placed in your stead, and in fact you could have voiced your own protests on the matter. But as far as I know, you didn't. So... why?"

"I..." Twilight started. Why she was here... "Because you're dangerous. Being around you is dangerous, and the tales that have spouted up in the short time since you've emigrated to Equestria... some of them are frankly monstrous. I can't in good conscience let somepony else take my place, even if it means that I am in turn in danger."

Gaige started chuckling to herself, a low sound that bounced around the airtight cabin. "Are you willing to risk your life, Twilight? In case being around me turns out to be just as bad as those tales?~"

Twilight steeled her jaw, her tone clear in her defiance to the subjects words. "I will. So others don't have to."

"Admirable," Gaige stated with a laugh. "Lets hope nothing bad happens all the same, shall we?" her expression grew thoughtful, as a wide grin spread across her face. "Hey Twilight, since we're friends now, how about a game? If you can tell me what Qwertys' cutiemark means by the end of the day, I'll give you the password. And not some nonsense like 'the code to get in is the code to get on', or some other such password that has no context to your goals and is simply a personal joke for me. That code, the one you actually want. The one to disable the jammers.~"

Twilight thought on her words, unable to find any deception. It sounded too good to be true, but the subject had thus far proven to be erratic in her goals and motives. It was entirely plausible she was being earnest. If she was... there was no harm in accepting. Simply inspecting a cutie mark and hypothesizing on potential meanings? There was almost no downside to this.

"I... accept," Twilight stated, nodding her head. the words 'since we're friends now' rang back through her head as she thought. If she was just given permission to be more friendly with the subject... She might as well start referring to her by her actual name. Friends called their friends by their names and not their titles, right? And as a student of friendship, she should know. "Till the end of the day? That sounds more than fair... Jordan," she pushed the unfamiliar name out of her mouth, stumbling over the odd sound. It was still her name though, as Celestia herself had called her. Her first name, too! Jordan Gaige was an odd name for a pony. But she wasn't really a pony, now was she?

Twilights sight was suddenly obscured by a thin metal barrel pointed straight at her forehead. Looking past the end of the barrel, her eyes traced the contours of a device which had previously been tightly harnessed within the folds of the subjects belt. Looking past that... Twilights blood froze in her veins.

She was staring at her, her eyes filled with palpable rage. Teeth stood gritted in the open snarl of a predator, and Twilight found herself shrinking inwards upon herself to get as far away from the sight as she could.

"DON'T. FUCKING. CALL ME THAT, " she ground out, her tone laced with fury Twilight had only seen once before. "That name was given to me as a collar, a leash. Its only purpose was to USE me as that man saw fit. To mold me into the perfect little doll HE wanted."

Twilights breath caught in her thought, refusing to move as the subjects rage instantly melted and was replaced by an earnest smile. The L shaped device which had been shoved into her face returned to her belt, and Twilight found herself able to breath again.

"Sorry, just a bit of a sore point for me. Just call me Gaige, k?" she stated cheerfully.

Twilight was right. She wasn't a pony. Not even close.

Author's Notes:

Enh, at least this chapters longer than the first one.

I had acronyms as 'anagrams' before I got halfway through spellcheck and realized something felt wrong...

Yes, Gaige has access to the comments section. Tis cannon, indeed. She learned how to do certain various interdimensional stunts via the Displaced that helped her escape from the prison, allowing her to basically log onto any dimensions version of the internet, at any time. So yeah, she's come across several dimensional variants of the internet where her life is being written as a fictional story. She doesn't really seem to care, all things to be honest.

Gamer4COD asks; Twilight; on a scale of one to foalcon rapefic, how fucked do you think you are?

Uhh... Well I asked her... she seems allright. I think I might have scared her though...

Trithtale asks; To Gage: When was the last time you had a nice, cool, glass of Italian Creme Soda?

Ehn, about a month before I came here, I guess? We just call it cream soda around there, though...

As always leave a question for Gaige or Twilight! They'll answer your questions, one way or another!~