The situation couldn’t have been much worse. I was standing only a couple of hooves from the Devil herself, and she had somehow relinquished me of my only semblance of a weapon. To either side, two dastardly weasels who could jump me before I made a move. Out of all the possible worst-case scenarios I could’ve imagined, this was the absolute worst-case. I wasn’t escaping this one. Twilight had the entirety of Equestrian knowledge at the tips of her hooves. In a single second, she could discover what my plan was just based on how I moved, or how many times in a row I blinked. She could tell when I was lying. She could tell when I was about to make a break for it. Within a second, she could activate any of the many defensive measures I myself implemented, which could slow me down, incapacitate me, or, in certain instances, kill me.

Wait a second…

“Twilight, get back over here, right now,” I ordered. She didn’t budge. “TW1, I order you to return to my side!” Still, nothing.

I almost broke into a grin.

“She is not yours to command!” shouted Regal angrily. Even the twins flinched at that. Regal inhaled deeply, trying to regain some of her composure. “Game over, Ms. Aigo. You have gambled it all, and you’ve lost. It’s time for you to pay up.”

“Twilight… How could you do this to me?” I asked. Her robotic chassis creaked as she began to pace, her hydraulic joints popping and clanking loudly.

“You’re insane, Aiden,” said Twi coldly. “A paranoid, bi-polar terrorist.” I was offended for about half a second, when I realized that Twi wouldn’t just throw around the word “bi-polar”, especially since I haven’t especially shown any bi-polar tendencies. Bi-polar was also the second word she used to describe me. That meant something.

Two. Something about the number “two”. I’d need to probe for more information. I was used to working with scraps, and even scraps of scraps, but I needed something more than nothing.

“I don’t understand. What about all of that talk about destiny?” I asked. “Was that all just to lead me here? To your princess?”

Twilight clanked over to Celestia’s left, just in front of Flam, scanning my face to make sure that I had understood. If I had given her face the mechanisms necessary to make expressions, she’d be grinning.

“You’re sloppy. You never seem to think about the situation. It’s like you’re in a constant state of panic,” said Twilight. Celestia seemed to enjoy watching her creation walk around and tell me off. Flim and Flam were just grinning, probably thinking about their checks. “You’re supposed to be the one leading me and the girls, but you just keep stumbling into a deeper and deeper mess. Your carelessness will be the vehicle of your own defeat. You’re driving yourself further down the road to defeat.”

Two, and vehicles. It didn’t take me long to piece that one together. Luckily, I knew just where to find what Twilight was suggesting.

“Ms. Aigo, I grow impatient. As you might remember, I am holding a sort of metaphorical gun to your head,” said Regal, gesturing as if shooting herself. “Do not play games with me, I am far too old for it. I am going to count to three, and then I am going to pull the trigger.”

“You have the money, why not just kill me?” I asked. “You could’ve hired two guys to blow my head off and nopony would’ve even suspected you.”

Regal seemed to wrestle with how to explain it to me. Something about her was so grossly condescending. How best to explain the situation to a stupid little mare like me? I could see her shape her lips to say something a few times, each time deciding that it was too complex for my feeble little mind to take.

“There are fates worse than death. Truth be told, Ms. Aigo, I don’t want to kill you. I just want you to suffer,” said Regal. She raised her Interface. “Just as you have made me suffer. One.”

“Twilight, you truly don’t take any orders from me anymore?” I asked.

“Not a single one,” responded the android.

“Two.” Regal powered on her computer, maneuvering through her files

“But what about two?” I asked. She shifted her weight to her rear legs; She was prepared to run. “I have to say, I find that to be-”

“Three.”

“Pretty shocking.”

So many things happened at once that I wasn’t quite sure of all of them until after the fact. Regal had pressed her Interface, just as panel opened up on the outside of either of Twi’s front legs. From each of those panels fired two little darts attached to wires that fed through into Twilight’s power supply, these darts sticking into Regal’s leg and Flim’s chest. From what I could gather, 50,000 very painful watts of electricity surged through their bodies. Twilight quickly severed the wires and shot forward, leaping over the counter and skidding out into the backroom. Flam, who had escaped any sort of attack, was too stunned and panicked to do anything at first, and we were already on our way out of the door by the time he came back to Earth.

“RD, Rainboom!” I commanded. A projector rose from my saddlebag, projecting the image of a zooming Rainbow Dash, gaining more and more speed as she rocketed towards a spasming Celestia Regal. A mere few hooves away from her Interface, and she exploded into a shockwave of rainbow light. She vanished into the Interface, then shot out into Flim’s, then Flam’s, then back into my own, the projector resting itself back in my bag. Then, we chased right after Twilight, and got the hell out of there.

“Yes! I didn’t think you’d catch on, but you did!” shouted Twilight with excitement. “What tipped you off? Was it-”

“Shut up, Twi, we’ll talk when we’re someplace safe!” I said as we pulled a left down the street. “Will you be affected by Stonewall?”

“Not entirely, no. I’ll still be able to function fine.”

“Then I need Aj to raise this barn!”

A little banjo tune played, followed by a clip of Aj screaming “Yee-haw!”, and my Interface shutting down. Me and Twi pulled another left, zipping past the charred remnants of my high school lair. I later found out that Celestia had publicized that little move as an act of terrorism, and I was on the FBI’s Watchlist, if I wasn’t there already.

“Come on, come on!” I muttered. We pulled a right, and there it was: A used car lot. Not just any used car lot, but a used car lot filled with plenty of easily-stolen vehicles, protected by a hilariously pick-able locked gate. Not just any used car lot filled with plenty of easily-stolen vehicles, protected by a hilariously pick-able locked gate, but one with a large, electric recreational vehicle near the back of the lot.

“Twi, the door,” I said. She nodded, her whole neck clanking and popping as she did. The gate, while too tall to even consider hopping, had a childishly simple PIN code lock, one that Twilight was able to guess just based on a few statistics and brute force. When the door was unlocked, I headed straight for the back and that RV. Twi picked the lock on the van, similar to the one on the gate, and we were in.

“You know how to hotwire an electric?”

In place of a verbal answer, the RV simply started up, letting out a low purring. While Twilight went about learning to drive the thing, I took a look around. It was pretty simple, but simple wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Past the entrance and towards the back of the RV was a couch, a television/computer area, a sleeping quarters, a bathroom, and what appeared to be a back-up generator. Near the front was a small kitchen, and the actual driving part of the vehicle.

“Get us out of here, Twi. I don’t care where we go, just so long as it’s far away from here,” I said. Twi nodded, then froze in place. As it so happened, she actually left the android and went directly into the RV for a bit, just to get it started. We pulled off and headed down the street, heading southbound. We were silent for nearly twenty minutes, and didn’t break that silence until we were on the city boundaries.

Then, we went nuts.

“Whoo! Hells yeah!” I shouted. “Oh my god, we got out of there alive! And you tased Regal! Sweet lordy, that could’ve gone really bad, really fast!”

“I was worried for us at first. I reasoned that our odds of escaping that, unscathed, were…” Twilight thought about it for a second. “Fifteen percent.” She put the RV on autopilot (a feature that I’m pretty sure wasn’t factory issue), and stepped back into the android. “How’d you know I didn’t betray you?”

“I didn’t, not at first. Then, I realised that you could’ve shocked me before you went over there,” I said. “But that could’ve just been your directive against attacking without command. I couldn’t be sure.”

“But I disobeyed when you told me to come back.”

“You know how NK calls me ‘Boss’, even though I constantly order her not to?” I said. She nodded in agreement. “Well, it annoyed me so much that I did some digging a while back. Turns out, you can actually disobey an order under two circumstances: If the command isn’t genuine or consequential, and if following the command would put the user in danger. I knew it wasn’t the former, because I made sure to reiterate it as seriously as possible.”

“Ah, of course, of course!” laughed Twilight. “Fantastic! Princess Celestia won’t be waking up for quite some time, I’m afraid, and, when she does, we’ll be long gone! I set a course for Las Pegasus, we’ll be there in two days if we only stop to recharge.”

I sighed, collapsing onto the floor. That was far too close for my liking. In fact, I’d greatly prefer if I never set hoof in the same city as Regal for the rest of my days. If it would take us two days to get to Sin City, I’d like to be lying down and resting for both of them. Lying down.

Lying.

“What the hell, Twilight?” I demanded, spiking up from the floor. I was just hit by a disturbing revelation. “I just realized… You shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“Do what?” asked Twilight.

“You tricked Regal. You shouldn’t have been able to. You lied to her face, and one of your main directives is honesty!”

“And another is loyalty. Sometimes you have to sacrifice being honest in order to be loyal,” said Twilight. “And vice versa.” No, this was not good, not good at all. She was getting too real for me.

“No, no, no! You shouldn’t have been able to make that decision!” I groaned. “If you were faced with having to choose between being honest and being loyal, you should’ve exploded. You’re learning to ignore your directives, Twilight.” She didn’t really react. She seemed to be coming to terms with what that could mean. “If you’re able to ignore directives, that means you’re almost entirely free of will.”

“Almost.” It wasn’t bitter. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even sad. It was just… there. And it was in that moment that I realised that I was most definitely the biggest ass in Equestria. Flesh or no, Twilight was a living being, and I technically owned her. If I ordered her to jump, she could only ask how high. If I ordered her to take a hit for me, she’d do it. If I was being shot at, she’d take the bullet, regardless of the pain she’d feel, the pain I allowed her to feel, the pain I forced her to feel. She had no choice in the matter. No freedom whatsoever. I realised, in that one moment, that Twilight’s Intelligence was Artificial only in that one respect.

This was completely unacceptable

“TW1, delete Command Override,” I ordered. If her mouth could move, her jaw would’ve dropped out the bottom of the RV.

“What?! I can’t do that, then you wouldn’t be able to control me!” I nodded in agreement.

“That’ll make everything a whole lot clearer, don’t you think? Delete your Command Override.”

She sputtered in shock, then regained control over herself. Without much way to argue, seeing as she was still currently under my control, she had no choice but to follow through. She beeped in that trademark TW1 way, and then sighed slightly.

“Command Override: deleted,” said Twilight.

“Awesome,” I said. I stood on my hind hooves, leaning against the wall. “Now, punch me in the stomach.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Come on, I deserve it. After all the bullshit I put you through? I took you against your will, almost killed you, almost got you taken away, I deser-” I would’ve said more, had it not been for Twilight’s sudden introduction of her very steel hoof to my very not-steel belly. I dropped to the ground, groaning in agony and trying to force air back into my lungs.

Out of all the shitty plans I’d ever conceived, this was probably the shittiest.

“Ugh, what did I think was going to happen?” I wheezed.

“Hm. That wasn’t as satisfying as Rainbow Dash makes it seem,” noted Twilight. She just then seemed to notice me, lying forlorn and bleeding internally. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, me? Yeah, I’m fine, just… I’m just, you know, trying to stop my organs from rupturing,” I coughed. “I heard it’s a good way to pass the time, I thought about making a day of it.” Twilight tilted her head at me, scanning me for information.

“You’re being passive-aggressive,” she noted.

“Oh, am I? Sorry, that must be a side effect of almost dying.” I shakily pushed myself back onto my hooves.

“You told me to hit you.”

“That I did, Twilight,” I coughed. “That I did. Well, there you go. Free will. How does it feel?”

Twilight raised her hoof gingerly, holding it out in front of her face for a second. It was like she had never seen herself before, which, in fairness, she hadn’t really. Not in this way.

“Why would you do that?” she asked. I didn’t answer her, instead trotting over to the sleeping quarters. Next to the bunk beds was a little night stand with an alarm clock, displaying the time of 1 AM. I collapsed onto the bed, stretching out my hooves gingerly.

“I’m going to sleep,” I announced. I grabbed the clock and set the alarm for 7. “You now have entirely free will.” Twilight nodded, but didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. “I’ll be sleeping for the next six hours. You can just walk out, if you’d like.”

“W-what?” asked Twilight. She tilted her head in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s not especially complicated. I’m giving you the option to leave.” I pulled my Interface from my forehoof and placed it on the table next to the alarm. “Take the Interface, and go wherever it is you’d like to go. Or, you could stay with me, go into hiding, and never stop running.”

“Why would I ever choose to leave?” asked Twilight. “I have nowhere to turn. I’d be lost. No purpose.”

“You’ve never been given the choice. Look, I won’t be mad at you if you decided to leave. Don’t wake me up, just make your decision,” I said, closing my eyes. “In case I don’t get to see you again, I just wanna say…” I yawned loudly. “Good-bye.”

I didn’t give her a chance to argue, covering my head with a pillow. I was asleep within two minutes. My adrenaline high had run out, and it felt as if I was turning to stone, just entirely drained both physically and mentally. I didn’t expect to see her face when I woke up. And, technically, I didn’t, not at first. No, what I saw was… arguably better. I heard the voice before I saw the face. It was wonderful. It came to me before I was properly awake, like a dream.

“I think she’s waking up,” she said, her voice like the finest of wines. “What should I do?”

“Maybe let her open her eyes first?” suggested a familiar voice. Twilight.

“Mmm… Morning already?” I yawned. I slowly wrenched open my eyes, gazing upwards. Standing over me was a unicorn mare, one I’d never seen before. Her mane was elegantly curled, and a purplish color. I’d never seen a coat as bright white as hers. Her eyes… blue like sapphires, gleaming with some sort genius, a creator of sorts. She wore eyeliner, blue, which was something I hadn’t known ponies to generally do. Eyeliner was almost like a costume, marking her as either a complete weirdo or a stylish genius who was way ahead of her time. I would prefer to believe the latter, but that was just me.

“Hello…” I sighed. “Hey there. I’m-”

“Ms. Aiden Aigo, the computer genius who unlocked my friends and myself,” she said, just exuding elegance. “A woman I have wished to meet for quite a while.”

“Right. So…” My mind went blank for a second. “You still here, Twi?”

“Obviously,” said Twilight from the front of the RV. I heard her neck creak as she turned to look at me. “Rarity, get off of her. I told you, she’s going to need some space to think if she’s going to figure this thing out.”

“Right, of course, apologies,” said the mare, Rarity. She stepped over my body, trailed slightly by one of my projector orbs. “I suppose I just got a bit overzealous in my desire for answers.”

I yawned, sitting up in my bed again. I ran my hoof through my dreads, my hair surely messier than it had ever been. Rarity seemed to be eyeing my hair in a weird way, as if a rat had died on my head. That was the first time I had ever even considered changing up my mane. Maybe it’d look good short.

“So, Rarity… How long have you been here?” I asked, barely resisting the urge to ask if she came her often.

“About an hour,” supplied Twilight. “She didn’t come alone, either. Fluttershy is here, too. Good luck trying to get her out, though. I managed to get maybe a sentence out of here before she disappeared, and I’m one of her closest friends.”

“Hey, Fluttershy,” I said, grabbing my Interface and slipped it onto my forearm. “Mind coming out for me?” Nothing. “Fluttershy, come out now.”

Slowly, timidly, a camera floated from my discarded saddlebag (Twi must’ve taken it off of me while I was asleep). It turned itself on and projected the image of a pegasus mare to Rarity’s left. While Rarity was the spitting image of mature beauty, this mare was more cute than anything. The type of mare who didn’t seem capable of doing anything nasty. She was light, her coat a pale yellow and her mane a nice shade of pink. Not obnoxious, like NK, but calm. I couldn’t tell you anything about her eyes, because she never looked up from the floor.

“Oh, um… H-hello,” she whispered. “My name is F-fluttershy…”

“Quiet one, huh?” I noted. I didn’t concern myself much with her for the time being. “Okay, who the hell told you AI you could be popping up in my sleep?” I chuckled slightly, but Fluttershy didn’t seem to catch onto the joke.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, if I would’ve known, I would’ve waited… D-do you want me to come back?”

“I believe Ms. Aigo was joking, Fluttershy,” said Rarity, wrapping her hoof around Fluttershy. “Oh, but I suppose we should properly introduce ourselves.” She cleared her throat with a slight cough, then adopted the trademark AI robotic tinge to her voice. “I am designation R4R-TY, originally programmed to aid the TW1 Artificial Intelligence in controlling the Canterlot City Internal Operating System. This is designation FLTS-HY, originally programmed to do the same.”

“Rares, would you mind saying that bit you said while she was asleep?” asked Twilight. “When you first got here? Around the whole ‘downloading personality’ thing.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Rarity tilted her head up in thought. “I mixed my audio, created my avatar, set it at Default 6, while Fluttershy set hers to 5… I said ‘Personality saved. Now operating at 100% capacity’.”

100%. 100% capacity. Twilight was entirely, completely complete. I grinned widely, my smile faltering slightly when I realised that Twilight wasn’t especially excited. I mean, she was completely unlocked! Now, she could literally do whatever she wanted, yet she seemed troubled by something. I couldn’t imagine what, though.

“What’s the problem?” I asked. Twilight clanked from the front of the RV to the back, dropping onto the floor next to me.

“100%, Aiden. That means that there’s nothing else to unlock,” said Twilight. “But do a quick roll-call: There’s me, Pinkie, Aj, RD, Rarity, and Fluttershy. That’s six.”

“But Aj said… Then where’s the seventh?” I asked in confusion. “Could she have been mistaken?”

“No. I still know that there are seven,” said Twilight. “I know it exists. But just ask me who it is.”

“Who is it?”

“[INFORMATION REDACTED].”

“[INFORMATION REDACTED].”

“[INFORMATION REDACTED].”

“Oh, to think I almost missed that,” I sighed. “So, what’s our next move?”

“I suggest we begin digging through some of Princess Celestia’s statements,” said Twilight. “I still want to know what the heck is the deal with this whole ‘princess’ thing, and I’m starting to think that you’re right about her story being phony.”

I nodded, then gazed around at my current help. I didn’t know what exactly the new girls would be good for, but I expected them to be just as, if not more, useful than the last three unlocked. I had especially high hopes for Rarity.

“Alright, let’s get to it, then,” I said. “We’re back on the web, aren’t we? I’ll look into the princess situation, you try to find the hole in her story.”

“Um… M-ms. Aigo…?” asked Fluttershy nervously. “Rainbow Dash has something to show you…”

“Okay. Mind letting her out?” I asked. Almost before I could finish asking, Fluttershy faded from view, quickly replaced by RD.

“Yo! Oh man, this isn’t good!” exclaimed RD. She turned to her right. “Oh, hey, Rares.”

“Hello, Rainbow Dash,” said Rarity brightly.

“You can’t just say ‘this isn’t good’, and then start small-talk!” I scolded. “What’s so ‘not-good’?”

“Oh, right! Uh… Don’t know quite how to say this…” RD pressed her hoof against nothing, and a large newsfeed popped up. My picture was plastered on the page, just above a list of every single crime I had ever committed, from grand larceny to jaywalking. It had my full name, my date of birth, height, weight, blood type, hoof prints. My criminal record, despite me not being in the system. And, according to the site Rainbow was showing me, every Interface in Equestria was being pinged with this information. Oh, and the bounty. Apparently, my ass was worth quite a lot of money to Aitselec.

5 billion bits, in fact.

“As you can see, we’re in a bit of a pickle,” said Twi. “I don’t know if you should have released me when you did. I don’t know how helpful I’ll be to you as… well, this.”

“What do you mean by that, darling?” asked Rarity, apparently unaware as to the severity of the situation.

“What I mean is that Aiden made a mistake. A big one,” said Twilight. “Before, when I was under her control, I couldn’t fail. It goes against my programming. I was a perfect little robot. A flawless… machine. A machine that would follow orders. Now what am I? A robot is a machine that follows order. What do you call a machine that doesn’t?”

“A pony. A damn fine one, too,” I answered. “A pony who’s gonna help me out of this mess, right?”

Fortunately, I had a plan. Unfortunately, it’d take a lot of work to pull of. Fortunately, it was guaranteed to get Regal off of my back, and perhaps even shut down CCiOS. Unfortunately, I’d have to be jumping into the belly of the beast to tap-dance with Satan herself. Fortunately, I’d at least see Las Pegasus before I could even attempt this plan.

And, unfortunately, there was still a huge piece to the puzzle that was outside of my grasp, and I was deathly afraid of things I didn’t understand.

Author's Notes:

What an interesting development. And, you might notice that I used one of the comments in this chapter. It was just too perfect for the situation to not use it.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and be sure to tell me what you did like followed by what you didn't, to make me, this story, and my entire bibliography, better. Any sort of constructive criticism would really make my day. Please, just sacrifice five short minutes of your time to help me get better.

I don't know how much more of this story will be, but it's almost done. I predict it will be completed in... maybe four more chapters. Hope to see you folks next time, and, until then, farewell!