In a large laboratory in the capital city of the Human Kingdom, a lone hooded figure stood over a work table full of different tools, parts, components, crystals, and wires which were all perfectly organized with machine-like precision, as was everything in the lab. His featureless blue eyes were two polished and perfectly clear lab grown sapphire orbs that faintly glowed with an inner light due to the magic energy from the enchantments put on them that connected them to his brain and allowed them to serve as functional eyes. His noseless mechanical face had overlapping sliding plates over his mouth and jaws that served as "lips" and as the walls of his tongueless mouth which hid his high quality industrial steel artificial teeth which were mainly just for show, though he did use them to cut wires on occasion. When he spoke his voice had a slight metallic reverberation to it, the movements of his mouth didn't perfectly line up with his words, and a blue light flashed in the back of his mouth as his iolite vocalizer lit up with each sound it made. The entirety of his jointed metallic exterior consisted of bland unpolished copper.

His body was unnaturally still. He displayed zero body language whatsoever, save for the occasional blink if he was particularly surprised by something and very rarely even a slight facial expression. He made no gestures while he spoke nor any other unnecessary movements that a normal individual would make unless he very deliberately intended to do so, and even when he did move it just looked wrong somehow. How he moved wasn't anything like how an organic creature moved but neither was it quite like how a typical golem or machine moved. Instead his movements were like a disturbing mixture of all the wrong elements of both machines and organic beings. An effect that was made worse by the soft mechanical whirring and clicking his robotic joints made whenever he moved.

His head was covered by a black hood which obscured his mechanical copper face in the harsh, top down, artificial lighting of his laboratory so the only thing lighting it was the soft blue glow of his eyes. Covering the rest of his utilitarian metal body was his standard uniform meant for everyday work. He had heavy polished black steel-toe military boots covering his feet. He wore a thick black hooded robe with a metallic grey trimming — the fabric of which was made from super thin thread-like wires of pure silver — with a large gear symbol with fifteen spokes that encircled a perfectly measured pentagram with a short series of runes just below the symbol all in metallic thread made from wires of pure gold which served to indicate his military branch, rank, and office sewn into both shoulders. On his legs were thick black pants that perfectly matched his robes even having the same silver trim made of metal fabric.

This mage — as while 99% of his body was artificial he was indeed still in actuality a human mage — was the High Lord of the Research and Development branch of the Human Kingdom's military government, Gerhardt Mechanica. One of the five High Lords that ruled the Human Kingdom and the world's leading expert in purely scientific fields of magic such as technomancy and alchemy.

At the moment, he was just putting the finishing touches on the prototype of an experimental new device that Isabel Sano — the current High Lord of the Medical branch — had requested he work on developing. It was a significant upgrade to the basic sterilization ray the medical branch already made frequent use of which only cleaned whatever the beam hit, be it surgical equipment or a wound. This upgraded version was specifically meant to kill any harmful bacteria, viruses, or any other negative pathogens within a person's entire body and to boost the individual's immune system. It was an idea they both came up with in response to a recent plague that had been running rampant through the kingdom as well as a very concerning rise in the use of and startling recent advancements in biological warfare by the Kingdom of the Wraiths, the Orc and Ogre Tribes, the Serpentine Republic, and many of the Human Kingdom's other enemies.

If the new anti-plague gun worked as it was supposed to then it should instantly cure any pathogen based disease a person may be experiencing even before they begin showing symptoms. However, since he had never built something like this before and was mainly working with concepts and ideas that were largely theoretical at this point, he was certain he was going to have to build dozens upon dozens of models and iterations in order to perfect the technology before it could go into mass production and use. Unfortunately, that would take time and the more time he took the more innocent people would die from this plague and possibly from the bioweapons being utilized by Humanity's enemies. It didn't matter if they were men, women, children, infants, young, or old they would die and it would be his fault for not working fast enough. It was always his fault for not working fast enough. Such was his role as a High Lord.

He had oceans of blood on his hands already from people killed by the weapons and vehicles he had made, the combat golems he had designed, and from those he had failed to save or was forced to abandon. And that was just all the people he had killed indirectly. There was plenty more blood on his hands from the countless enemy soldiers, assassins, spies, and innocent civilians whose only crime was getting caught in the crossfire that he had personally — and sometimes accidentally — slaughtered without remorse over the centuries and every minute he didn't have a finished model of this device added another crimson drop to that ancient rotting sea of blood.

When he was young, killing and death used to affect him greatly. However, he had experienced centuries of almost perpetual war with very brief periods of relative peace scattered in here and there every so often and had personally seen and experienced some of the worst horrors and crimes ever committed by some of the most insane, depraved, sadistic, and outright evil — truly, undeniably, objectively evil — minds the world had to offer. So he was quite jaded to all of the proverbial oceans of blood on his hands at this point and all the death and violence that was an almost daily occurrence for him as a military leader. In his position he couldn't really afford to care about any of the deaths he caused or could not prevent, he simply had to focus on keeping as many of his own people alive as he possibly could.

However, that did not mean he enjoyed having the deaths of innocent civilians — especially human civilians — on his shoulders like this. He absolutely hated it. He was just forced to accept that it was simply the reality of his situation and continue working as he always did. So he hummed a soft and familiar tune to himself, which would sound almost like a child's lullaby to any who might hear it, while recalling pleasant memories from his now ancient past as he worked in an effort to comfort himself and help himself relax.

He remembered his parents and how proud they had been when he had made his first golem when he was just a child and had only just been drafted for his ability to use magic. He remembered how he used to enjoy his work so much when he was an apprentice and lower ranking technomancer, how he would lose himself in the wires and components of complex machinery as one might lose themself in reading a particularly interesting book. He would become so invested in certain projects that he would lock himself alone in a random lab and would spend anywhere from hours to days on end building, repairing, or improving upon different devices or bits of machinery while completely forgoing all of his former organic body's needs for food or sleep until he was completely finished. This would sometimes end up with him being found unconscious if not half dead on the floor before being rushed to the emergency ward of the Medical Branch in critical condition, whereupon he would be scolded by the doctors and medical mages, but that never mattered to him. He remembered how proud he was when he first invented brain augmentations, which allowed him to surpass nature and become effectively immortal which could never have been achieved with the conventional augmentations that existed at the time on their own. He even remembered the moment all his hard work was finally recognized and he was informed that he was to become the next High Lord of the R&D branch after his predecessor had been killed in action while testing and defending an experimental artillery cannon in the middle of some large battle.

Those had all been the best times of his life and were by far his most cherished memories. Unfortunately, those days were long since gone. It had been centuries since he last felt even the tiniest spark of happiness, pride or even so much as the slightest most infinitesimally meager bit of satisfaction while working or for anything he designed or built. His duty as a High Lord and how long he had been one had sucked all the happiness and enjoyment out of his work leaving nothing behind. He could never be satisfied let alone proud of anything he ever built anymore as it was simply never good enough.

Nothing he could do was ever enough. There was always over a hundred different crises that demanded his attention at once and by the time he finished one thing a dozen more would pop up and/or the problem would have escalated past the point that whatever he had done or built could reasonably deal with it and he would have to start over and do or build something else entirely. He tried to delegate as much as possible but even then he struggled to barely keep up as his job was not typically a particularly fast one and required a lot of patience and precision to do correctly.

When Gerhardt finally finished bolting on the device's exterior plating he sighed. Well technically his vocalizer only made a sound that was extremely similar to a sigh with a bit of a static sound in the background, but it was the closest approximation to a sigh that he could physically make since he didn’t have lungs or an actual throat. "I'm finally done. Good. Now I just have to see if I can even turn it on or if I'll have to scrap it, start over, and completely redesign it from scratch... Gods above, I hope this works..." He muttered to himself in a mixture of stress and anxiety.

He was about to attempt to flip a switch to activate the device but paused and simply let his hands fall back to his sides as his sensors suddenly detected energy readings consistent with the presence of a lesser god currently standing directly behind him. "Hello, Gerhardt... Working on another abhorrent toy in a futile effort to control the natural course of life, I see." A familiar, angry, and spiteful voice growled from behind him.

Sighing in extreme frustration Gerhardt turned and saw Silvanus, a relatively young lesser god of nature who used to be kind and helpful but had become disillusioned and cruel, and had a very serious grudge against him. Fortunately he was unable to do anything to Gerhardt or any other mortal directly because of the rules the Greater Gods enforced upon all gods that ever came to the mortal world. He wore a green robe made from plants, had long green hair and a long tangled beard that were reminiscent of vines, grassy green eyes, pointed ears, very pale almost glowing skin like that of an Elf, and he was currently sneering at Gerhardt in complete and utter disdain.

"Greetings, Silvanus. I suppose I should have been anticipating a visit from you seeing as today marks the eight hundredth anniversary of the day that you first requested that I build those Funerary Séance devices for you. I see you are still very clearly upset about how that turned out. I, on the other hand, continue to fail to understand why you refuse to simply let go of your petty, misguided, and completely impotent grudge against me and move on with your life even after eight hundred years, nor why you refuse to accept the facts as they are. The facts being that you give me far too much credit for something I had little to no hand in. If you had never commissioned my services and had never given me those Arcane Equations then Caedes — or the "Father of Liches" if you prefer that completely asinine title he gave himself — would have never been able to use the equations you gave me to invent the study of Necromancy in the first place. I had nothing to do with it beyond developing and building a few machines. So if you truly wish to blame someone you should honestly blame yourself and Caedes rather than me, but I digress..." Gerhardt growled dismissively, irritated by the unwelcome interruption by this very unwelcome intruder. He had neither the time nor the patience to listen to a god blame and vilify him for something that was not his fault by any stretch of the imagination. He already blamed and vilified himself for a lot of things, but Necromancy was most definitely not one of them.

The lesser god’s sneer grew absolutely murderous and he backhanded Gerhardt across the face causing his pain receptors to activate as Silvanus knocked the ancient technomancer’s mechanical jaw out of alignment and very nearly dented the magically reinforced copper plates that made up his face. The shear force of the blow spun Gerhardt a full 180 degrees and very nearly sent him crashing onto the work table behind him which would have destroyed the table and wrecked everything on it due to the sheer weight and momentum of his magically reinforced metal body had he not managed to catch himself on the edge of the table — which happened to be bolted securely to the ground just as all of the many other work tables in the room were, to ensure the safety of the dozens of delicate tools and projects laying on them — before this could happen.

Standing up straight once more Gerhardt turned around to face Silvanus again before reaching up with his right hand and forcing his jaw back into alignment and calmly letting his arm drop back to his side again. Other than that he was completely unphased by the futile act of aggression, knowing the deity couldn't actually do anything to kill or permanently injure him so directly unless Gerhardt threatened him first.

"Silence, you insolent metal abomination! How DARE you attempt to place any of the blame on me! All I did was attempt to give you damned mortals a nice gift, like the naive fool that I was! It was one of your former apprentice who warped and twisted my gift into that grotesque blasphemy you dare call a field of magical study, you bastard! So it's ALL YOUR FAULT!" he growled furiously. With his fists shaking, he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "It doesn't matter. Soon you will be gone forever! You see, while I can't kill you — at least not here — I have finally found a loophole in the rules that I can exploit to at the very least get rid of you, permanently!" He smiled wickedly.

"I... I see... Well then." Gerhardt immediately overclocked his brain, drastically speeding up his perception of time and thus causing everything to seem like it was moving at little more than a crawl from his perspective. He quickly turned to the side and raised one of his hands in front of him which was suddenly engulfed by a bright copper colored aura as he cast a spell and created a portal leading to the main courtyard of the castle. With that done, he immediately began bolting towards the portal as fast as he could causing his joints to loudly whir and click in protest as his body was pushed to the absolute limits of its mechanically enhanced abilities.

He knew full well that he didn't stand a chance against a deity on his own, even a lesser god like Silvanus, but if he could at least get to the court yard then there would be hundreds of mages and soldiers there who could help him hold off Silvanus until everything the human military could possibly bring to bear could arrive to help fight him off. He had already sent a signal to remotely activate the castle's invasion alarms and had sent the other High Lords a message explaining the situation, so all he really had to do was buy as much time as he possibly could.

This was an absolute disaster. Far worse even then the recent plague or the bioweapons being utilized by Humanity's current enemies. If Silvanus caught him then for the first time in over twenty thousand years the Human Kingdom would be forced to declare war on a lesser god which hadn’t happened since a lesser god had declared war on them during the War of Survival, the very event that had forced the greater gods to create their rules in the first place. This was especially bad as it meant Silvanus would be allowed to kill directly in order to "defend himself" according to the rules laid out by the Greater Gods and he was far more powerful than the first lesser god humanity and their allies had fought. Granted, the Human Kingdom was also far larger and more powerful then it had been during the War of Survival, but that was not necessarily a good thing. In reality all of this just meant that this situation had the potential to absolutely dwarf the War of Survival in terms of scale, devastation, and bloodshed.

Still, he might be able to mitigate this before it escalated to that point and prevent this war from ever occurring if he could just get away. Hell, he would even go so far as to publicly execute himself later if that's what it took to stop this from happening. After all, he would be eliminating the source of the conflict (himself) by doing so and it would be removed in a way that the kingdom would not be forced to declare war due to politics.

Unfortunately, it seemed fate had different plans. Before he even got a quarter of the way to the portal, Silvanus appeared in front of him again and he was now moving just as fast if not faster then he was. "Where do you think you're going, you mechanical freak?! You know damn well you can't escape me!" The lesser god growled as he grabbed Gerhardt by the throat and lifted him up into the air, as he was unable to stop his momentum or change his direction in time to get away. He felt his brain be forced out of its overclocked state by an external force and time returned to its normal pace for him. "So, do you have any parting words before you never see this world again?" Silvanus mocked triumphantly.

Gerhardt sighed and decided to accept his fate since he knew full well that there was absolutely nothing he could do at this point. It wasn’t like he could teleport away or something to that effect. Teleportation magic had yet to be perfected and was millions of times more likely to kill the one being teleported than actually work as intended or he would have used it instead of making a portal, which was a far safer, if less efficient, means of travel. And those numbers were by no means an exaggeration. Out of all 89,053,270 (recorded) trials and experiments with teleportation that had been conducted by almost every intelligent species across the entire world there had never once in the entire history of the planet ever been a single attempt at teleportation magic where the test subject had not been completely destroyed, be it an inanimate object or a living creature. As a result, a few centuries ago a small team of technomancers had decided to simply weaponize it instead and those weapons were extremely effective to this very day, but that was all teleportation magic was good for. Only gods and spirits had ever truly managed to use it as an actual means of travel. And despite all of Gerhardt’s augmentations and intelligence he was still only human so teleportation was far beyond his means.

Gerhardt couldn’t even attack Silvanus in order to force the god to let him go otherwise the deity could kill him outright and claim it was an act of “self defense”. That being said, he was only human, as was previously acknowledged, so he wasn’t exactly sure if he even could harm Silvanus enough to force the lesser god to release him even if he went so far as to pour 98% of his entire magic energy reserves into either the most powerful combat or war spell he knew and then spent another 1% of his remaining magic energy reserves not required to power his body to lace said spell with some of the most vile, cruel, destructive, and outright lethal curses this world had ever seen. It would take the work of a small army of combat and/or war mages working together to pose any sort of threat to him, a single technomancer like him simply wasn't sufficient.

“I have only this to say.” Gerhardt growled, despite his mechanical face displaying no emotions. “While I know full well that I myself am by no means a saint or anywhere near perfect as despite my augmentations I am still only human, you, Silvanus, absolutely disgust me. Not only because you are a god of nature — which as a technomancer is something I absolutely abhor to the point it would induce intense feelings of nausea in me were I still physically capable of such things as it is so pathetically weak, flawed, inefficient, impotent, overall incompetent in terms of design and engineering, and is completely devoid of purpose or direction — but because you as an individual are by far one of the most childish, narcissistic, arrogant, self righteous, spiteful, and hypocritical beings I have ever had the immense displeasure of meeting. You can never accept any fault for your own mistakes, always trying to push the blame off to others, such as myself, when things do not do your way. You believe you are perfect, infallible, and can never be in the wrong simply because you are a god, yet you are so pathetically immature and barbaric that you get angry and violent whenever someone even slightly challenges this idiotic assertion. You—”

Gerhardt could feel Silvanus grip around his throat tightening in anger with every word he spoke to the point the overlapping magically reinforced copper plates that made up the exterior of his throat were on the verge of buckling under the pressure while the lesser god’s expression grew darker and darker yet the technomancer still continued to speak, completely undeterred. He was hoping if he got him angry enough his patience and self control would ultimately shatter and Silvanus would end up harming or killing him in a fit of rage. If he did, the Greater Gods would punish him for breaking their rules and would never allow him to return to the mortal world ever again, thus ending this war before it ever had the chance to begin.

This, however, did not make any of what he was saying any less true. Well, except for the part about how he hated nature. Perhaps in his youth it was true to an extent, but even then what he said was exaggerated to a fairly significant degree. He never liked nature but he never truly hated it either, he merely claimed as much as an admittedly crude — but hopefully effective — attempt to get under Silvanus’ skin.

Unfortunately, while he believed he was fairly competent at psychological manipulation — not only as a result of the fact he had dealt with international politics for hundreds of years, but also because he needed to know how to build devices with which to conduct psychological warfare effectively, among many other issues that came with his job and the fact that he was born a mage — he was by no means a true master of it, plus he had a bit of trouble understanding body language, social cues, and the emotions of others. As a result he had no idea how effective or ineffective his words were being or even if they were having the effect he desired. All he could really tell was what was clearly obvious such as the fact Silvanus was indeed growing angrier based on how hard he was gripping Gerhardt’s throat and his very obviously angry expression.

“Silence…” Silvanus hissed furiously, cutting Gerhardt off as he talked.

Gerhardt shook his head as best he could and said, “No, you asked me if I had any last words and I am not yet finished. While you may be a deity you are far from omniscient, omnipotent, or perfect. Like nature itself or like any of us mere mortals you presume to lord over, you are so disgustingly flawed that you even put Caedes himself to shame and your current actions only serve to prove this beyond even a shadow of a doubt. You may get rid of me in whatever way you are planning, but in the end it won't truly matter. Necromancy will continue to exist and it will continue to be your fault, not mine.”

“After all, had you ever stopped to consider that perhaps the other gods had never done something similar to what you did by giving us access to those arcane equations for a reason, then perhaps this magic you hate so much would have never existed in the first place, or at least would not have ended up in our hands. However, you did not stop to think of this. You didn’t think at all. And as a result of your lack of thought countless people died and were turned into undead, entire species went extinct and were turned into undead, countless souls were outright destroyed, vast swaths of land were forever rendered completely uninhabitable, and people continue to suffer from rogue necromancers, liches, wraiths, and undead to this very day. And to think, none of this would have ever happened without you. So I truly must congratulate you Silvanus. Despite being a Lesser God of Nature, you have done more damage to the natural order of the world than Caedes could ever even dream of through your sheer incompetence alone. So I do truly hope you feel proud of yourself because that is quite the achievement. You truly are the most pathetic failure of a god to ever—”

“ENOUGH!” Silvanus’ voice boomed with supernatural force loud enough that it shook the entire castle and could easily be heard across the entire city, cutting Gerhardt off mid speech once again. Everything became unnaturally silent for a moment but this silence was quickly shattered by the sound of the reinforced concrete, stone, and metal walls, floor, and roof of his lab cracking and splitting open as plants and vines rapidly began to grow straight through them. Loud hurricane force winds began to blow outside and everything got darker as the sky outside was rapidly filled with pitch black swirling clouds which poured unnaturally heavy rains and began crashing violently with more thunder and lightning then was possible from a natural storm. As a result Gerhardt’s faintly glowing artificial eyes, the portal — which had long since turned a dull grey by this point, indicating that it was currently cut off and experiencing interference of some sort —, and the overhead lights, which were starting to dim and flicker ominously from the plants that were starting to interfere with their wiring, were now the room’s only sources of illumination.

Gerhardt could feel an external force shut down his vocalizer rendering him completely incapable of speech. As such, the only thing he could really do was close his mouth and glare at the deity gripping his throat while mentally cursing to himself.

“Do you think me so stupid that I don’t realize what you are trying to do, you insolent metal defilement of the human form?! Do you truly believe that I would be so easily manipulated?! That alone is a thousand times more insulting than all of those malicious lies you just spouted combined!” He growled furiously.

Gerhardt rolled his eye, though one would not be able to notice this unless they were looking very closely as the clear glowing sapphire orbs in his metal skull were completely featureless as they lacked the irises or pupils that organic eyes had. Unable to say anything with his iolite vocalizer currently offline the ancient mechanical technomancer instead opted to raise a fist and hold up his middle finger. A bright copper colored aura engulfed his other hand, which was currently dangling limply by his side, as he also cast an illusion spell in order to create a series of translucent silver glowing letters in the air in front of him that spelled out, ‘I did not speak a single lie you deluded sociopathic whoreson’. It was extraordinarily crude by his usual standards, but he didn’t exactly have many other options at this point since he could no longer talk so he would just have to make do with what he could for the moment.

Seeing this Silvanus narrowed his eyes slightly but he otherwise ignored the rude hand gesture and the illusory message. He waved a hand in front of the portal Gerhardt had created earlier and turned it into a pure white swirling vortex of pure magic energy. "Whatever. So long as you no longer taint this world with your disgusting presence your pathetic insults mean nothing to me... Now, BEGONE!" He shouted before physically throwing Gerhardt into the swirling white vortex of magic energy.

Gerhardt felt an absolutely immense wave of magic energy wash over him and everything turned white with the peripherals of his vision being the only color he could see as they were filled with ever changing fractal-like patterns that made it appear almost as though he was looking through some demented kaleidoscope. As soon as he was fully inside the vortex and it closed behind him, he began to experience a sensation as though the world had fallen out from under him and he was falling through reality itself, for lack of a better term.

Realizing he wasn't dead, at least not yet, he attempted to analyze the wild raging magic in the pure white space surrounding him but oddly he found it utterly impossible. It was as if he were trying to analyze an ever changing and ever moving fluid that operated in a non-euclidean space rather than studying actual tangible magic. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Attempting to manipulate this "fluid" or change it in any way, shape, or form he found was equally impossible. It was like trying to mold air or water like clay with his bare hands in a universe where the laws of physics worked completely differently to those of his own universe. Trying to use actual magic from his own energy reserves on this "fluid" did absolutely nothing but slowly drain what remained of his energy reserves.

Opening a writing program in his head, he began writing down notes and observations about this strange unusable pseudo-magic. His iolite vocalizer was no longer being shut down by an external force and out of habit he unconsciously started muttering to himself as he wrote his notes down. After a moment, however, he noticed something that made him pause. He just realized that he couldn't actually hear his own voice. Blinking in surprise, he tried saying something again. True absolute silence was all he heard. He couldn't even so much as hear the sounds or vibrations of his own body as he moved. It was as if his audio processors had been completely removed from his head entirely but a quick diagnostic check assured him that they were still there and were all working properly.

Curious, he reached into the chest of his robe and pulled out his ornate gold and silver concealed magic pistol he always carried with him. Flipping a tiny switch on the side and setting it from "Silent" to "Shriek" he fired a single shot off into the ether as an experiment to see if he might be able to hear something louder then his voice. Nothing. It appeared that sound just didn't exist in whatever this place was.

Even stranger, however, was what happened to the beam his pistol had fired. As the silver colored ray of magic energy shot off into the vast nothingness, Gerhardt watched as it bent, stretched, twisted, expanded, shrunk, turned numerous different colors, disappeared, reappeared, turned and shot back towards him only to pass harmlessly through his body as if either he or it didn't really exist, and many other things before it eventually just vanished again seemingly for good this time. Simply put, what happened to that beam was complete and utter bullshit. Hell, at this point he wouldn’t have even been surprised if the beam had turned into literal bull shit at some point during whatever the hell it was he had just witnessed.

Out of habit Gerhardt sighed to himself inaudibly. ‘I suppose that means this place’s laws of physics operate on non-standard logic then. Damn it all.’ He thought to himself in frustration. That meant if he wanted to figure out how this place truly worked he was going to have to use “Chaos Theory” which had always been something he absolutely hated ever since it had first been invented, yet had still been forced to use on multiple occasions as it proved to be extremely useful in certain circumstances. He had very little patience for dealing with the underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization inherent to Chaos Theory and found working with it extremely frustrating and tedious. He very much preferred the pure solid logic and order of technology and standard physics over supposed “chaos” any day. As such, he very much so wanted to get out of whatever this place was and back to a realm, plane of existence, or whatever else so long as it at the very least had a relatively normal set physics where things were relatively simple to understand and actually made sense, as soon as physically possible.

Not really sure what else to do, and having lost all interest in figuring out how the physics of this place worked upon discovering that he would have to use chaos theory to do so, he put his pistol away and continued to "feel" around in this pseudo-magic fluid for a few minutes, slowly reaching deeper into the seemingly endless ocean of the stuff. Eventually he found something that he could only describe as "solid" in that infinitely vast expanse of "fluid". It felt strange, alien, yet oddly familiar. As if with the instincts that he should technically no longer even have he almost immediately knew exactly what it was that he had found, though how he knew this was still a complete and utter mystery to him. It was a world, an entire universe even. Yet, while it felt somewhat similar to his original universe, he knew it was definitely not his original universe. He also felt himself rapidly being dragged away from it as if he was being pulled by the rapids of a raging river, while it was simultaneously moving away from him as it was also being dragged in a completely different direction.

He took a few microseconds to think, which for him was the equivalent to several hours for an unaugmented human due to his brain's drastically enhanced processing power. According to his internal chronometer he had in fact spent close to half an hour in this "place", if it could even be called that, already and he calculated that if he was being dragged this rapidly and this universe was being dragged just as rapidly in a completely different direction then he was already much too far away from his original universe to ever be able to find it again, let alone return to it.

The universe he had just found felt somewhat different but he estimated that it should probably be close enough to his original universe that he believed he should be able to survive in it. There was no guarantee if or when he would find another universe if he passed this one, and even if he did find another there was no guarantee he would be able to survive in it like there was with this universe. The gods only knew how long it would take for him to find another potentially habitable universe in... whatever this was. He also had no idea where he would end up if he just let this "current" continue pulling him along as it was. That was assuming it was even taking him anywhere since it could easily just be throwing him around completely randomly and without direction, like a leaf caught in a hurricane or a tornado.

After much deliberation he decided he had no other choice and followed these strange instincts he shouldn't even have in order to "latch on to" the universe he had found. Suddenly he felt his "direction", for lack of a better term, change and felt himself rapidly being pulled towards the universe he had latched on to. Finally he collided with the universe and felt himself being thrown towards a seemingly random location within. Suddenly he felt something — possibly multiple things — watching him and detected his "velocity" shift ever so slightly to send him somewhere else entirely. He immediately assumed his uninvited entrance to this universe had caught the attention of a few of whatever spirits or deities managed it and they were the ones who were changing his course for whatever reason. If he were to guess, they likely altered his course to force him to end up in the center of a star or a black hole or something to that effect to dispose of him as they would view him as an intruder. If he was correct, he was effectively doomed as it was much too late for him to do anything about it now.

With a noiseless sigh, he accepted his inevitable demise. He had been expecting this day to come for a very long time, he just never knew how, where, or when it would happen. Honestly, he was more surprised it hadn't happened sooner, especially in his line of work and with his political position. He had simply been lucky enough to survive this long, with quite a bit of help from his augmentations, but he was still mortal so his luck was not infinite and it seemed that it had finally run out. His only regret was that he didn't have salivary glands, lungs, or mouth muscles so he was physically incapable of spitting in Silvanus' face before he threw him through that vortex as a last great act of defiance, but he supposed that his words alone would just have to suffice.

As the bright white light vanished and along with it the feeling of being watched, Gerhardt realized he was still alive and had apparently been incorrect in his assumption about the intentions of whatever had redirected his course. However before he could register anything else, his sensors — which had a one mile effective radius — had very nearly exploded from a sudden influx of an absolutely massive amount of data as they immediately began detecting hundreds of thousands if not millions of energy readings all around him in every possible direction. It was almost as if he was in the middle of a city and every living thing in said city, from the people that inhabited it down to the very birds, rodents, insects and every other living thing that wasn’t either a single celled organism or microscopically small had some sort of connection to magic. Not only that but only a fraction of the energy readings he was detecting were consistent with actual mages while most of the rest were not even remotely consistent with anything he had ever encountered before — though he was able to tell that almost all of them were mortal — and effectively all of them were somewhat unique in some way shape or form. None of which should have been even remotely possible based on everything he knew about magic.

A mortal being born with a connection to magic was a highly uncommon trait and was almost completely random as it had to do with how an individual's soul formed before birth rather than biology or genetics (though two mages reproducing did have a far higher chance of having their offspring be born with such a connection, however this phenomenon had absolutely nothing to do with genetics). Furthermore, when something — be it a member of a sapient species or even just a mere animal — was born with a connection to magic, they were always capable of using magic and thus were always, without fail, a mage. Every. Single. Time. Without exception. It was completely binary. Either one was born with the ability to use magic or they were not, there was absolutely no middle ground. As such all of these strange energy readings made no sense to him whatsoever.

However, he was unable to really consider these issues for very long as he was very quickly forced to lower the effective range of his sensors to a maximum radius of approximately 50 feet as they were not designed to handle anywhere near that much raw data all at once and were in grave danger of overheating and melting to a useless puddle of slag or outright exploding inside of him which could have potentially damaged a few of his other systems.

As soon as the range was lowered and he was no longer being absolutely bombarded with excessive amounts of data, however, he finally noticed something somewhat alarming that had previously gotten lost amongst the millions of other energy signatures. Within the current drastically lowered radius of his sensors were two energy readings consistent with those of two demigods, multiple mages, a few not mages, and a few mages that were simultaneously also not mages surrounding him on all sides. He panicked for a microsecond believing he had been sent straight into a trap of some sort, when he noticed something odd about the demigods, mages, and sort-of-mages. Their energy signatures all seemed to lack proper control and coherency and seemed strangely weak, atrophied even, as if they lacked proper training and had never in their lives taken the time to properly maintain their magical fitness. Realizing this, he was no longer concerned about being in any danger but he was now more confused than ever.

Curious, he finally looked around and found himself standing in the middle of what looked like a wedding venue filled with strange, horrifically deformed, almost unnaturally colorful, tiny, mutant, equine-esque parodies of creatures with extremely exaggerated features that wouldn't look out of place in a child's picture book. Some of said pseudo-equine creatures had traits such as long spike-like horns sticking out of the center of their skull or uselessly tiny presumably vestigial wings on their backs that made them vaguely resemble unicorns or pegasus from ancient Elven and Dwarven mythology respectively, while others lacked either, and more still had different features entirely.

One of the demigods he was currently detecting — which appeared to be slightly larger than the rest of the pseudo-equine creatures and seemed to be some sort of pink hybrid pegasus unicorn creature — appeared to be somewhat disheveled, had its hooves glued to the ground by some strange green substance, and was standing underneath the wedding altar. Next to it was one of the unicorn-esque creatures. This one happened to be wearing what looked like some strange red uniform of somesort and judging by its eyes it was under the effects of a potent mind altering or perhaps — if the poor bastard was particularly unlucky — even a mind erasing illusion spell. Next to those two was a similarly strange and mutated large bipedal purple reptile of somesort, who appeared to be wearing a formal suit and a tophat.

The second and slightly more powerful of the two demigods — which also seemed to be a hybrid like the pink demigod creature — was currently hanging upside down from the roof in a translucent green cocoon-like sack or pod that appeared to be made of the same green substance that currently had the hooves of the pink demigod glued to the ground.

There were also several insectoid faux-equines with strange perfectly circular holes in their legs, sharp jagged horns sticking out of the center of their skulls, pitch black carapaces, and insectoid wings on their backs that should have been far too small and thin to produce even a fraction of the force that should be necessary to lift their bodies but were somehow violating the laws of physics and allowing the creatures to fly anyways.

Upon seeing this Gerhardt really wanted to capture one of these creatures in order to study them in an attempt to determine the exact mechanism behind how it was even remotely possible for them to fly with those pathetic little wings. He suspected some sort of magic had to be at work, especially since they seemed to be the sort-of-but-not-mages his sensors were detecting — which still made absolutely NO sense to him —, but he couldn’t truly be completely certain without dissecting one as well as running a few tests and experiments on them. Either way he just wanted to figure it out so he could adapt it for use in his own machines. However he knew that was likely just a pipe dream as they were probably sapient creatures and as such he would most likely have to jump through all sorts of legal and political hoops and spend a fortune — which he did not have — just to get permission to be given even so much as a corpse for study let alone a live subject, likely in the form of a dangerous criminal whom has been given the death sentence. So ultimately it simply wasn’t worth the trouble.

Refocusing on the matter at hand Gerhardt also noticed another of the strange black insectoid creatures only this one was larger than the other insects like the demigods though according to his sensors it was very much still mortal if just a bit more powerful than any of the other creatures in the room save the demigod in the cocoon thing. That wasn’t saying much, however, since said demigod was only about as powerful as an above average mage with its magic atrophied as it was. The larger insectoid creature’s wings appeared to have been horribly mutilated in a way that looked as though it had been quite painful, it had what looked like a strange crown-like growth attached to its head just behind its jagged horn, it lacked the compound eyes of the rest but had green snake-like eyes, and it lacked the pitch black full body carapace of the rest but instead had what looked like a bright green carapace that only covered its back and chest while the rest of its body save for its strange membranous mane and tail was covered in pitch black fur.

All of the creatures were apparently capable of unsettlingly humanoid facial expressions and were all staring at him in a mixture of surprise, shock, confusion, and even a little fear in a few cases.

He assumed that the larger insectoid creature was probably the leader of the insects while the two demigods were the leaders of the other group of faux-equines. Furthermore, based on the fact that the demigods seemed to have been captured, the two groups were probably at war or something and this was likely a very important battle. However, a wedding venue was a rather odd choice of location for a major battle like this in his opinion, but he assumed there was probably a reason for it and he simply lacked context. Perhaps there had been a wedding planned for today and one group decided to use this as an opportunity to attack the other group while they were distracted or something to that effect? That would certainly explain it.

Either way he really didn’t want to get involved in any of this if he didn’t have to as whatever conflict they had with each other did not concern him in the least. Plus he did not know anything about this world, its current political climate, or either of the two sides and their respective goals or beliefs. So even if he wanted to get involved he simply didn’t have enough information to make a sound judgement about which side he should ally himself with.

With that in mind the first thing he did was activate the universal translation device that was built into his brain while carefully raising a single hand so as to not provoke any of the creatures and lowering his hood in an attempt to look slightly less intimidating or suspicious. He then let his hand fall back to his side and said, “Greetings. I come in peace. My sincerest apologies for the interruption, my sudden arrival here was not by choice. I have no intention of involving myself in whatever this is. So if there are no objections, I will be leaving now. Good day to you all.”

He was about to bow politely and turn to start heading towards the massive door that he could only assume was the exit. Before he could, however, the larger insect shouted. “Capture that huge metal freak as well, my changelings! He may not be a pony but his love can still serve as food for the hive all the same!”

Gerhardt froze in place. “Changelings?” he asked in surprised confusion. These things were changelings? They certainly didn’t look like any kind of Changelings he knew of. Then again, when it came to changelings appearances hardly mattered since they could take on essentially any form they desired. More importantly his sensors told him these insect creatures were all mortal, but Changelings were a type of Fae which meant they were decidedly not mortals. So these things couldn’t possibly be Changelings. This made him wonder if his universal translator was malfunctioning.

He didn’t have time to run a systems diagnostic in order to check, however, as all eight of the smaller insectoid creatures in the room hissed at him, revealing long snake-like tongues and sharp fangs, before they started flying towards him, some having green auras surrounding their horns indicating they were channeling their magic through them.

Gerhardt simply frowned slightly and reached into the chest of his robes with his right hand. Grasping the handle of his concealed magic pistol but leaving it in its holster for the moment he stated in a dangerously calm voice, “I said I do not wish to become involved in whatever quarrel you have with each other. Please just allow me to leave or I will be forced to defend myself.” The so-called “Changelings” just ignored him and kept coming. A few fired beams of green energy from their jagged glowing horns. Two missed while another slammed into his face causing his pain receptors to activate but doing little to no real damage to the magically reinforced copper that made up his exterior plating.

The ancient technomancer sighed and pulled the magic pistol out of its holster and flipped the switch on the side from “Shriek” back to “Silent” as this was a fairly enclosed space and he did not wish to permanently deafen anyone by rupturing their eardrums plus he did not believe this was the best time for psychological warfare tactics, which that setting was specifically designed for. “So be it...” He muttered in frustration. Deciding not to kill the creatures as he wanted to avoid making enemies if possible and because he only really needed to make a point, he twisted the very end of the barrel to change its focusing crystal’s settings and raised the ornate weapon. Allowing an advanced targeting program to take control of his arm, the limb began to move on its own as it very quickly aimed his sidearm at each of the creatures in turn and pulled the trigger of his weapon eight times in very rapid succession. There was a soft Bzzzt sound every time he pulled the trigger as the weapon quickly unleashed eight flat wide beams of bright silver energy from its barrel one after the other.

Each of the beams slammed into their targets exactly where he wanted to hit them and instantly severed one or two limbs from each of the eight “Changelings” as any atoms that came in contact with the beams were instantly teleported randomly across the universe. They each flinched as the beams came near them but otherwise didn’t react until they heard clattering and wet splats on the floor beneath them. Then almost as one they each looked and saw their missing limbs laying on the ground beneath them, as well as the bloody stumps where they used to be attached. Finally their bodies seemed to register the fact that their limbs had been cut off and they each fell out of the air screaming in a mixture of mind numbing agony and absolute horror while clutching desperately at whatever stump they could with whatever forelimbs they still had. A few even passed out, likely more so from the pain or perhaps shock rather than blood loss as they had not had enough time to lose that much blood yet.

As the “Changelings” hit the ground, Gerhardt finally lowered his ornate magic pistol and raised his other hand, which became engulfed by a bright copper aura. As he did not want the creatures to bleed to death either he cast a simple wound cauterization spell. Suddenly the profusely bleeding stumps the creatures limbs used to be attached to were engulfed with intense arcane flames. The smell of burning flesh and carapace rapidly filled the room and several more of the creatures passed out from the pain while the screams of the few that continued to remain awake grew even louder and more intense. Once it was the stumps were thoroughly charred and no longer bleeding, the flames dissipated. Finally, the ancient technomancer decided to be a bit merciful and cast a sleep spell on the few “Changeling” soldiers that remained conscious, and with that the screams came to an abrupt stop and the room became completely silent.

Gerhardt saw the non-insectoid pseudo-equines staring at him in a mix of shock, disgust, and fear, except for two in particular. The first and most notable of the two was the white unicorn-esque one with the purple mane. Witnessing this sort of violence appeared to have been too much for it as he watched it dramatically fall over onto the ground appearing as if it had passed out, though he highly suspected that it was still awake and was just being over dramatic. The second was of the two was the yellow pegasus-esque one with the pink mane, who was currently huddled in a corner with its fore-hooves covering its head while its entire body trembled in what appeared to be genuine terror.

‘They must be civilians.’ He noted mentally while twisting the end of the pistol’s barrel once more to return it to its default beam setting before turning back to face the large “Changeling” creature who was just standing there looking at the unconscious bodies of her soldiers with a dumbfounded expression that eventually gave way to one of shock, horror, and what appeared to be genuine concern for her soldiers. Having long since become jaded to such things Gerhardt simply ignored this and walked towards her saying, “Do not worry, they are all still alive and are in no danger of dying. I truly did not want to do this, ma’am, but unfortunately I am in a very bad mood right now and you have just forced me to pick a side.” His voice was completely cold and remorseless.

The creature glared furiously at him and opened her mouth to speak but Gerhardt cut her off by aiming his pistol at her head and saying in a deathly serious tone that brokered no argument, “I was not finished. Do not attempt to interrupt me again or, unlike what I did to your soldiers, rather then simply removing limbs I will instead aim for your head and kill you before you can so much as blink let alone attempt to defend yourself. You are to remain silent until I explicitly tell you to speak. Do I make myself clear?” She continued to glare hatefully at him with a defiant expression on her face but closed her mouth and silently nodded.

He lowered his pistol and came to a stop a few feet in front of her. “Good. So now that you have decided to involve me in this conflict between your people, here is what is going to happen. As I still do not wish to take a side, first, you are going to release those two demigods over there, whom I can only assume are the leaders of these “Ponies”, as you call them.” He said while pointing towards the two captured hybrid creatures. “Second, assuming I am not mistaken in my assumption and this is indeed some sort of attack or invasion, you are going to call off any and all of your soldiers that are in the area and those two are going to do the same. Finally, you and those two are going to sit down and you will negotiate some sort of compromise, peace treaty, cease fire, or whatever else — I really don’t care which — and I am going to act as a completely neutral third party mediator to ensure things remain perfectly civil between you. Do these terms sound fair to you? You may speak.”

“No! Celestia hates Changelings simply because we feed on love, she will never agree to negotiate with us let alone help us! My hive is starving, we need the ponies love to survive which is the entire reason I invaded Equestria in the first place! If you are going to execute me then so be it but I will never call off my subjects! Not when we are so close to securing a permanent food source! Especially not on the orders of some sort of metal monster that just maimed and tortured eight of my subjects in front of me!” The “Changeling” hissed defiantly.

Gerhardt rolled his artificial eyes at her accusation, though it was almost impossible to see as they were glowing and were completely blank as they lacked any irises, pupils, or even any noticeable flaws. “Please... They are soldiers. Such injuries are expected in this line of work. Furthermore, I did not “torture” them I merely cauterized their wounds so they wouldn’t bleed to death. Would you have preferred I let them die instead? Ultimately I did not do anything to them that I myself can not fix, assuming I have the right materials. Merely replacing a lost limb is a trivial matter. After all, I was not always a “metal monster” as you call me, but that is besides the point. Now, I remember hearing you mention feeding on love when you ordered those soldiers to capture me. I have no idea how that even works and I would be very interested to learn or perhaps study it at some point in the future, but I digress. If this “Celestia” truly vilifies your species for that then I believe there must be a root cause of this hatred. Does your feeding on emotions perhaps harm the Ponies in any way shape or form?”

She shook her head. “It can if we take too much but we actively try to avoid that! We are starving so why on Equis would we want to harm or kill off our main food source?!”

“I see. If that’s the case then I still believe a compromise could be reached between you. Setting up a system where ponies could willingly donate love, perhaps? Bah, it is irrelevant either way. I believe I have a few ideas that would be a far better solution anyways. Ideas that will ensure your species will never have to worry about starvation again but also do not involve you having to feed on Ponies or indeed any other living creature ever again and I am willing to work with you on these ideas. However, you must first agree to negotiate with the Ponies.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “Why? You just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of our invasion, maimed eight of my subjects, and are now demanding I negotiate with Equestria while offering to help us. It’s all too convenient. Who are you? What do you even get out of this?”

He frowned slightly and decided he should probably tell the truth for the moment for two reasons. First, he believed it was likely a wise idea to start building this creature’s trust at this stage so she could be more easily manipulated later, if necessary. And second, if these “Changelings”, as they call themselves, truly feed on emotions then they likely have some way of sensing emotions which would make lying to one far more difficult and getting caught lying at this stage could very easily ruin any progress he had made up until this point, which was something he really needed to avoid right now.

“When I said I did not arrive here willingly, I meant it. Allow me to explain. My name is Gerhardt Mechanica, and up until a short while ago I was one of the five High Lords who ruled the Human Kingdom on planet Earth. In that sense, you may consider me an extraterrestrial of sorts as this is not my world. To be a bit more specific I was the High Lord in charge of the Research and Development branch of our kingdom’s military government, and while I was in the middle of developing a device that was of vital importance to my own people in my personal lab, I was accosted by a very powerful and highly malevolent entity by the name of Silvanus. He then banished me from my world against my will. The fact that I ended up here after being banished is merely poor timing and an unfortunate twist of fate.” He explained, attempting to remain as brief as possible while still giving as much of the full story as he could.

”So when I arrived I knew absolutely nothing about this world or either of your species so I did not wish to attempt to ally myself with either of you or get involved in your conflict. However you decided to involve me anyways by ordering your men to capture me. Now I am simply trying to salvage this situation to the best of my abilities. To be perfectly honest I simply can not afford to make powerful enemies such as you or these Ponies respective kingdoms at the moment as having to avoid assassins and/or groups of soldiers constantly attempting to hunt me down and kill and/or capture me would make my life extremely and unnecessarily difficult at this stage. So I am hoping that by improving relations between your respective kingdoms I will be able to avoid becoming enemies with either of you. Furthermore, this also gives me something to focus on other than the unfortunately rather dire situation that my own kingdom is in at the moment, even if only temporarily. Otherwise, I gain little to nothing from doing this. So, now that you know all of this, do you finally agree to have peaceful negotiations with the Ponies?”

The creature stared at him evaluatingly for a few seconds before looking behind him towards the eight unconscious bodies puddles of their own blood on the floor with a bit of remorse. Finally she sighed in resignation and nodded reluctantly. “Assuming you’re telling the truth about having an alternate solution to prevent my Hive from starving, I have no choice but to agree… But I only agree if the ponies agree as well, and you replace the limbs of my subjects as you claimed to be able too! And if it turns out you’re lying about having a solution to keep us from starving or if these negotiations go badly, I will do everything within my power as Queen of the Changelings to ensure you are hunted down and executed for your crimes against the hive, so it would be in your best interest to try your best to make sure that doesn’t happen!” She growled viciously.

Gerhardt ignored her threat for the moment, though he most certainly kept it in mind, and nodded at her. “Very well then. I have a few materials with me currently, though I will need more to work with in order to do as you have asked. However, we may discuss that in more detail at a later date.” He acknowledged. Finally he turned and looked at the two demigods who were both still trapped and appeared to have been listening very intently to his entire conversation with the insect creature this entire time. “Thank you both for remaining patient up until this point, not that either of you really had much choice in the matter but it is still appreciated nonetheless. So, as it appears that only one of you is able to speak at the moment, it seems that you will have to be the one to make this decision.” He stated, looking at the pink one. “Do you agree to have peaceful negotiations with the Changelings?”

The demigod remained silent for a moment looking somewhat conflicted. After a full thirty seconds of silence Gerhardt was on the verge of raising his pistol and repeating the question a bit more forcefully but finally the demigod nodded and said, “I agree, but only if Queen Chrysalis releases my Shining Armor from her spell and I receive a public apology for her ruining my wedding!”

“Ah, so there really was a wedding. I will admit, I had been wondering about that.” Gerhardt muttered to himself. Looking back towards the newly dubbed Queen Chrysalis he asked, “Very well. So, your highness, do you accept the demigod’s terms?”

Queen Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Ugh, fine whatever. I was going to release your little coltfriend anyways, and I’ll apologize after the negotiations are over. That is assuming they don’t fall through.”

The demigod sighed. “Alright, I suppose that’s the best I’m going to get right now.”

“Excellent!” Gerhardt stated, both surprised and extremely relieved that he had somehow managed to pull this off. Putting his pistol back in its holster under his robes, he raised a hand which became engulfed by a bright copper colored aura as he cast a spell. Suddenly a line of copper colored light ran up the side of the green cocoon-like sack that held the other demigod. Said sack then promptly split open as if it had been sliced open by a razor sharp blade allowing the demigod within to free herself with relative ease. He then cast another spell and the green substance gluing the smaller pink demigod’s hooves to the ground almost seemed to melt into a liquid state freeing her as well. “Now that all of that is settled, I assume you three will need to discuss a time, date, and location for these negotiations to take place. I am fine with whatever you decide as my entire schedule has, unfortunately, been completely cleared up for the foreseeable future.”

The larger white demigod cleared its throat and said, “Actually, while Queen Chrysalis, Princess Cadence, and I all have a few things we need to take care of before we start, I believe we should get to this as soon as possible. So, how about we hold these negotiations in a private meeting room in the castle in let’s say, one… maybe two hours?”

“I agree, the sooner the better.” The pink demigod who was apparently called “Princess Cadence” nodded.

“Let’s just hurry up and get this over with. We all know it’s just going to end up being a complete waste of time anyways.” Chrysalis grumbled impatiently.

Gerhardt stared at them for a moment, not having expected this. “As you wish. I certainly have no objections. I am surprised, however. In my experience politics and bureaucracy are typically rather slow and tedious processes that often take quite a bit of time. The fact that this can be done so quickly here is actually quite convenient and is a welcome change of pace.”

The larger white demigod chuckled at that. “Oh, don’t misunderstand. Both of those things are exactly the same here too, it's just that this is a unique situation.” She said with a slightly amused smile. “Now, High Lord Gerhardt, I need to talk to my student Twilight and her friends alone for a few minutes since this is the first time any of them have ever seen violence like this and I need to make sure they're all okay, then I’ll lead you to the castle and will have a servant show you to the meeting room.”

“Very well.” Gerhardt acknowledged.

She nodded and started walking towards the group of six smaller faux-equine creatures on the opposite side of the room before pausing mid stride and looking back towards him with a stern disapproving glare. “Oh, and by the way, after the negotiations are over the two of us are going to have to have a very serious discussion about your use of excessive violence against these eight Changelings.” She stated in a very serious tone.

Gerhardt simply stared at her, unsure how to respond and not really caring either way. As far as he was concerned he had merely acted in self defense. In fact, he had even been quite merciful considering all of them were still alive when he could have just as easily killed them all and been done with it or even cursed them instead. It wasn’t his problem if this demigod was a bit squeamish about something so trivial as a few severed limbs.

Holy crap, I finally did it! You guys have no idea how long this story has been stuck in my head and how many dozens of versions I scraped or have laying around abandoned in my computer's files because they were terrible, I couldn't figure out how to write them, or I simply didn't like them. Hell, even I don't know how many versions I went through since I wrote completely over some and outright deleted others. While I had fun with it, this was by far one of the most challenging things I have ever written up until this point and I'm just glad I finally have a version I think is good enough to keep.

Fun fact. I actually spent a few hours just trying to figure out what the exact percentage of the body the frontal lobe takes up and I eventually determined that 99.997% of the main character's body is artificial. Now, I have no idea if that's actually right but I'm sticking with that number for now unless I am wrong and someone would like to correct me.

Edit: Correction. I have been told the actual number is actually closer to 99%, so I have gone back and corrected this.

Another fun fact: Gerhardt here was originally supposed to not have any emotions. And I mean at all. To an extreme degree. To the point that he was not only physically incapable of emotion but actually had to have preprogrammed subroutines as artificial driving forces otherwise he would have essentially been little more then a living, overly complex, overly intelligent, and overly expensive copper statue. That version of him had quite literally cut out his amygdala and removed his capacity to feel emotion at all in order to increase his efficiency and productivity. I thought it would be interesting writing a character that was completely and utterly devoid of any trace of emotion whatsoever... but hooooly shit, it is fucking hard to write a character with absolutely no emotions, goals, desires, ambitions, opinions, or anything else like that especially in a My Little Pony fanfic like this. I honestly doubt that I could have ever written that version of him correctly or in a way that made sense.

Last fun fact: The Research and Development branch doesn't just sit around working in labs all day, they do actually go out on the front lines and fight in active combat. However, their roles on the battlefield mainly involve technology, logistics, and pure mathematics. For example: ensuring everyone has all of the proper supplies and equipment for the given mission or battlefield, defending, operating, and repairing important machinery and artillery, repairing weapons, vehicles, golems, and other such things, basic communication roles, sneaking behind enemy lines to sabotage machines, vehicles, and artillery that are important to the enemy forces, maintaining and managing supply lines, hacking enemy devices, and sometimes even working along side the medical branch to give severely wounded soldiers augmentations. Everyone in the human military is a trained soldier, no exceptions.

Now on a bit more serious of a note. To anyone who may be wondering, no I have not abandoned my other story. I will most definitely continue it eventually. The only reasons I haven't up until this point are that life kinda got in the way, I was having trouble with the second chapter and that kind of made me temporarily lose interest for a while. and I couldn't get this idea for a story out of my head. I will update it eventually.

Anyways, tell me what you guys thought about this chapter! Constructive criticism is more then welcome. In fact it is encouraged! After all, how can I possibly improve if I don't know what I did wrong or what I should work on? I am excited to hear what you all think. Either way I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it and I'll see you all in the next one!

Edit: Fixed an inconsistency I spotted while re-reading this. Previously Gerhardt claimed to remember Chrysalis mentioning something about eating love when she ordered her soldiers to capture him, but that never happened. She only said he could serve as food for the hive. Now she actually does mention feeding on love. Also, fixed a typo in the summary. Ah, the "joys" (annoyances) of writing while dead tired.

Edit #2: It was a long time coming and I know I should have done it sooner, but I finally got around to fixing the description of Gerhardt's uniform. It's no longer one massive run on sentence. Corrected a few other minor things as well, and broke up a few paragraphs I thought were too big and should be split in two.

The larger white demigod, who Gerhardt still didn’t know the name of, had spent a little over ten minutes speaking with the six civilians before she finally returned and led Gerhardt to the Castle and told a maid lead him to the meeting room before going off to take care of whatever business she needed to. As they walked through the castle Gerhardt noticed the maid that was leading him and all of the other servants and even the “Royal Guard”, as he learned they were called, all seemed to be avoiding him or be giving him startled or disturbed looks. This was something he had grown more then used to over the centuries. Honestly speaking, he would have found it odd if they weren’t bothered by him. Almost everyone who saw or met him for the first time tended to act this way around him as most people found the way he looked, moved, and behaved to be somewhat unsettling.

He knew he could have done something about it if he truly wanted to simply by redesigning his metal exterior to resemble a skeletal frame then by covering it with a self repairing artificial skin substitute made of silicone to make his body look like his old organic body and by altering his joints a bit and by tweaking the programming of his motor cortex slightly to make his movements look more natural. In fact, most individuals with particularly extensive augmentations typically did both of these things. He simply never bothered as he honestly just didn’t care. In fact, not only did he not care but he actually found the psychological effects his augmentations had on others to be quite beneficial most of the time. This was because, since he unsettled people they tended to avoid him unless they had an actual reason to bother him which usually allowed him to work for longer periods of time without any interruptions that were not strictly necessary.

For this reason he would have actually even gone so far as to make himself look even more unsettling to others and would have given his body several other alterations and improvements as well if he could have. Unfortunately for him he was unable to do so because of the laws around augmentations that essentially stated that an augmented individual had to closely resemble their original species and could not significantly alter their basic bodily structure by adding external parts. Despite having been a High Lord — or to be more accurate specifically because he had been a High Lord — he still had to follow the laws or he would have lost his office and would have been publicly executed, as in the punishments were far harsher on High Lords then they were for anyone else in the Human Kingdom.

Eventually the maid led him to a door in one of the castle halls and opened it revealing a smallish room containing a large circular table with ten oddly designed chairs set around it. The ancient technomancer looked down at the maid who had led him here and thanked her before choosing a chair at random and sitting down. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing he had ever sat on as the chair had very clearly not been designed with creatures like him in mind, let alone ones that were made of metal like him. Plus he was slightly too big for it as it had been designed for smaller creatures like these ponies and he was fairly large even by human standards standing at 6’5’’, though despite his height he was actually fairly thin. On average these ponies only seemed to come up to his waist, in terms of height, with the white demigod being the tallest he had seen coming up to just below his chest, not counting her horn.

Having nothing better to do at the moment, Gerhardt decided he may as well build a proof of concept for what he promised Queen Chrysalis. As such he unlatched the rolled up portable toolkit made of thick durable cloth from the back of the belt of his robes and set it on the table in front of him. It only contained a few small basic tools, but it would be sufficient for what he intended to do. He then reached into several of the pouches and satchels that also hung around the middle of his torso on the belt of his robes and pulled out several spare parts and components, various types of crystals of different sizes, small individual roles of gold, copper, and silver wire, and several small sheets of different types of metal and set them all on the table one after another.

He knew this was going to eat up a significant portion of the very limited materials he had with him but he didn’t want to risk experimenting by using his own Emotion Processing Unit to generate love for the “Changeling” to attempt feeding on to see if it was even possible, because if something went wrong and his E.P.U. was damaged it could prove to be a very bad thing. So he decided it was better to be safe than sorry and began the process of building a separate E.P.U. entirely. He didn’t have either the time nor the tools to make one the same quality as his own at the moment, so the one he was building would be far more crude and primitive but it would be sufficient for the purposes of demonstration and experimentation. In fact, it was better that it was so crude as that meant it didn’t matter as much if it was damaged in the experiment which he fully expected it to be.

He spent a little over an hour working on the device, making sure to be careful so he didn’t scratch or otherwise damage the table he was using. When he was finally finished he had what looked like a square box made of silver with a switch and dial on the top that were both made of steel, no larger than the palm of his hand. With that finished, he cleaned up and put everything away once more and set the freshly made device on his lap before continuing to wait patiently for the others to arrive. After a few minutes his mind drifted back towards the situation on earth and his current predicament.

“What am I supposed to do?" He muttered to himself uncertainly. "It's impossible for me to return to my own universe and even if it were possible it would simply be pointless as Silvanus would just send me away again or more likely would outright kill me since the kingdom is likely now officially at war with him... which is probably exactly what he wanted to gain by doing this in the first place, damn it all...”

Gerhardt sighed in a bitter mix of both frustration and resignation. The situation was out of his hands, there was nothing he could do about it anymore. As much as he hated it — and by the gods did he absolutely despise it — he just had to hope for the best. The other high lords may have been young when compared to him but they were each still very competent military leaders that were each the kingdom’s leading expert in their respective crafts at minimum and even the newest of them — the current High Lord of Aviation, Alexander Sky — was a highly accomplished war veteran and tactician who has held his office for well over fifty years at this point. If anyone could possibly lead the kingdom through this disaster it would most definitely be them and whoever replaced him as the High Lord of R&D, he was absolutely sure of it. Yet for some reason he couldn’t help but worry.

Desperate to take his mind off of this, he began humming the same gentle lullaby from his past that he had been while he was working on the anti-plague gun in his lab earlier that day. The same tune he always hummed to himself whenever he was particularly stressed or otherwise worried in an attempt to help himself calm down and relax. This time, however, the melody sounded slower and much more melancholy, more along the lines of a mournful lament or perhaps even a funeral dirge rather than a simple child’s lullaby. He continued on like, this losing himself in memories of happier times in his life so he didn’t have to think about what was happening on Earth, until his sensors finally detected four energy readings approaching the room causing him to immediately stop humming and look towards the door. Three were strangely weak demigods, one was a sort-of-but-not mage that was about as powerful as them. He recognized the unique energy signatures of Queen Chrysalis and the two demigods he had met when he had first arrived, but the third demigod was new which put him slightly on edge.

A few seconds later the door opened and the four of them walked in. The new demigod was a hybrid creature like the other two but this one was slightly larger than the one known as Cadence but was still smaller than the larger white one, and she had dark blue fur and an illusory mane and tail similar to those the largest of the three demigods had but Cadence oddly lacked for some reason. All four of them sat down at the table, the demigods all sitting next to each other while Queen Chrysalis sat on her own away from either the demigods or Gerhardt.

Gerhardt felt slightly embarrassed that he wasn’t using a more formal body or wearing a more formal uniform for this meeting seeing as he had not been expecting to act as a mediator in negotiations between two alien kingdoms today. He actually felt somewhat tempted to apologize to all of them for it before the negotiations began but after a microsecond of thought he ultimately decided against it. They did not know he had, or use to have, more than one body he could switch his brain between and both the Ponies and the “Changelings” appeared to come from cultures that were largely nudist much like the Trolls or the Ogres, so they likely didn’t care about his clothing in the least. So instead of apologizing he merely decided to get to the point and asked, “Am I correct to assume that everyone that needs to be here for these negotiations is present?”

The largest of the demigods nodded and said, “Yes, but before we begin I would like to address something Queen Chrysalis said earlier.” She looked at the Changeling. “You claimed that I hate Changelings and would never agree to negotiate with you or agree to help you. That simply is not true! If you had sent somepony to set up a meeting I would have been more than happy to discuss this with you earlier.”

Queen Chrysalis scoffed. “Oh please… Tell that to the Changelings I sent to do just that only for them to be chased out of your city or be arrested by your Royal Guard!” Chrysalis hissed back furiously.

All three of the demigods appeared shocked by this claim. “W-what?! What do you mean?! I never received any reports of any changeling diplomats being arrested!” The demigod exclaimed.

“This is merely a theory based on personal experience but perhaps your guards were falsifying their reports or simply just never informed you, or perhaps it was ordered by other high ranking or otherwise politically powerful individuals under you?” Gerhardt suggested. That kind of thing was frustratingly common in his experience and he had to deal with it more times then he even bothered to count.

The blue one scowled. “Thou may be correct, eerie metal creature. Indeed, I can think of several who I believe would be capable of such treachery!” She exclaimed, apparently outraged.

Gerhardt stared at her for a moment wondering whether she intended what she called him as an insult or a mere observation, but said nothing.

The white one sighed. “In either case this is a very serious problem that I am deeply ashamed I ever allowed to happen under my rule. I take full responsibility for this and I promise that my sister and I will begin investigating this matter as soon as this meeting is over and as soon as we find those responsible we will punish them accordingly, assuming this isn’t just a particularly bad case of miscommunication. I sincerely apologize to you and your hive. Had I known about this I would have done something about it far sooner.”

Chrysalis huffed in annoyance and glared at the two larger demigods and the room quickly descended into an awkward silence.

“R-right, um…” Cadence muttered, clearly feeling uncomfortable. “A-any ways… I also have something I would like to bring up from earlier. High Lord Gerhardt, you called me and my aunt demigods on multiple occasions, why is that?”

This caught the white and blue demigods’ attention and they both looked at him. “Yes, I wasn’t going to bring it up but I would like to know this as well.” The white demigod stated.

Gerhardt turned his head and looked straight at her. “It is because you are demigods. I have lived a very long life and in that time I have encountered all manner of divine and immortal beings from gods, to spirits, and even other demigods such as yourselves, and my body’s built in sensors indicate that both of you as well as the blue one are in fact demigods based on the semi-divine energy readings that I am detecting from all three of you. On the other hand Queen Chrysalis and the other Changelings all appear to be mortal and all of them appear to be something along the lines of mages but somehow not. It also seems that every living thing in this world has some connection to magic and not all of them are mages but are other things entirely, but as far as I am aware neither of those things should be even remotely possible.”

“On that note, all of your magic seems to lack proper control or coherency and is abnormally weak to the point it seems almost atrophied, almost as if none of you ever received proper training and have never once taken the time to maintain your magical fitness. It is honestly, quite strange to me. Now please keep in mind that I do not mean any of that as an insult, it is merely a scientific observation from an individual who is not familiar with this world or its inhabitants.”

All of them appeared greatly disturbed by this revelation. “Judging by his emotions, he’s dead serious.” Chrysalis stated, appearing slightly offended as well as disturbed.

“... None of this information is to ever leave this room, are we all agreed?” The white demigod asked, looking around at everyone at the table. Chrysalis, Cadence, and the blue demigod all muttered their agreements.

“Which parts and why?” Gerhardt inquired. “I fail to see how any of it needs to be kept secret. In fact some of that information could potentially benefit your respective societies such as the need for proper training and the need for maintaining magical fitness among your mages.”

The white demigod took a deep breath and said, “Mainly the part about the three of us being demigods but none of this should ever get out. At least not right away. I, for one, have a school where talented young unicorns go to learn how to use magic. Imagine the backlash if the public believed their Princess was either incompetent or not giving their foals a proper education!”

“Princess? I thought you were a queen or part of a council or something. Either way, I suppose I see your point. Though I would still recommend beginning to improve your education system as soon as possible and perhaps at least teaching certain trustworthy members of your respective militaries about magical fitness while continuing to keep the general populace in the dark about it, assuming there are civilian mages in your kingdoms. That way you are able to maintain an edge over any mages that go rogue and can eliminate them before they are able to do any significant damage.”

“Oh, right. You know Queen Chrysalis and Princess Cadence’s names already but I suppose you probably still don’t know who me or my sister are.” The white demigod stated, apparently only just realizing this. “I’m sorry, I’m just so used to everypony knowing us instantly that it slipped my mind. I am Princess Celestia and this is my younger sister Princess Luna, we are the diarchs of Equestria and rule the day and night respectively. My sister and I don’t really like to use the term “Queen” as we believe that would make us sound less friendly or approachable to our subjects.” The white demigod explained. “And we will take your recommendations into consideration, though for us to do anything about it you may have to provide us with some notes on how to improve our training and how to maintain magical fitness. Though, I do have to ask, why aren’t you following your own advice by not keeping us in the dark about this? Wouldn’t you want to keep that advantage yourself.”

“Ah, so you call yourselves “Princesses” as a tactic for a subtle psychological manipulation of your people. Good to know. I will keep that in mind.” Gerhardt acknowledged. The two so-called “princesses” almost seemed to choke upon hearing this while Queen Chrysalis seemed to be having to hold back laughter, even Princess Cadence had a slightly amused expression. Gerhardt didn’t understand what the issue was or what was so funny but he decided to ignore this strange behavior for the moment as he continued speaking.

“As for why I am sharing this information with you, I am used to living in a world where it is fairly common knowledge. So as long as we are not enemies then I honestly just don’t care since I have no intentions of fighting any of you or your kingdoms in the first place. Furthermore, so long as I continue to remain on peaceful terms with all of you, then by improving the quality of your soldiers training and strengthening their magic I make your respective kingdoms safer and thus I make myself safer by extension so long as I remain within the borders of one of your kingdoms. Plus, if I truly had no choice but to defend myself, I’m neither stupid nor suicidal so I would not do it by fighting either of your kingdom’s soldiers and especially not any of you yourselves head on let alone until I had an army of my own first.” He explained, intentionally avoiding going into any further detail as to what he meant by that last bit.

Fortunately for him, all four of them seemed to accept his reasoning easily enough and none of them seemed to notice his wording or simply didn’t think much of it and thus didn’t bother questioning him for the moment. Even if they had called him out on it however, he fully planned on simply playing it off as having misspoken and apologizing for it before moving on. “Now then, assuming someone gives me something to write with and either a notebook or a sizable stack of papers, I’ll see what I am able to come up with in regards to the notes you have requested once the negotiations have concluded. Speaking of the negotiations, may I suggest we cease with these meaningless pleasantries or whatever one would call this pointless conversation and actually begin? That is the entire reason why we are all here right now after all.”

“Agreed. Not that this hasn’t been… “enlightening”, so to speak, but let’s just get on with it already. To get this started, you said you had an idea to keep the hive from starving, I want to know what it is before I agree to anything.” Queen Chrysalis demanded, glaring at Gerhardt.

“Several ideas actually, but the rest only matter if my main idea doesn’t work as I am almost certain it will given the fact that you can apparently sense my own emotions.” Gerhardt explained before picking up the square metal device in his lap and setting it on the table in front of him. “I built this with what basic tools and some of what limited materials I have while waiting for all of you to arrive. It is effectively a crude and hastily slapped together version of a brain augmentation meant to replace the amygdala of an organic brain and take over its role in processing emotions, though not its role in memory as that is the job of another augmentation all together, but I am getting off topic. These augmentations are called Emotion Processing Units or E.P.U.s for short. I have one myself, which is why the fact that you can sense my emotions at all makes me so certain this will work.”

All four of them looked somewhat surprised when he explained that it was designed to replace part of a person’s brain, and Queen Chrysalis leaned closer slightly in an attempt to get a better look at it.

“Now, that being said, this one is significantly different from my own E.P.U. First and foremost, I currently lack the appropriate tools and materials and did not have enough time to make it to anywhere near the same level of quality as my own. Second, I designed it so that it can function entirely on its own without being attached to the rest of a person’s brain, which augmentations are not normally designed to do, thus why it resembles a silver box more than anything else. As such, I suppose it’s effectively a sort of “emotion generator” or a type of magic energy converter rather than an actual brain augmentation. Finally, I designed it to only “feel” one thing, that being love since that is what you claim to eat. Now, I am not totally sure which type of love Changelings feed on but since this invasion apparently took place during Princess Cadence’s wedding I could only assume it’s romantic love rather than familial or platonic love, so that is what I designed it to “feel” if that makes any difference?” He said questioningly.

“It doesn’t. Changelings can feed on all forms of love. Different types of love do taste different, with romantic love being the sweetest tasting, so the preferences of any given Changeling may vary depending on the individual. Personally, though, I have no preferences in regards to the type of love I consume.” Chrysalis stated, her eyes never leaving the little silver device sitting on the table.

“Thank you, I will have to keep that in mind while developing the finished product. Now, let’s test this. The device is currently turned off and the dial is set to zero so it is currently not producing any love. I’m going to activate it and turn it up to, let us say… twenty-five percent of its maximum capabilities to start off with, just to be safe. Then I would like for you to see if you can feed on it. However, I would request that you be careful and go slowly at first — assuming you are able to — as since you claim that draining too much love can have adverse effects on organic beings such as Ponies I am uncertain as to what effect it will have on this device, if any.”

“Fine... I’ll be careful not to break your stupid machine, just get on with it.” Chrysalis grumbled in a mix of annoyance and impatience.

“Very well.” Gerhardt acknowledged. With that he flipped the switch on the top of the device and turned the dial up to 25%.

Queen Chrysalis then opened her mouth and a stream of pinkish energy began slowly flowing into it from the device. Chrysalis’ face scrunched up slightly in displeasure as the pinkish energy entered her mouth. After a few seconds, however, the device started smoking and before anyone could react it erupted in a shower of sparks of pure magic energy, cutting off the pink energy Chrysalis was consuming. The sparks continued on for a few seconds before eventually dying down and coming to a stop.

Chrysalis shook her head in disgust. “Blech… I think it worked all up until the point it blew up but the love it creates tastes like metal and is extremely sour. Ugh…” She stated, very clearly not having enjoyed the experience.

Gerhardt picked up the now completely ruined and still smoking device off the table in front of him. Deciding speed was more important than efficiency at the moment, he decided to forgo tools and instead cast a quick telekinetic spell to undo four small screws and opened up the top panel the switch and dial were connected to. Giving the insides a quick once over he noticed several of the circuits had far too much strain placed on them causing them to overload, several crucial wires had actually melted, the magic battery had all but exploded, and the enchanted quartz crystal that served as the ambient energy collector which charged the magic battery had completely shattered and was now little more than a pile of a fine dust-like powder laying on the bottom of the silver casing. He was now very glad he hadn’t used his own E.P.U. for this experiment.

“I believe I see what went wrong... Well... The important part is that this showed that the concept can work which means we will not have to resort to growing working genetically engineered organic brains without souls in large vats, which was one of my alternative ideas. Simply building a single machine or mass producing many machines to generate love will be much faster, cheaper, more efficient, and will require less maintenance than any of the alternatives. We can work on refining the taste of the love the machine or machines produce later while I work on trying to improve the design so the machine doesn’t utterly annihilate itself every time a Changeling attempts to feed on it.” Gerhardt explained while closing the top back up and using telekinesis to screw the bolts back in before setting the destroyed device back down on the table in front of him.

“So with that now out of the way, unless I am directly spoken to or things start becoming less then civil between you, from this point onwards I will be completely silent for the remainder of this meeting.” He stated before closing his mouth and proceeding to watch them all silently.

Princess Celestia nodded and said, “Right, well moving forwards we would like for the Changelings to pay reparations for any and all damages incurred during their invasion today and for them to release any Equestrian citizens they may have imprisoned or have held hostage. We would also like to note that in return we are willing to open our borders to the Changeling Hive and will allow your subjects to enter Equestria peacefully so long as they remain undisguised and follow our laws while within our borders. We are also willing to assist you and your Hive by setting up temporary locations where our citizens could willingly donate love to the Hive until research and development into these love generator devices can be completed so long as you agree to have your subjects abide by certain rules and regulations to ensure the safety of those who choose to donate. It would be very similar in operation to a blood bank.”

“And you still have to publicly apologize for ruining my wedding after this is over.” Princess Cadence quickly added, earning an amused chuckle from Luna and a stern slightly frustrated look from Celestia.

Queen Chrysalis was silent for a moment as she considered this, completely ignoring Cadence’s demand beyond a simple roll of her eyes. “Very well, but the same applies to any Ponies crossing the border into Changeling territory. They must follow our laws or they will be arrested and will be punished accordingly. We will send reports concerning Ponies being arrested for breaking our laws within our borders to you, but you must agree to do the same for any Changelings arrested within your borders. And thank you Princess Cadence, you just gave me an idea. I also want the punishment for whoever is responsible for arresting my messengers and diplomats to be completely public and I want what they did and why they are being punished for it to be made perfectly clear to your citizens.”

Cadence winced and gave Celestia an apologetic look.

“A-are you sure? We don’t know for certain why this was happening yet and I don’t exactly like the idea of humiliating anypony like this…” Celestia said, sounding slightly nervous and uncomfortable.

Chrysalis sneered and slammed a hoof on the table. “If it weren’t for them none of this would have ever happened and my Hive wouldn’t be on the verge of starvation right now, so yes I’m absolutely bucking certain! Just be glad I’m not demanding they be executed or sent to Tartarus instead, Hive knows they deserve either one for what they did! Luckily, for us both I’m not that short sighted. Doing this instead should actually help mitigate the common pony’s fear and prejudice against me and my Changelings and improve their perception of us somewhat by showing them exactly who’s truly at fault for all of this in the first place.”

Luna raised a hoof to her mouth and cleared her throat. “Sister, I am afraid I must agree with Queen Chrysalis on this matter. Her request is far from unreasonable. Furthermore, whomever is at fault for this more than deserves such a fate for the damage they hath inflicted upon the Changeling Hive and for harming diplomatic relations between our kingdoms to such a degree.”

Celestia stared at Luna for a moment seemingly not having expected her to side with Chrysalis and sighed in resignation. “Alright... I don’t like it, but I suppose I have no choice but to agree… Now, moving on, what is your stance on the Hive becoming official allies with Equestria?”

“I’m completely bucking opposed to it!” Chrysalis hissed furiously. “I’m not stupid, Celestia! Don’t you dare think I don’t know what it means for a foreign power to become so-called “allies” with Equestria! If I agreed the hive would completely lose its independence as a country and would become part of Equestria in all but name alone! So long as I am Queen of the Changelings, I refuse to allow my Hive to ever become subservient to you imperialists! I take personal offence to the fact you would dare even ask me such a thing!”

The three demigods all looked taken aback by this. “Please calm down and try to think about this rationally. We aren’t—” Celestia attempted to say, only to be cut off by Queen Chrysalis.

“I AM thinking about this perfectly rationally! It’s happened time and time again throughout history! If I agreed to become allies with Equestria, you would demand my Hive demilitarize, if we didn’t agree you would force us into compliance by threatening us through displays of military force and using your control over the sun and moon until we would have no choice but to agree! Then you would send your Royal Guard in to patrol within our borders given that we would no longer be able to do so ourselves! Then you would start sending ponies in to immigrate into our territory under the guise of “friendship” and “wanting to learn about our culture”! Then you would start making demands about making changes to our laws to “better accommodate” the bucking ponies living in our territory! Eventually it would end up with my Hive paying Equestria taxes for the continued “protection” of your Royal Guard and even more from there! So the answer is, buck no we are not going to become allies and we never bucking will!” Chrysalis ranted, all but shouting at this point.

Gerhardt stared at her, feeling extremely confused. What on Earth did she mean by their “control over the sun and moon”? Was that supposed to be a metaphor or something? Did it have something to do with the strange tattoos, brands, or whatever the hell those strange pictures on their rumps were, which seemingly every pony he had seen thus far had? After all, he remembered Celestia’s sort of looked like a sun and Luna’s sort of looked like a crescent moon.

Luna scowled at Chrysalis. “How DAREST thou speaketh to us in such a manner! Why, I ought to teacheth thee a lesson in proper manners and respect!”

Princess Celestia gave Princess Luna a sharp look. “Sister! That’s—”

Queen Chrysalis cut her off mid sentence as she slammed her front hooves into the table with her jagged horn glowing green with magic as if she were preparing to cast a spell and retorted, “Oh yeah?! Bring it on Nightmare bitch! I beat Celestia earlier and I still have more than enough energy from the love I consumed from Shining Armor left over to take down the lesser of the two celestial sisters! I’ll gladly make you wish you were banished to the moon again for another thousand years!”

Luna looked completely shocked for a moment before her previous anger returned a hundred times over as her wings flared out in absolute fury and her own horn started glowing with blue light.

Gerhardt stood up out of his seat, his hands glowing with copper colored light as he cast an illusion spell on himself meant to invoke an intense sense of fear and intimidation in whoever looked at him. It could be countered pretty easily if one knew what it was, but fortunately all of them appeared too distracted to really notice at the moment so he estimated that it should affect all of them for a few seconds, which was all he really needed to calm things down. In an attempt to add to this effect he also made his eyes glow brighter in an attempt to look more intimidating, turned up the volume and brightness of his iolite vocalizer to make his voice louder without him having to actually shout, and in as commanding a tone as he possibly could demanded, “Stop!”

The room fell silent and all four of them were now staring at him with wide eyes… wider eyes… Seriously, how the hell were those things not falling out of their skulls? After standing there for a few more seconds just to make absolutely sure no one was going to try anything, he turned the brightness of his eyes and vocalizer and turned the volume of his voice back down to their default settings and released his hold on the illusion spell he was casting since he knew it would only be another second or two at most before someone in here countered it.

“I am cutting this off now before it has a chance to escalate any further. As the acting mediator for these negotiations, I will not tolerate anything less than perfectly civil discussion. Queen Chrysalis, such an antagonistic response was entirely uncalled for, as were the insults. A simple “no” and a polite explanation as to your reasoning would have more than sufficed. Princess Luna, Queen Chrysalis’ response does not warrant you allowing your emotions to get the better of you and letting yourself threaten her as you did, nor do her insults. Please remember that you are one of the two main leaders of your country and as such your people require you to retain a certain measure of self restraint and a level head in situations where you might otherwise become upset or angry, even if it is difficult to do so. Both of you please refrain from repeating such actions for the rest of the duration of this meeting.” With that, Gerhardt sat back down once more looking as if nothing had even happened.

The room descended into silence once again with both Luna and Chrysalis both clearly still being upset and completely refusing to look at eachother or Gerhardt. Princess Celestia had a mentally and emotionally exhausted look on her face, and Princess Cadence looked as though she was at a loss as to what to do. Eventually though it was Princess Cadence who broke the silence, once again.

Clearing her throat, clearly still uncomfortable, she asked, “Ehem… So, um… While I think Queen Chrysalis’ information may be a little… out of date, I think I might have an alternate suggestion I think might work, if I may?” She looked at Celestia who gave her a warm smile and nodded. Cadence smiled back thankfully, looked at Chrysalis and said, “If you don’t want to become allies with Equestria, how about becoming neutral unaffiliated trading partners instead? That way our kingdoms can at least maintain cordial relations with each other without having to be official allies. That would work, um... right?” She asked uncertainly, very clearly showing that she was still fairly new to dealing with international politics. So, while it was going to take time and experience for her to build up her confidence, Gerhardt could tell she had the potential to become an excellent politician, which he honestly didn’t find surprising in the least given that he assumed she had been trained for politics from birth as most members of royalty were.

Queen Chrysalis actually thought about this for a few seconds. “Perhaps… I will admit, that does sound more acceptable... We’ll have to discuss the terms of this arrangement in more detail as well as go over potential trade routes before I actually agree to anything, however.”

After that they continued on for a few hours, discussing terms, setting up trade routes, and other such things. Fortunately, from there on out there had been no further incidents that required Gerhardt to intervene. Eventually Celestia summoned a large blank document seemingly out of thin air along with a quill and inkwell and the four of them began the process of writing up a peace treaty.

The fact she had seemingly teleported something to her didn’t surprise Gerhardt in the least given that he knew she was a demigod. However, the ancient technomancer had very much so been extremely shocked to see the quill and inkwell as while he had indeed heard of such things he had honestly never seen one of either in person before as they had long since been completely replaced by pens thousands of years before even he was born. He didn’t show it visually, however, and he recovered fairly quickly, though he was still fairly certain Queen Chrysalis knew anyways given her frankly unsettling ability to sense emotions. He made a mental note to work on developing something to hide his emotions from Changelings while working on developing the love generators for them.

Granted, he had also seen the steel spears held the Ponies’ “Royal Guard” and the archaic gold armor they wore, the only enchantment on which was a minor light based illusion enchantment that made them all look exactly the same, but he had thought those were both intended to be ceremonial. After all, how could they not be merely ceremonial given the fact that the Ponies lacked the necessary physiology to use spears effectively in combat and the fact that unreinforced gold was a terrible metal to use for armor?

Seeing the quill and inkwell, however, made him wonder if he had been mistaken and this world was truly thousands of years behind his own in terms of technological development. Even if that were the case, however, it still didn’t explain why they used non-magically-reinforced gold for armor. It just didn’t make any sense to him unless the armor, if nothing else, was ceremonial rather than practical given that he knew for a fact they had steel. Having little to nothing to do with the rest of the goings on in the room, he had little else to do but think about things and thus became hung up on this unusual discrepancy for quite some time. Something so mundane as simply asking someone about it never even remotely crossed his mind as he continued to mentally speculate and theorize about the subject.

Eventually he was torn out of his train of thought when he heard Princess Celestia say his name. “Well, Mr. Gerhardt, I believe this pretty much concludes the negotiations. Although, if I’m not mistaken, you currently don’t have anywhere to stay and as of right now you’re currently unemployed seeing as you are stuck here until you can find a way to return to your own world. So, I’m curious, what are you planning to do from here on out?”

“You are correct in that I have no were to stay and am currently unemployed, however, even if it was remotely possible for me to find a way to return to my own world — and honestly I am not confident that it is — there would simply be no point. If I did somehow manage to return then Silvanus would simply banish me again or more likely would outright kill me. So I essentially have no choice but to stay here in this world for the foreseeable future. As for what I plan to do while I am here after I finish developing the love generators for the Changelings… Hm… Well, your kingdom and presumably the rest of this world seems to have fairly primitive technology compared to my own and, well… I am a technomancer so I imagine I will just start a business building, selling, and repairing my technology and will use whatever profit I make to fund my research since I have literally nothing else to do.”

“What’s a technomancer?” Princess Cadence asked curiously before anyone could say anything else.

“A technomancer is what we humans call a mage who combines magic and technology. Also, just in case it is not already plainly obvious by now, a mage is what we humans call individuals who are born with the ability to use magic.”

Celestia smiled and said, “I see... Well, Mr. Mechanica, I would like to make you an offer, if you would be willing to listen?”

Gerhardt immediately became suspicious and stared at her for a moment before replying with a simple, “I‘m listening, for now at least, but I make no guarantees that I will actually agree to anything.”

Celestia nodded understandingly and said, “I would be willing to grant you citizenship here in Equestria, as well as give you a house with a large storage shed attached to the back that you could convert into a small lab or workshop, and even offer some assistance in starting your business and in distributing your products. In return, however, I would like for your business to at least start off with somewhat of a focus on selling your medical technology to our hospitals, I would like us to be your main supplier so I would like for you to order at least 55% of your materials from the castle, I would also like you to prioritize any commissions from me or my sister and give us a 50% discount on anything we order from you.”

He considered this for a moment. “A couple things before I agree to anything. First, what if instead I order 65% of my materials from you but only for the first five or so years? Later, assuming you turn out to be a reliable and trustworthy business partner I may continue purchasing most of my materials from you. Second, I believe 50% is a bit too high of a discount. How does 35% sound to you?”

“Hmm… How about you order 60% of your materials from us for eight years and give us a 40% discount.” Princess Celestia countered.

“40% is still quite high but I suppose it is not exactly unreasonable given how much I would be receiving in return… Very well, I agree to your terms.”

She smiled at him. “Wonderful! Then I suppose that means this meeting is officially concluded. Queen Chrysalis, I will have a copy of the treaty sent to you as soon as possible. I’ll also have somepony inform you where to send the materials for Gerhardt to work with while developing these love generators for your Hive in a few days after I finalize some paperwork.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever.” Chrysalis grumbled dismissively as she got out of her seat and began heading for the door. “Just hurry it up! I want those generators as soon as possible, and he still has to replace the limbs of the eight subjects of mine that he maimed.”

Princess Luna, Princess Cadence, and Gerhardt all got up out of their seats and were about to do the same when Celestia cleared her throat and said, “Actually, Gerhardt, please sit back down. What Chrysalis said just reminded me, you and I still have to discuss your actions regarding those Changelings earlier.” Her smile was gone and had been replaced with the same stern disapproving glare from earlier.

Gerhardt stopped, sighed in annoyance, pulled his chair back out from under the table and sat back down. When Luna and Cadence finally exited the room and the door closed behind them he said, “As far as I see it, there isn’t much to discuss. They attacked me and I acted in self defense. End of story. In fact, I was actually being quite merciful by only removing a couple limbs. I could very easily have placed unbreakable curses on them or could have simply aimed for their heads and killed them instead, but I didn’t. Plus, I am willing to replace their limbs so it's not as though they are going to be crippled for life, which is yet another thing I could have done to them but didn’t. I fail to see anything wrong with my actions.”

Celestia seemed completely unphased by this and simply retorted, “I realize they attacked you first and you had to defend yourself, but you went too far! I saw you cast that sleep spell on them after cauterizing their wounds, you could have just as easily done that to begin with instead of resorting to mutilating them!”

“Ah yes, that. Yet another thing I didn’t have to do at all.” Gerhardt scoffed dismissively. “Now, even you have to know better then that. Sleep spells are easily countered by anyone paying any attention whatsoever, even mages with atrophied magic like you or them. The only reason it worked on them when it did was because they were too distracted by their wounds to even notice me casting the spell and were in too much pain to care let alone try to stop me even if they did. Furthermore, even if they hadn't been able to counter my spell for whatever reason simply putting them to sleep would have rather ironically resulted in an even bloodier outcome and would have completely ruined my chances of avoiding making enemies with her Kingdom."

Celestia scowled at him but quirked an eyebrow curiously. "I could say the same to you. You should know better. If you craft it well enough a sleep spell should be almost impossible to counter for anyone other then a particularly skilled or powerful magic user. Now, could you please explain how you can possibly believe that putting them to sleep would have ended up being even bloodier then severing their limbs or how maiming those changelings somehow improved your chances of not making enemies?"

Gerhardt blinked at her once. "Really? Do you honestly need me to explain the obvious? Please just take a moment to think about it. It really is just simple logic, I assure you."

"It's really not!" Celestia retorted.

Gerhardt sighed in exasperation. "Very well... Since you appear to enjoy pretending that you lack the intelligence to follow logical trains of thought then I will put this into simple terms that even an idiot could understand." Continuing on he began speaking a bit slower, causing Celestia to bristle slightly. "Based on her personality and behavior I assume we can both very clearly tell that Queen Chrysalis is an arrogant bitch. Not only that, but she had every reason to fight in order to secure a food source for her hive to prevent her people from starving to death. So if I simply put her soldiers to sleep rather then killing or mutilating them in someway she would not have been intimidated enough to even bother listening to me even when I had a gun to her head, especially since I highly doubt she would have known what my gun was even capable of without witnessing it in action first." While he talked he pulled his teleportation pistol out of its holster concealed under his robes and placing it on the table in front of him, after switching on the safety, just to display the ornate gold and silver weapon he was referring to.

"Since I would not have been able to intimidate her into submission, she would have attacked me and I would have been forced to defend myself. Our resulting fight would have inevitably ended up spilling out of that building and dozens upon dozens of civilians would have been killed in the crossfire at bare minimum, and that would more then likely include those six civilians that were in the room at the time. And that is to say nothing of how many would have been hurt or seriously injured or all the property damage that would have occurred in the process. Finally, I would have been forced to either maim or kill Chrysalis along with any more of her soldiers that attempted to assist her by attacking me. That would mean I would have automatically become a very serious enemy of the Changelings as well as a major target in their eyes for harming or killing their queen and who knows how many of their soldiers. Now do you understand why simply putting those eight to sleep would have been far worse then temporarily crippling them as I did?"

Celestia was clearly horrified when he explained how many people he estimated would have died in the crossfire. When he finally finished talking she appeared to struggle for a few moments, very clearly trying (and failing) to come up with a valid counter argument. Eventually she shook her head with a huff slammed a hoof into the table in front of her and exclaimed, "No, I refuse to accept that! Violence is never the right answer, especially not violence to the extreme you took it! There had to have been a way this could have been resolved peacefully without anypony getting hurt and you're at fault for not even bothering to find it before cutting eight Changelings bucking limbs off like a bucking psychopath!"

Gerhardt rolled the glowing sapphire orbs that served as his eyes, though this was extremely difficult to see. "Oh please... You seem to believe you have the moral high ground in this argument, but I'm sorry to inform you that is simply not the case. So dispense with the petty insults, would you? First, those Changelings were not innocent civilians or anything to that effect, they were hostile soldiers who had attacked me. Losing a limb or two is just one of the many risks one takes when joining the military. They are just lucky to have not lost their lives instead as I had every right to kill them to defend myself and I probably would have if they had been even slightly larger of a threat to me."

Celestia seemed to want to object but he did not give her the chance as he continued speaking. "Second, if you truly believe that assertion than you are a naive idealistic fool because, like it or not, that is simply not how things work in real life. This isn't some fantasy world where everything is sunshine and rainbows, nothing bad ever happens to anyone, and every one can just get along and be friends at the end of the day, not in the least. In reality the world is a cold cruel pit of agony, despair, and constant struggle where hellish monsters that put your worst nightmares to shame exist lurking in the shadows and people constantly fight, suffer, and die while only those who are strong, clever, or lucky enough survive in the harsh and merciless process that is natural selection. Sometimes violence is not just the right answer but the only answer. Whether you choose to accept this or not is completely irrelevant to me."

Celestia just stared at him silently for a moment with an unreadable expression on her face. Finally she asked, "That's... a very grim outlook on life, Gerhardt. I don't think it's a very healthy way to look at things. What could have possibly happened to you in the past to make you think like this? As, if I'm not misinterpreting this, you seem to be speaking from personal experience."

"Almost a thousand years of constant war and having seen and personally experienced some of the worst atrocities ever committed by a few of the most insane and truly evil people and monsters in the history of my world. Hm..." Gerhardt paused for a second to consider an idea he just had. "I suppose it would be easier if I just show you. I'm not in my world anymore after all so it is not as though I have a reason to keep any of this classified anymore. Let us see just how long you can keep your naive pacifistic beliefs after seeing a mere fraction of the things I have experienced throughout my life from my perspective. I believe this should be a rather interesting experiment."

Celestia gave him a confused look and she seemed to be about to ask him what he meant by that when a bright copper aura surrounded his hand and he cast an optical and audio based illusion spell. Suddenly a large rectangular illusory projection almost like the screen of a computer or television appeared floating in the middle of the table between the two of them. This illusory screen began playing some of Gerhardt's worst memories one after the other in the form of videos taken from his perspective from his eyes and audio processors. Sounds of weapons fire, combat and war spells being cast, buildings collapsing, people screaming, begging, and crying, and many other horrible things filled the room as Gerhardt played the first memory he planned to share with Celestia.

Wow, this story honestly got way more attention way faster then I expected! When I noticed this, I got to working on the first chapter straight away. I'm glad everyone liked the prologue so much, I just hope I can keep up the same level of quality and not end up disappointing too many of you since it's sort of inevitable that some people are not going to like something I do with the story at some point. That's just how people work, I suppose. Well, I hope I at least portrayed the characters well enough.

Fun fact #1: Equestria actually had a bit of an imperialistic streak for a couple centuries earlier on in their history in this story. However, they did start changing this approach even before Luna was banished to the moon and four or five centuries after she was banished, Celestia had gotten rid of this approach completely. So Queen Chrysalis' concerns with becoming allies with Equestria do indeed have actual historical merit though they are outdated, as Princess Cadence pointed out. Queen Chrysalis does know this, but she's highly paranoid and is a bit prejudice against Ponies. Just because she's not a completely evil cartoon villain doesn't automatically mean she's a nice person. She's still a stuck up, rude, arrogant bitch to anyone who isn't a Changeling.

Fun fact #2: Silver, Copper, and Gold are the top three most magically conductive metals, in that order, just like they are the top three most electrically conductive metals. This is the reason why the exterior of Gerhardt's current body is made of copper. It's the second most magically conductive metal meaning it doesn't hinder his ability to cast spells any, its cheaper then gold or silver so it's cheaper for him to repair if it gets damaged during an experiment or something to that effect. This is his work body. He also use to have a body designed for combat which was made of magically reinforced silver for extra efficiency when casting spells in the middle of a fight, and an ornate body made of normal gold and silver for important meetings, formal events, and other such things.

As always, constructive criticism is more then welcome. Please, tell me what you guys think of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter as much as much if not more then I enjoyed writing it!

Edit: Fixed some things I forgot to save when editing this the first time.
Edit #2: Just some minor corrections.

[Earth, 802 years in the past]

The sounds of both magic and physical based Artillery fire roared all around Gerhardt as he quickly double checked and recalibrated his primary weapon. It was a custom designed large caliber Heavy Assault Rifle with three separate barrels that could be swapped between with the press of a button, each of which fired something different in order to best overcome effectively any defenses his enemies could possibly use.

The first barrel was made of silver and fired 1 in bolts of magic that exploded on impact to annihilate most basic magic shields. The second barrel used an advanced recoil-less telekinetic system that fired 15 mm tungsten carbide rods mass enchanted to reduce drag and the loss of kinetic energy over distance at mach 9 to pierce through most physical armor. The third and final barrel fired 1 in beams of concentrated coherent photons and could easily be calibrated to shoot at any frequency ranging from microwaves to gamma rays if the enemies defenses were too advanced or complex for the other two modes to penetrate effectively or to shoot straight through them if they were even slightly transparent.

Satisfied with the condition of his primary weapon Gerhardt looked out over the battlefield — once a beautiful major city on the eastern border of the Human Kingdom, now little more than a bloody war zone littered with the rubble of collapsed skyscrapers, craters from aerial and artillery bombardment, and the broken, shattered, and sometimes burning remains of aircraft, armored vehicles, combat golems, and other such war machines that had yet to be recovered for repair or recycling — and scowled as he watched an enemy artillery shell slam into the side of another skyscraper before exploding, causing the entire thing to collapse. His heads up display informed him that had been one of the few remaining buildings that had yet to be fully evacuated. Exactly 637 civilians had still been inside, now they were all dead or were going to die eventually since no one had the time to dig them out.

The dark crimson perfectly clear lab grown rubies that served as his eyes glowed brighter in utter rage and his mechanical silver hands gripped his rifle slightly tighter as he used the flight path, angle, and speed of the artillery shell to calculate the exact position of the gun that fired it. He then used video feeds from the few Combat Golems in the area to confirm his calculations were correct. “High Lord Mechanica to all functional Super Heavy Combat Golems and Artillery Cannons within a three mile radius of my current coordinates. Confirmation Code: 34TM921B. I want zone D9-47J wiped off the gods damned map. Begin bombardment immediately until the total destruction of everything within the area then return to firing at your assigned targets.” He ordered through the communication system built into his head with nothing but cold fury in his voice.

Sure giving that order may have been a bit vindictive and unprofessional of him, but he was in a bad mood right now and he highly doubted anyone would call him out on it. If they did, he would simply call it a strategic decision to take out a seemingly valuable enemy artillery platform as soon as possible. It would be very difficult to prove otherwise as with his brain wirelessly connected to all 250,000 Combat Golems in the city he could see through 500 of their eyes at once allowing him to see almost everywhere across the city just by switching between their video feeds. Thus he had a massive strategic advantage over the Serpents and a far greater perspective of the battlefield then anyone else, meaning all but the few individuals in the entire Kingdom who were the most skeptical and critical of him would be willing to simply take his word for it.

However, while his brain was connected to the golems that didn’t mean he was controlling them all. They were all just as autonomous as combat golems typically were, and they were all in several thousand platoons and other units under the direct command of the soldiers from the R&D branch that they were assigned to. His current unaugmented motor cortex wasn’t powerful enough to control even so much as two bodies at once let alone 250,000, nor could he possibly hope to give commands to so many individual units at once. Even the bleeding edge technology of his occipital processors was barely advanced enough to handle processing his own vision plus even 500 of the 250,000 live video feeds at once.

Having given his orders he adjusted his grip on his weapon and ordered the squad he was leading to begin marching forwards. Their current mission was to escort an “Executioner” class Heavy Combat Golem safely to the center of the city, where the bulk of the fighting was currently taking place. The golem itself was two stories tall, had very thick magically reinforced steel armor, weighed several hundred tons, had well over two dozen small guns to obliterate enemy troops, two arms with two huge cannons with three barrels each where the forearms should have been which operated similarly to Gherhardt’s custom built Heavy Assault Rifle but were designed to destroy enemy tanks and bunkers rather than individual soldiers, and two shoulder mounted cannons that fired canisters of poisonous gas and powerful military grade gaseous super-acid respectively.

As they passed by the building that collapsed, Gerhardt saw something crawling out from under some of the rubble. He thought it was a woman but it was extremely hard to tell as she was very badly burned, was severely mutilated, was covered in blood and dust, was bleeding profusely, had bits of shrapnel, glass, and wood of various sizes sticking out of her body, and was missing both of her legs below her knees.

“H-hep… eee… iii hurrrsss…” she struggled to beg through a severely broken jaw, though Gerhardt could guess what she meant easily enough. She wanted help, as anyone would in her situation. Unfortunately, given the severity of her wounds Gerhardt was honestly surprised she wasn’t already dead and he knew that even if she were to receive healing by the best medical mage in the world that very instant, she would still die in a few minutes to an hour at maximum, and that was in a fully stocked hospital. As such, he did the only thing he could in this situation.

He reached under his combat robes to the side of the belt of his pants and pulled his side arm out of its holster. It was a fairly basic but reliable telekinetic pistol that fired hollow point 9 mm rounds made of solid lead at mach 5, meant to put a hole through either the head or the heart of the average enemy soldier. Flipping the safety off he aimed the pistol straight at her head and with a sigh he said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I wish I could help you, I really do, but unfortunately this is the only mercy I can offer you. May you suffer not in death.” He then pulled the trigger. There was a loud BANG as the lead hollow point round broke the sound barrier before slamming into the slowly dying woman’s skull, killing her instantly and ending her suffering.

He then simply re-holstered his pistol and continued marching. This was not the first time he had been forced to deliver a mercy killing and he very much doubted it would be the last, so he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. If he had still been physically capable of sleep that is.

(The scene fast forwarded)

Gerhardt had finally reached the center of the city and it was like a scene from the end of the world. Exactly 43 minutes and 25 seconds after he finally reached the center of the city and began fighting, those gods damned Snakes from the Serpentine Republic had conducted a blood ritual using the countless corpses littering the city and all of the pain and suffering this battle was generating to open a massive portal to the infernal realm allowing numberless hordes of demons to spill out into the world. The Serpents were now retreating and the demons were killing, torturing, and destroying everyone and everything they could get their gods forsaken claws on, be they civilians, soldiers, or even mere animals.

He and what remained of his squad were trying to hold off the demons to the best of their abilities but they were quickly being overwhelmed. Their “Executioner” class Heavy Combat Golem had already been destroyed by the demons and most of what remained of his squad were using its burning half melted remains as cover. Unfortunately the hellfire the demons were throwing at them was about to melt all the way through it.

“This is High Lord Mechanica to all Human forces in the city, military and civilian alike. Confirmation Code: 34TM921B. The Serpents opened a massive portal to the Infernal Realm. We are being overwhelmed by demons. I repeat, we are being overwhelmed by demons. I am now ordering all members of the R&D branch to retreat and evacuate the city immediately and I highly recommend that all units from all other branches and any civilians that may be hearing this do the same. This city is lost. I will be approving the use of Arcane W.M.D.s in order to destroy that portal as well as this city in approximately two hours, Priority Code: Alpha. Haste is highly recommended.” He announced through his built in communication system, which he currently had set to transmit on all frequencies.

Firing fully automatic salvos of 15 mm tungsten carbide rods from his custom built Heavy Assault Rifle at any demons he saw since while their magical defenses were damn near impenetrable their physical defenses were almost pitiful, he followed his own orders and began retreating. A ball of pure hellfire slammed into his right shoulder, burning through his now tattered and torn combat robes and melting his arm completely off his body making him lose his grip on his weapon. His artificial pain receptors flared agonizingly in response causing him to cry out in pain. Gritting his artificial teeth, he tried his best to focus despite the pain and used a telekinetic spell to lift his Heavy Assault Rifle off the ground before grabbing it with his left hand. It would be very awkward and unwieldy to use with only one hand due to its size, as it was designed for use with both hands, but he was just going to have to make do.

Once he eventually ran completely out of magazines of tungsten carbide rods for the telekinetic barrel of his gun, he used telekinesis to press one of the buttons on the side causing the three barrels to rotate until the third barrel which shot concentrated beams of coherent photons was on top of the “triangle” of barrels. Quickly calibrating it to fire gamma rays, as that was one of the hardest frequencies of light to defend against, he began firing his weapon while trying his best to duck and dodge out of the way of balls, beams, and waves of hellfire that were flying towards him. There were flashes of bright purple visible light every time he pulled the trigger that was meant to serve as an indicator to let him know whenever his weapon was firing since while his eyes were designed to see in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums they were most definitely not designed to see on the gamma spectrum, which was something he decided he would have to try his best to rectify at some point

As he retreated he saw a child being skinned alive by one of the demons, one of the soldiers who had been in his squad being hung from a street light from a noose made of his own entrails, people being burned alive, and countless other horrors as what remained of the ruined streets gutters were slowly starting to fill with fresh blood. Gerhardt shot and killed a few of the victims to end their suffering and to deprive the demons of another victim whenever he could, utterly infuriating their tormentors who would always immediately attack him for “ruining their fun” or “breaking their toys”.

All the while, aircraft continued to fly over dropping bombs and sharp steel flechettes while pelting streets with a variety of physical and magic projectiles, artillery continued to fall from the skies like rain, and buildings continued to collapse all around him as the parts of the Human Military that were still outside or flying above the city tried their damnedest to slow down the spread of the demons in an attempt to limit how many of them escaped before the bombs fell. Sadly this had the unfortunate side effect of limiting how many humans could get out in time as well. Fortunately for Gerhardt, he had the added advantage of being a mage which meant, while portals were too dangerous to use at the moment due to the blood ritual the serpents had conducted, he was still able to use telekinetic magic to carry himself over any rubble that was blocking his path that he couldn’t simply go around or climb over and he could use magic to create shields to protect himself whenever necessary.

Even so, a sizable chunk of his stomach was blown off by another ball of molten hellfire that caught him off guard, one of the rubies that served as his eyes had been completely shattered, 46% of his systems were either broken, offline, or barely functional, and one of his legs was damaged pretty severely causing him to move with a heavy limp. It was all so agonizing he was forced to shut down his pain receptors entirely. Still, despite the damage he had sustained, he pressed on trying his best to fight his way out of this doomed city within one hour and thirty seven minutes, which was all the time he had left before the W.M.D.s began falling and everything still inside was destroyed.

It had been 73 years since he officially became old enough to participate on the front lines in active combat. He was almost a century old now and In all his decades of service he had honestly thought he had seen the worst horrors this world had to offer especially after having fought the Ghouls and seen what they do to their victims and their victims' corpses. But he had been naive, oh so horribly naive, and now he was paying for it.

Yes the Ghouls were a grotesque species of vile sadists who tortured almost all of their victims before actually killing them. Yes they eviscerated their victims’ corpses and ritualistically hung their horrifically mutilated corpses and entrails out to rot so they could eat them later and used their victims bones to make everything from tools to ritual implements. All because Ghouls were a species of extreme carrion eaters who’s bodies actually required much of the bacteria present in rotten meat for digestion and they worshiped certain sadistic and malevolent gods of death who demanded such forms of sacrifice from their worshipers. They were by far the most twisted vile species of mortal creatures in existence and he would love nothing more than to see them eradicated off the face of reality itself.

However, even the worst atrocities ever committed by the most vile Ghouls in existence paled in comparison to what these Demons were currently doing. To be frank, the few victims he saw that were being skinned, burned, or hung by their own entrails while still alive were honestly meeting down right merciful fates compared to some of the other horrors he was currently witnessing and was actively trying to stop or prevent while he retreated. For the first time in his life he was witnessing evil. True, undeniable, objective evil and it was like a living nightmare he couldn’t wake up from no matter how much he desperately wanted to. Unfortunately, he knew full well that this wasn’t one of the infrequent times he had accidentally fallen asleep while working in a lab prior to the invention of his new brain augmentations. This was all truly happening and there was very little he could do to stop it other than what he had already done and was currently doing.

If his body were still capable of it, he was certain that he would have vomited by now. That his vision would be obscured by the tears that would have been streaming down his face from the sheer horror of it all. That he would either be dead or laying on the ground thrashing and screaming in agony from his wounds by now, in which case he would have very likely ended up becoming one of the countless victims of the demons. That he may have even gone insane by now if it weren’t for certain redundant fail-safes, systems, and programs installed in his head that were constantly correcting the code of the very few artificial parts of his brain and the brain activity of the parts that were still organic in order to prevent that from ever happening.

As he was running through the streets as fast as his damaged leg and ruined body would allow while shooting pretty much anything in sight that he reasonably could, he honestly couldn’t even tell if being forcefully kept sane like this was a blessing or a curse. Mentally he knew he would appreciate it later on, right now though it most definitely felt far more like a particularly cruel curse he had unwittingly put upon himself.

(The illusory screen paused)

By the time Gerhardt had paused the memory Celestia was in tears and had summoned a bucket which she was currently vomiting into. “Oh calm down, would you? It wasn’t that bad. This memory is hardly worth being upset over, let alone this upset over. Especially given the fact that it all happened over eight hundred years ago.” The technomancer stated, unperturbed. He had intentionally blurred out the worst bits so she wouldn’t have to see them, so from his perspective she was overreacting by quite a bit.

Ignoring him for the moment, she continued to vomit the last of the contents of her stomach into the bucket. Finally she teleported it away and collapsed onto the table glaring weakly at the technomancer. “If...ugh… If this is one of your… m-memories then how can see-seeing this… this… atrocity again no-not affect you in the least…?! What the buck is wrong with you?!” She growled furiously, still recovering from having just thrown up.

“As I’ve told you, almost a thousand years of experience. One does not survive in my previous occupation for as long as I have by being overly emotional about every little thing they have survived. Also, while that may have been one of the worst memories I have, it is hardly the absolute worst, but I will be keeping those particular memories to myself as they are rather… well not quite personal, but somewhere close. Now, I have a question of my own.” He explained while mentally drawing up a few designs for an improved version of the love generator that wouldn’t break the moment a Changeling attempted to feed off of it.

“The Serpents of the Serpentine Republic are extremely over zealous religious fanatics who want to destroy humanity in the name of the god they worship and they have ever since the War of Survival when their god attempted to commit mass genocide on us. So they used their attack on that city to generate enough blood and suffering to conduct a blood ritual to open a portal to the Infernal Realm in hopes that the Demons they unleashed would kill us all for them so they wouldn’t have to waste their own resources doing it themselves. A rather short sighted plan given that the Demons wouldn’t have just stayed in our kingdom but would have spread across the world and would have destroyed the Serpents too had we not deployed arcane bombs to destroy the city and disrupt the portal before too many of them could get through so they could open even more portals elsewhere. That being said, I doubt they even thought of that or would have cared in the least even if they did since as a species they have always been unbelievably arrogant and overconfident in their own abilities, but I digress.”

“So, do you believe this situation could have been resolved peacefully without anyone getting hurt? That violence was not the only answer? That we could have simply talked with the Serpents and avoided all of this entirely? What about the demons? They are evil in its purest form and revel in the death and suffering of others, so how could we have possibly avoided fighting them? Pacifism can only get you so far, so instead of fighting the Serpents or the Demons as we did do you believe we should have just sat back and let our species be exterminated? Tell me honestly, as a pacifist what would you have done differently were you in our situation? Please keep in mind that we are mere mortals, not gods, spirits, or demigods so we are limited in what we are actually capable of doing.”

By this point Celestia appeared to have mostly recovered from her earlier nausea, however she still seemed to have been caught slightly off guard by his question. “I… I don’t know… Violence is wrong but… Those demons...” She shuddered, looking nauseous again as she apparently recalled the horrors they subjected their victims to.

“Indeed. Truly horrible entities, demons. Interestingly, while there are many spirits that are hostile for various reasons, demons are actually the only lesser spirits in existence that are well and truly “evil”. And while I fully realize that good and evil are typically all based on perspective, I do mean that objectively in this case. They are the literal embodiments of evil and malevolence given physical form, as all spirits are the literal embodiments of whatever concept they represent.” Gerhardt stated in acknowledgement. Saying this however, brought out his academic side a bit as he started thinking about spirits and how they functioned.

“Actually — continuing to use demons as an example for the moment though this very much applies to all spirits —, our concepts of what evil even is are likely very different from one another. As such, while the appearance of the demons might possibly share a few common features between our perceptions, there would still be slight variations between what they look like to you versus what they look like to me. Maybe they were larger to you or perhaps they were shorter, or maybe they had larger, smaller, longer, shorter, more, or less teeth, fangs, mouths, horns, wings, arms, legs, tentacles, claws, hooves, eyes, tails, scales, fur, etc. Unless a spirit intentionally takes on a very specific form then their actual appearance all depends on the perception of the individual looking at them at the time. In fact, after watching this memory again, the demons actually look vastly different to me right now than they did 802 years ago when I first saw them. Fascinating is it not?”

Awaiting a response, he looked at Celestia who was currently just staring at him silently. It took him a few microseconds but he eventually realized why. The overlapping copper plates that served as his lips slid down somewhat into a slight frown. “Oh… How embarrassing… It appears I was rambling. I should have realized this sooner and stopped myself… Gods damn me and my blasted vocalizer! My sincerest apologies for my rudeness, Princess. Please just forget I said anything and let us continue our conversation.”

Celestia chuckled slightly and shook her head. “It’s fine Mr. Mechanica. Honestly, it reminded me a bit of my student Twilight. Sometimes she goes off on tangents like that whenever she’s talking about a subject that she finds particularly interesting too. I’m sure you two would get along wonderfully. Well… That is, assuming you don’t kill or dismember anypony else or show her any memories like this one.” She motioned to the paused illusory screen floating slightly above the table in front of her. “Anyways, to answer your earlier question… I honestly don’t know what I would do in that situation. I can only hope I never am.”

“Then I highly suggest you think about it in case you ever are. In the meantime, I will be showing you yet another memory. It won’t be quite as bad as the first, as there will be no demons committing acts so evil that just witnessing them could drive a person insane. However, I do recommend you steel yourself, and perhaps prepare another bucket for yourself since you appear to have a weak stomach, as it will be very close to as dark and gruesome as the first just in a slightly different way.”

Not waiting for a response he waved a hand and caused the illusory screen to change. It began depicting a scene from another of his worst memories, taking place only a few short years after the first memory. It was one of the largest battles Gerhardt had personally fought in during the single largest assault ever conducted by Caedes and his army of undead, necromancers, and liches after he went rogue.

The battle the screen was showing was Caedes’ attack on the Elven kingdom. Not just one or two cities within the kingdom, but the literal kingdom itself. This was because, unlike most species the Elves were not spread across multiple settlements. They had what was effectively one absolutely immense city that was spread across the entire Aeternus Forest, which was the third largest forest in the world and was filled with trees that very nearly rivaled small skyscrapers in size. Unfortunately that’s also what made the attack so devastating.

While the Elven kingdom’s defenses were damn near impenetrable against traditional armies, against Caedes and his undead ripping through it was practically childs play because of the fact undead and necromancers positively thrived inside large cities. The attack was so spread out the Elves military couldn’t put up an effective resistance. Undead were still a very new concept that no one really knew how to combat effectively at that point in time. Every living thing that died would immediately be forced to join Caedes’ ranks as not just one but two separate undead, the victim’s reanimated corpse as well as their enslaved disembodied spirit. The Nature spirits that resided in the forest were aggressive towards both the Undead and the Human Military, which made things far more complicated and difficult than they needed to be. Plus Caedes had apparently somehow managed to kill a gods damned dragon and used it to set almost half of the forest on fire before they were actually able to destroy the undead monster's body and soul.

Unfortunately, fighting the undead out of the forest had been deemed effectively impossible. As such, Gerhardt’s mission during this attack was to lead his troops and the search and rescue golems in finding and evacuating as many Elves from the forest as physically possible before they could be killed and turned into more undead while the Army branch held off Caedes’ forces to the best of their abilities. It had been horrible. He had to watch as hundreds of men, women, and children were ripped apart, eaten, had their souls ripped out and their corpses reanimated, all while trying to defend and evacuate countless others.

By the end of it all the Elven kingdom had effectively been destroyed, the Elves had lost well over half of their total population, their line of succession had been wiped out, Caedes’ undead’s numbers had increased by hundreds of millions, hundreds of Nature Spirits had been corrupted by necromancy turning them into the first Spirits of Undeath, the Human Kingdom had to contend with millions of new refugees who were now all in need of medical attention, food, water, shelter, psychological counseling, and so much more. It had been nothing but an absolute disaster from start to finish. After the war was over, half the remaining Elves decided to stay in the Human Kingdom as citizens while the other half returned to the Aeternus forest to rebuild their kingdom. It took the Elves centuries to repair the majority of the damage to the forest even with as much assistance as the Human Kingdom could reasonably provide them, and to this day their kingdom still has yet to fully recover.

Celestia appeared somewhat nauseous again as the screen showed mutilated and decaying zombies and skeletons ripping people apart and eating them like a bunch of rotting cannibals, to her credit though she did not actually throw up this time. She also appeared devastated as the screen played scenes of families being torn apart as children or their parents had to be forcefully dragged away in tears while their loved ones were slaughtered and turned into more undead, and other such tragic scenes that were of a similar nature.

After a few minutes of showing her some of the worst clips he had of this entire event, Gerhardt finally paused the illusory screen again. He then proceeded to give Celestia a brief summary of the battle and the war, leaving out everything he could about necromancy by simply calling it “dark magic” and by not providing her with any details about what it actually was or how it worked. “Now, do you have any questions or comments?” He inquired, frowning at the illusory screen as he recalled all the atrocities his former apprentice had committed. The destruction of the Elven Kingdom was horrible, yes, but it was by no means the worst thing he had ever done. Gerhardt sort of wished that he had been the one to kill that bastard, but some Combat Mage from the Army branch had gotten to him first.

“Oh, I have plenty of questions. However, I feel like we would be here until next week if I were to ask everything that I want to.” Celestia stated, clearly unhappy and unsatisfied with everything she just learned.

“Very well. Just know that our wars are typically not like these two memories I have shown you. Wars in general are always horrible and anywhere between hundreds and millions of people usually die on both sides, yes. These two events, however, are rather extreme and can more easily be classified as disasters. However, disasters like these are still fairly common. In my experience they happen every few decades or so. Now tell me, if you were in my position and were mortal like me rather than a demigod, between constant wars where your enemies will kill or enslave you if you don’t fight back no matter how much you try to negotiate and disasters like these do you honestly believe that you could possibly remain a pacifist? Would you still believe that violence is never the right answer? Would you still be criticizing my actions today?”

Celestia sighed and shook her head. “No, probably not.” She admitted reluctantly. “However, I am not in your position and, Harmony willing, I never will be. As such, I still believe your use of excessive force more than warrants punishment.”

Gerhardt stared at her. “Really? You do realize that I am already going to have to waste my time building each of them new limbs, correct? Is that not punishment enough?”

Celestia gave him a stern look and snorted. “If you had a slightly different attitude about it then maybe. However, since you seem more worried about your time then the health and wellbeing of the Changelings you mutilated, no it isn’t. Granted, given what I now know of your past and your world I don’t believe I can give you too harsh a punishment. Plus you have done Equestria a great service by brokering peace between us and the Changelings, so I do believe you deserve a bit of a reward as well… Hm… I’ll have to think it over. As soon as I come up with something I’ll let you know. Until then I’ll have a servant show you to one of the guest rooms. After everything that’s happened today you must be absolutely exhausted.” She yawned. “I know I am.”

“Actually, no. Not at all. My body’s need for sleep was one of the first things I removed when I first invented brain augmentations. I am now actually completely incapable of it. Instead, I would appreciate it if you could have someone show me to the medical facility the Changelings are being held at so I may get a few measurements in order to design their prosthetics to fit their respective bodies. After that, all I will need is materials I can use and a place to work. Also, I would like to know where the nearest public library is so that I may read up on this kingdom’s laws, culture, and history among other things. Oh, and I still need a notebook or a sizable stack of papers and some ink so I can write those notes you have requested. No need for a quill though as I would much prefer to just build myself a fountain pen to write with.” Gerhardt explained.

Celestia rested a hoof against her face in exasperation and said, “At this point I’m not even surprised… I would recommend that you fix that as soon as you have the tools and materials to do so. Luna may enjoy having somepony new other than her night guard staying awake to admire her night for awhile, but that will wear out fairly quickly once she realizes that you legitimately never sleep. When she does she might be slightly offended as she tries her hardest to give everypony pleasant dreams just as she tries her hardest to make the night sky as beautiful as possible. While the night sky has always been her favorite, recently she has started taking a lot of pride in both of her duties.”

“Wait? Dreams? The night sky? Forgive my ignorance but what do you mean by that? I can only assume you are speaking metaphorically but I’m afraid I do not understand the metaphor.” Gerhardt inquired in confusion. He remembered Chrysalis mentioning something like this earlier and it made just as little sense to him now as it did then.

Celestia gave him a slightly confused look. “No… I mean that literally. I raise and lower the sun every morning and night and my sister literally raises and lowers the moon every night and morning. As an extension of that my sister also controls the stars and protects everypony’s dreams from nightmares as they sleep.”

“No. You do not.” Gerhardt stated with unfaltering certainty. “Manipulating people’s dreams? Perhaps. Manipulating celestial bodies let alone at such vast distances? I’m sorry but no. You are not even close to a quarter as powerful as you would need to be to alter the rotation of the planet let alone move a moon or a star. Not to mention the fact that that’s not how physics works. Day and night happen on their own due to the rotation of the planet and its orbit around the sun, and seasons occur due to the change in the planet’s tilt as it slowly wobbles as it spins.”

Celestia frowned at him in annoyance. “Yes, I do. I have raised and lowered the sun everyday for over a thousand years. It has been extremely well researched and documented throughout history. It's about time for me to lower the sun today anyways so I can even prove it.” She stated, as she stood up and got out of her seat.

Gerhardt followed suit assuming she was going to lead him somewhere else in a futile attempt to prove her ridiculous claims. It turned out that his assumption was incorrect for as soon as he stood up, her horn began glowing and she teleported them both to a balcony with a clear view of the evening sky. Not waiting for him to say anything, she walked forwards towards the edge and her horn began to glow again. Gerhardt took this as his que to look up towards the sky. Strangely enough, the sun appeared to be picking up momentum as it rapidly began to grow lower and lower in the sky. As soon as it disappeared beyond the horizon, Celestia’s horn stopped glowing and she turned to face Gerhardt again seemingly awaiting a response.

“Fascinating.” Gerhardt commented, completely nonplussed by the sight. “Did you create that self perpetuating mass illusion across the sky yourself or did someone place it there for you?”

Celestia scowled at him, clearly taking offense to his question. “Illusion? There is no illusion! I just lowered the sun!”

“Yes there is and no you didn’t. To do anything even remotely approaching what you seemingly just did, you would have had to rotate the planet itself, not move the sun. However, it would take a Lesser God or Greater Spirit of immense power to force a planet to rotate like that. Not to mention the fact that once it begins rotating it would never stop rotating due to the laws of motion which state that an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. So, based on the process of elimination there has to be a massive illusion obscuring the actual sky that you can somehow alter otherwise that would have never happened.”

Celestia took a deep breath and said, “You know what? I’m too tired and have way too much of a headache to try arguing with you about this… There’s a library here in the Castle where you can read as well as request some paper and ink to write with, I’ll have a servant show you where it is. You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow morning to go to the hospital to get those measurements and I’ll have to try to find somewhere in the castle you can work until the paperwork for your new house is finished.” With that she turned and began walking away. Gerhardt heard her mutter something to a maid as she passed by them. Said maid nodded and began approaching him.

Not having anything else to do, Gerhardt followed the maid to the Castle library. As soon as they arrived, he thanked the maid for leading him and immediately approached what he assumed was the librarian sitting at what appeared to be the front desk, requested a stack of paper and some ink, lying and telling them he already had something to write with but was out of ink. The librarian seemed intimidated and nervous but gave him the stack of paper and ink anyways which he immediately took to an empty desk.

Setting the paper and ink off to the side, he cast a noise dampening illusion spell on the area around him, took out his tools and some of the few remaining materials he had and set to work building himself a new fountain pen. The entire process only took him a few minutes and when he was done he had a brand new fountain pen which had a rather bland steel tube for a body with a button on the side that made it suck in ink to refill it and a very fine pointed nib made of gold. After making a cap for his pen to cover it whenever he wasn’t using it so ink wouldn’t get everywhere he cleaned up his tools and scraps, filled the pen with ink, and put it in one of his robe’s pockets for later use.

He still had to work on translating the Equestrian’s written language before he could start writing his notes otherwise the Princesses and Queen Chrysalis would be unable to understand a thing he wrote down as his universal translator unfortunately only worked on spoken language not on writing. As such, he walked over to one of the first shelves of books and began using telekinesis spells to pull books out one after another and rapidly flip through each and every last one of their pages before returning them to the exact spots they were before. His brain’s enhanced processing speed allowed him to record each page in a matter of milliseconds which meant he could finish each book in a matter of seconds even when it would take an unaugmented individual hours of dedicated reading.

As he had expected, the books were all filled with what looked like utter gibberish to him. As such, while he was reading he began trying to decode and translate the language. He knew that it was going to be an agonizingly slow, tedious, and difficult process since he didn’t have even so much as a picture book a parent might use to teach a child how to read to work with. Fortunately the more writing samples he had the faster the process would be and he had access to plenty of samples since he was currently in the middle of a library.

However, even if he read every last book in this place it was still going to take him until tomorrow morning to translate the language at minimum, and that was according to his most optimistic estimates. If he was particularly unlucky it could potentially even take him decades to do on his own depending on how different this language was to any he was familiar with, but he would request assistance long before it came to that.

As soon as he finished recording all of the books on the one shelf he moved on to the next one and then the next one and so on. This process continued like this for about ten minutes until he felt something tap on his leg. Quickly finishing the book he was currently recording, he levitated it and the other books currently in his telekinetic grip back into their places on the shelf and turned around. Looking down he saw a purple unicorn-esque pony staring at him in a mixture of curiosity and fear. It wasn’t the disturbed or unsettled look most people had when they saw him but legitimate fear. Running a quick scan of the creature’s biosigns confirmed that she was indeed well and truly terrified of him for some reason. He couldn’t help but wonder why.

It was then he realized that he actually recognized this pony. She was one of the six civilians that had been present during his arrival and had witnessed his earlier act of self defense in person. Well, that certainly explained why she was afraid of him. While he had no intention of hurting her unless she tried to kill him, it was still quite brave of her to approach him like this after what she had seen. “Ah, I remember you. You are one of the civilians from earlier. I can tell you are afraid of me, which is rather unnecessary as I have no intention of harming you or anyone else but is completely understandable given the circumstances. I do apologize if my presence here is distracting you. I can move to a different location where you will not have to see me if that is of any assistance.” He stated, trying his best to be polite.

The pony seemed genuinely surprised for a moment and shook her head. “N-no, no! It’s fine. Really! You apparently helped create peace between the Changelings and Equestria, so I know you can’t be that bad. It’s just…” She trailed off, seemingly trying to think of what to say.

“You aren’t used to seeing such bloody acts of violence?” Gerhardt finished for her.

She winced at that. “Er… Yeah… That… Um… Anyways, is it true that you’re an alien?”

“Honestly, there’s actually quite a bit more to it then that but for the sake of simplicity, yes I am. I am not originally from this world therefore by definition I am indeed an “alien”. Why?” He asked, not understanding the purpose of this line of questioning.

“Well, would you mind if I asked you a few questions? You’re the first actual extraterrestrial to ever visit Equis in history! If possible I would absolutely love to have the chance to learn as much as I can about you, your species, and your world!” She exclaimed, all her earlier fear and nervousness vanishing in a flash as excitement and eagerness took its place.

“I’m afraid I’m rather busy at the moment. I am in the middle of trying to gather writing samples in order to translate your species written language. Unfortunately my universal translation device can only translate speech, not text.” Gerhardt informed her.

Hearing that she seemed to deflate slightly in disappointment. However, an idea seemed to strike her and she perked back up almost immediately. “I can help you translate our language! It would be a perfect opportunity to learn a bit about your language too, and you could answer a few of my questions while we do that!” She suggested eagerly.

Gerhardt stared at her for a moment, considering her offer. “I suppose that would speed things up quite a bit… Very well. Ah. How rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself. I am Gerhardt Mechanica, former High Lord of the Research and Development branch of the Human Kingdom, though I am sure you likely remember that from my earlier introduction. What is your name, if I may ask?”

“Oh, I’m Twilight Sparkle. While your arrival may have been a little… erm… rough, to say the least, it is still a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Mechanica.” She responded happily.

Alright, between life and this pandemic thing combined with having had to rewrite this chapter seven times, it took me way longer to finish this then it should have. Sorry about that. I fully intended to get it out sooner but stuff happens. Sorry that this one is a bit boring. I'll try my best to do better in the future chapters.
Edit: Yeah, "boring". My only excuse for saying that was that I had just finished writing the part where Gerhardt went to a library and built himself a fricking fountain pen a few minutes before I wrote these notes and it was late so I was bit tired. I guess my mind got a bit hung up on that one scene.

Anyways, fun fact: In a lot of media magic shields and such typically appear somewhat translucent! That means they have to be letting some frequencies of visible light through and if they are letting visible light through they likely let certain frequencies of non-visible light through as well. And that also means a laser set to fire the correct frequency of light would be able to get through. A high tech civilization with a lot of experience with magic would likely realize this and would attempt to exploit this weakness to the fullest extent possible.

As a result, mages would start to adapt to make their shields opaque to block out all frequencies of light, possibly even at the cost of visibility depending on the circumstances. Thus magic would have to be used to destroy their shields instead. However no defense can be perfect thus if a shield blocks both light and is well defended against magic, physical rounds should be able to get through, and non-mage soldiers would have very strong physical armor designed to reduce all three as much as possible. As such, Gerhardt built his rifle in this chapter to counter any possible defenses. Unfortunately, it ended up being too expensive to mass produce and it got destroyed in battle at some point.

Fun fact #2: copper and certain copper alloys have anti-microbial properties and thus they kill bacteria, viruses, and such that are on them over time. I think it takes a few hours, but still, I've always found that particular property of the metal really cool.

Those the only two fun facts that I could think of this time, unfortunately. I might stop doing these at some point in the future. Don't know. I'll have to think about it.

Anyways, this chapter was a bit more grim then I initially intended it to be, mainly the flashback part in the beginning. I don't think any future chapters should be this bad, but who knows? I've been surprised before. I think I should probably add the "dark" tag just to be safe. Also, I'm wondering if I should remove the "drama" tag or not. There really hasn't been enough drama happening so far to warrant it in my opinion. Same with profanity. I guess I'm just really bad at tagging my stories... Sorry about that.

As always, constructive criticism is more then welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much as much if not more then I enjoyed writing it!

Also, please use hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol content frequently whenever your out in public, practice social distancing, etc. Honestly, guys, just listen to the experts. Things have been really scary lately and I would much prefer if all of you stayed healthy. Please try your best to stay safe out there, everybody!

If you're in the medical field and are fighting Covid 19 right now, thank you so much! You guys are absolute freaking heros! My best thoughts and wishes go out to each and every one of you!

Edit: A few minor fixes and added an explanation for why in the flashback opening portals to escape the city was not an option at the time.

Edit #2: Fixed a few instances where I accidentally misspelled Caedes' name by getting the a and the e reversed. I mean, the man probably more then deserves to have his name misspelled, but still. Thought I'd fix it anyways. Made a few other minor fixes as well.