@Podbeing  
There are two more short stories in the same universe as this one:  
First one  
Second one

@clean
 
I love HFY stories, and that was a good one :)
 
I was actually sort of channeling Keith Laumer here–his Bolo stories are about my favorite, and fanfic featuring them is thin as hell on the ground. Which is a crying shame, really, because he had a knack for making you cry for a 35,000 metric ton weapon of war that can kill anything in its perceptual sphere, even as far away as the moon.

@Podbeing  
Nice story. :)
 
It reminded me of another story .

@Background Pony #F9C0
 
Oh…a little something I threw together on Deviantart a few years ago. First comment. It’s the only thing I’ve written that’s pony-related there, at least that I can still find. It’s a simple little sketch, like 90% of what I write. I’m fucking weird that way.
 
Link.
 
I don’t have a Fimfiction page for horse words yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever get one. That would probably necessitate me trying to actually (le gasp) finish something. But who knows?

@Background Pony #F9C0  
I DO have a pastebin filled with crap.
 
Some of it might accidentally be readable, if you’re desperate and you stretch the term considerably.
 
Link

@Nightweaver20xx  
Podbeing’s written a lot of enjoyable comment stories. Some of my favorites are Goo Trixie ranting, Twilight discovers bacon, Sweetie Belle asking for peanut butter, Bon Bon and Anon, Humane 7 vs. dumbass villain that doesn’t know how quicksand works, and Logan Dash gone missing.
 
@Podbeing  
Honestly I’m kind of surprised I haven’t seen you on FimFiction yet.

@Nightweaver20xx  
I had some time :)
 
And my autism is strong.

@Podbeing  
Wow, that’s some dedication to write a full story around this.

@Nightweaver20xx  
The ancient unit stirred at the small disturbance at the edge of its operational area.
 
That the depot, constructed before native sentient life had existed on this planet, was mostly rubble was irrelevant. The enemy had passed this way long ago, had turned the earth into glass for miles around this ancient supply depot from the safety of orbit before moving on, secure in their obliteration of the Builder presence on this world. AZI-004B understood in its own way that much time had passed since then, at least in a general sense. It had watched, patiently and without boredom as the glass had been slowly ground back into sand by slow weathering and the passage of eons, the radioactivity fading with time, the land greening as climates changed with the slow roll of orbital precession: first grassland, then forest and swamp, and finally coming full circle as it reverted back into desert again.
 
This was all irrelevant. The dilapidated state of the surface installation was irrelevant. The fact that AZI-004B was the last surviving Planetary Defense unit was irrelevant. It still occasionally used its remote drones to salvage surviving parts from its sibling units, whose remains it had buried and covered with rock and sheet metal for use as a stockpile of repair components to stave off its own demise. Its Builders had wrought well, but time was the enemy of everything, and even the supertough composites, synthetic alloys and exotic plastics of its construction eventually broke beyond even its own considerable self-repair abilities, and that limited, and slowly dwindling, supply of salvage was all that stood between itself and extinction. It knew that certain more advanced units than itself had possessed the ability to build copies of each and every last component of their own structure, up to and including complete copies of themselves, and it felt something akin to envy; but such musings were not productive. And so it put them aside and did what it could. What was, was. All else was irrevelant.
 
What WAS relevant were its orders–defend the installation, intact or not, and the area around it from all intrusion. Relevant, too, was what slumbered far beneath the surface, hidden carefully under refractory metals and dense rock from Enemy awareness. Those, it would defend to its own death. But occasions when it needed to act were rare. This place was remote, and had been so for all the history of intelligent life on this world. Centuries would pass, with nothing larger than small wildlife passing close by, and it would ignore them. Occasionally, it would send a drone to follow, as much as out of curiosity as any desire to gather intelligence, telling itself that it merely wanted to verify that it posed no threat, but after the first millenium or so that thin justification had begun to ring hollow. Once, no more than a thousand or so ago, a pair of gargantuan flying reptiles of some sort had touched down close by, intent to rummage for it knew not what. What was left of them was still nearby, where it had laboriously dragged the remains with drones and a tow-line. In spite of being equipped with what appeared to be some sort of biologically-mediated plasma weapon, its own second-level artillery had made short work of them. Their remains had been interesting; parts of their corpses had concentrated heavy metals in useful amounts, and it had been somewhat starved for resources at the time. From time to time it almost hoped more would arrive.
 
In the meantime, it waited and watched. Occasionally, faint radio touched its surfaces, and it knew that elsewhere on this world were now things with a certain mastery of technology, but here, hidden deep in one of this world’s most forbidding deserts, it had been left almost entirely alone.
 
Until now, that is.
 
The creature was quadrupedal, yet sported feathery wings. Weighing perhaps 30 kilograms, it was yellow, with large, liquid eyes of a startling blue hue, and it bore a resemblance to other creatures of this world it had seen through the eyes of its recon drones at a great distance. It was well inside of its perimeter, and it found itself wondering just exactly how it had managed to get this close without detection. That shouldn’t have been possible. And there was almost nothing aboveground to mark this area, and nothing of any conceivable interest for hundreds of kilometers around except empty desert and salt flats, and it seemed like an odd coincidence that anything should have come here, specifically, as opposed to literally anywhere else.
 
And yet, here it was.
 
A quick scan showed no evidence of excplosives in the packs it wore belted to either side of its barrel, no weapons, no advanced technology of any kind. It posed no remotely conceivable threat. Orders were clear, however. Anything not transmitting a known IFF code was to be neutralized immediately. The intruder had no obvious armor, no defenses of any sort. It was as fragile as any other organic. The limited weapons of its least-capable recon drone would have finished it instantly, without it ever being aware beforehand. It could have killed it simply by smashing it with cannon.
 
And yet…and yet…
 
AZI-004B did not quite understand why it hadn’t already killed the intruder. It should. Its orders had no leeway. There was absolutely no reason not to. And yet…
 
For several very, very small fractions of a second, it contemplated its own own reluctance.
 
It needed intelligence, it decided. Yes. That was it. Its tactical subprocessing system was undoubtedly in need of more information. Chief among these was how the intruder had approached so closely without being detected by ANY of its monitoring systems, followed closely by why it had singled out this specific location, instead of, say, the dry lake bed thirty kilometers to the west. Obviously. That was it, it decided. It could always kill the intruder when it had the data it needed.
 
The decision made, it engaged contragravs and blew off the sand and debris it had camoflaged itself with, rising out of its depression in the desert for the first time in over a decade. Sand sluiced off its flanks like water, and it saw the creature with its own primary optics for the first time, miniscule in comparison to its own gargantuan bulk. One of its two surviving weapons nacelles swung down to cover the creater, which had immediately taken to the air to avoid being buried by falling sand. Ten identical creatures could have walked down the barrel abreast, with room to spare.
 
No, it was not enjoying the theater. Absolutely not. It was simply a tactical decision to…to…
 
It left it at that. It hadn’t been able to think of a good reason not to watch the nesting birds in quadrant 16-B with a drone, either. It was probably neural net senescence, and it wasn’t important now. It would run detailed scans later. Instead it studied the creature through multiple optics and from multiple angles, in every wavelength from deep radio to high-energy x-ray. Its heartrate had briefly increased as AZI-004B had burst from concealment, but it seemed…calm?
 
The two of them stared at each other. Its cyan eyes blinked owlishly.
 
“Hello. You’re a big fellow, aren’t you?” it said, and smiled.
 
The language wasn’t recognizable. It was nothing like the Builders’ lingua franca. Nothing like it existed in its database. It shouldn’t have been intelligible. And yet, it had no problem understanding the exact intent, even though the words and syntax were, as yet, unknown.
 
Had AZI-004B possessed eyebrows, they would have been climbing up its nonexistent forehead in surprise.
 
“The Table said we would find something out here, and we did! I’m so happy to meet you, and- oh my Luna, you’re hurt, aren’t you?” The flying creature fluttered toward it–or more specifically, toward the stump that used to house Weapon Nacelle #3 and a cluster of its optical systems. It had been destroyed in the Enemy orbital bombardment, none of its limited stock of parts included enough components to completely rebuild the unit, and long ago it had finally closed off the ports and welded it shut, but it would have been lying if it had said that it wasn’t a nagging annoyance even after all this time. It scuttled backwards in surprise as it approached, every last remaining forward-facing weapon locking onto the creature in reflex.
 
How WHY had it reacted like that? And why hadn’t it blown the little mite into steam already? If it had been confused before by the entire queer situation, that confusion had turned into a howling shriek of utter incomprehension that was running around in circles and biting itself in the small of the back. “EEP! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you!” exclaimed the creature, drawing back instantly.
 
It opened a datachannel. It hadn’t done that in ages. Literally. There was no reason to, the site’s mainframe was thousands of meters down and its surface communications gear was wrecked. And there was no reason to do it now, since there was absolutely no chance this creature would even be able to detect a radio signal, much less understand it was an identification query–
 
“Oh…I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude! My name is Fluttershy!” it said. “What’s yours?”
 
…?
 
“You’ve got a really odd accent, but I can understand you. It’s just a little more work than…than with my animal friends. So can you tell me your name? If…if that’s okay with you?”
 
After almost a full second of deliberation, it finally shared its full identification string.
 
“Oh, that’s a nice name,” it said, smiling. “But that’s an awful lot of numbers. And…ummm…that’s probably a lot more than I can remember very easily. Would you mind if I just called you ‘Azzy?’ If that’s okay with you, that is…?”
 
Had it been organic, it would probably have rolled its eyes. Organics had the most peculiar difficulty with math and precision. AZI described its entire production line, but since, as far as it was aware, it was the only one left on this world, and perhaps anywhere, it would do, it supposed. It would know who the native–the Fluttershy–meant when it used it, at least. The Fluttershy-creature was now sitting on top of its primary hull between its weapon nacelles, directly in front of sensor cluster A.
 
“Oh, thank you, Mister Azzy. And you can call me…well, Fluttershy, I guess. But you can shorten it, if you want to, that is. That seems fair.”
 
It should have charged the hull plating on contact and fried it. An AP weapon could have removed it instantly. It had plenty of ammunition. It could have simply burned it off with a communications maser, since it was literally lying against one of them. Protocol dictated it. Basic programming demanded it.
 
It still wasn’t sure why it hadn’t.
 
Instead, it swivelled a nacelle overhead to provide some shade. It seemed polite to do so for the purposes of this interrogation. The desert sun was very bright and hot, and the Fluttershy-creature seemed a bit overheated. This was likely outside of its preferred temperature envelope.
 
It brought one of its hull-plate heat exchangers online, bringing the temperature of that section of armor plating down to well beneath ambient. After another moment’s consideration, it directed some chilled air through a nearby external vapor duct. The Fluttershy-creature sighed in contentment.
 
“Oh, it is very hot, Mister Azzy. Thank you so much,” she said, and nestled in against the side of the sensor-cluster, enjoying the cool breeze. “You’ve been here for a long time, haven’t you?”
 
It allowed as it had. After a moment’s reflection, it gave her a rough estimate of the number of local days it had been assigned to this installation. The Fluttershy-creature’s jaw dropped in astonishment and shock. “I don’t actually know how many years that is, but it sounds like a long time.”
 
Query: local day-year conversion.
 
“Oh…well, 365 days and a bit is a year…”
 
The conversion was elementary. “I, umm…wow.” she said, almost inaudibly. It gave her a description of star-positions upon its deployment and a comparison with the current night sky. It also remembered a night a fraction over 10,000 ‘years’ ago when the planet had ceased to rotate around its sun and the moon had suddenly stopped moving in its orbit for several hours with no possible explanation before suddenly resuming, a night 1007 years before, when the moon had abruptly devloped a single, massive marking in the form of a peculiar pattern of craters, and ANOTHER night 7 ‘years’ before the present when that pattern had vanished as suddenly and mysteriously as it had appeared. Those were things it had no answers for, part of a very quickly growing list.
 
“Oh, I had better let Twilight tell you that! You’d like her. She enjoys very complicated numbers, too,” the Fluttershy-creature said. “She dropped me off over there,” it said, gesturing with a foreleg in the general direction of where it had detected the original disturbance. “I told her that it would be easier to talk to you alone at first. So we didn’t startle you.”
 
It admitted that was probably wise, but it wondered how they had known it was here and why she had come here to begin with. And how she had gotten here, it added as an afterthought. “Umm…I had probably better let Twilight do the explaining,” said the Fluttershy-creature. “She’s so much better at that kind of thing than I am. She’ll be back in an hour or so. You can ask her yourself then. She might be able to help with that, too,” it said, gesturing at the stump of a nacelle. “If, umm..that’s okay with you, that is.”
 
It contemplated the stump sourly. Having its full strike capability back would be very nice. Besides, the wrecked housing ached terribly.
 
It still wasn’t sure why it was okay with any of this.
 
Carefully, it safed its weapons. The situation was unprecedented, far outside the scope of its original programming. It could make further decisions upon the Twilight-creature’s arrival. In the meantime, it would create a translation matrix for vocal communication, and more language samples would be very helpful.
 
THEN WE SHALL WAIT, said Azzy. SPEAK PLEASE.
 
Fluttershy smiled.
 
“Yay.”
 
And together, they settled back to wait.

what a good pet owner.

@WyrmSpawN  
Thanks.

@WyrmSpawN  
Tachikomas are win.

@Meanlucario  
Ghost in the shell.
 
I’d know that robot shape anywhere.

@Nightweaver20xx  
What’s that from?

It was a thing and it was glorious. I miss it and it’s silliness.

@Nightweaver20xx
 
Just so. :)
 
I like the cut of your jib.

 
Oh, it definitely was a thing…
 

@Podbeing  
So this basically  

@Nightweaver20xx  
She would also be able to speak with them and understand them. She would probably be the one person who could program them just by asking, with a “pretty please” thrown in. XD
 
Heh. Just had a mental image of Fluttershy chatting with a 10,000 ton AI tank.

She’d absolutely do this.

ciberpunk 2077