"LIAR! You rule Avalon's Shadow REX, you just don't admit it." Sidney yelled as he went flying by causing the AA systems to fire upon him again and destroying incoming rockets.
"Ya just wasting yer ammo Sid." KC said as a missile struck Sidney's tail, causing him to spin out and crash just outside of the AA system's range.
"Who the hell was that?" KC asked
"If I had a guess it's one of two ponies, Nora or Lightning." You say as you go and move the small turret into range of Sid.
"No Anon. I did." Thunderbolt said as she landed and moved up to you.
"Nice, wasn't expecting that." You say as she tries to hug you, but it ends in an near awkward smothering of you against her skin.
Sidney was yelling in agony as he stood back up and faced you.
"Think that precious A-10 of yours can save you now?" Sidney said as his gunpods opened up on you forcing to to cover only to have a very intriguing thing happen.
Sidney's guns ran dry, you were still alive, Morgan was protecting Thunderbolt, and KC was hiding like a little girl.
"Well, I'll be damned, looks like Morganite works for more than just Morgan." You say laughing as you grab onto the cannon you set up within range of this shit.
"That's impossible, that's fucking impossible. YOU SHOULD BE DEAD!" Sidney screamed at you.
"Should and am are two different things. Rex Tremendae is going to send you to your damned grave. Tell T-50 Rex sends his regards. And Sidney." You say as he stands there shocked.
"T-50 says die." You say firing the cannon into his face ripping it to shreds and killing him near instantly.
"And that's one less problem for us." You say as you dismantle the cannon and heft it over your shoulder.
"Shore taught im." KC said as you laugh.
"Yea, we'll deal with the scrap tomorrow, official reason he accidentally flew into the AA net." You say as there's a group of ponies, both plane and non waiting for you.
"Great, what do you want?" You ask as Thunderbolt takes the cannon from you.
"Is what attacked us gone?" A little 150 asked.
"Yes, it's dead. It won't bother us anymore." You say as Nora comes back to the group with Raptor.
"Great. Thank Celestia it's gone." Nora said knowing who was completely destroyed out in the AA field.
"Anon what happened?" Twilight asks as all the ponies are out.
"Well, there was an incident with a former resident, which has been taken care of." You say wanting to go back to bed.
"Who?" Twilight asks.
"A Harrier called Sidney. Does it really matter Twilight?" You ask as most of the crowd nods and goes away.
"Not really, just would have liked to see how you handled it." Twilight said as you chuckle a little.
"Treated him in kind. Came shooting up the place, so he gets a little shot up in return. He is never going to bother us again." You say as you go back inside to Thunderbolt and Morgan. Princess Luna was hiding under Morgan, and Thunderbolt was starting to fall asleep on the couch.
"Princess, the danger has passed." You say as you stand by Thunderbolt.
"This is the only place I feel secure right now." Luna says as you laugh a little and then begin to slide underneath Thunderbolt's head.
"Know what you mean, I hide under Thunder's head when I want some comfort. Maybe Morgan would be willing to do the same for you." You say as you're still holding onto Thunderbolt before fully sliding into the nice little cave between her neck and the ground.
"Would you?" Luna asked as she looked up at Morgan.
"Of course. Just let me lay down." Morgan said with a smile of joy and laid down allowing Luna to hide like you.
"Night all." You say and fully hide.
"Good night Rex Tremendae." Luna says as that's one of the reasons you're hiding under Thunderbolt.
From your warm and squishy hiding place you just sigh and stare up into the darkness that surrounds you.
"Fuck everything. If Sid was right, and I am the shot caller here, that means I'm royally fucked." You say to yourself as Thunderbolt's skin muffles everything out
"Maybe I jumped to conclusions about anything Sunbutt would want from me. Seems to be a show of faith if she'd send her own sister out here without "guards". Then again, she's probably trying to test me. Fuck I don't know. I know I can't trust her that's for damned sure." you say aloud again before you start to drift off to sleep.
0100 hrs. Raptor's.
"Nora are you alright?" Raptor asked.
"Yea, I'm good Raptor, you ok?" Nora asked as the two of them were now wide awake due to Sidney showing up.
"I don't know. Just hearing that he was here again, oh Celestia, it's frightening. To think I was asleep too. He would have killed me if it wasn't for you." Raptor said as the two of them were on the verge of letting their feelings fly.
"Heh, lucky for you I was awake and armed." Nora said as she giggled.
Raptor did the same before she had a response. "How could I ever thank you?" she said as she moved closer to Nora.
"Well, I could think of a few things." Nora said as she too closed the distance between her and Raptor.
"Really, now what would those things be?" Raptor asked returning the same bedroom eye look to Nora.
"Well, it seems you're getting the right idea, but I thought you'd never come around." Nora said as they went nose to nose.
0115 hrs. VTOL hangar.
"LIGHTNING you ok!" Sasha said as she knocked him to the ground when he returned home.
"Yea, I'm ok. Sasha, try not to worry about me so much." Lightning said as he booped her nose.
Sasha just scrunched her face and stared at him.
"Oh come on." Lightning said just before Sasha did the same thing to him, but said "Boop" when she did causing him to laugh.
"Yea that was the point." Lightning said still laughing about that.
"Da, now bed. It early, and all not feel good if we don't sleep." Sasha said helping Lightning up.
"Oh so I'm allowed back in our room?" Lightning asked as he was swatted over the head with a roll of paper.
"Da, but I still want me time." Sasha said as she gave him a kiss on the cheek
0800 hrs. Shuttle facility.
"Mriya look, it's all comin together so well. This makes the ol facility look like a pile of manure in comparison. An it's all so new, look there's tha VAB, ain't this all somethin?" Sadie said as she and Mriya were touring around the newly built launchpads and assembly buildings.
"Da, all new, very shiny. But lacks signs of use and experience." Mriya said keeping everything short as usual.
"Aw come on Mriya, ya gotta admit this is pretty neat. Since when have ya and Buran ever gotten to use anything bran new?" Sadie asked as the two of them now stopped to look at it all.
"When Buran was born, Energia was brand new, made exclusively for him. Then things got too expensive. You know rest." Mriya said
"Ah know how ya feel, them early launches for my shuttles ran bills up through the roof. Ah was just lucky there was some research agencies that was willing to pay for all their stuff." Sadie said as Mriya smiled a little as Buran came out to them with what was to them an interesting purple alicorn.
"Mom, Sadie, this is Twilight. She makes few experiments that Challenger carries. Been tellings me of type experiments I may carry." Buran said seemingly happy to have found this tiny pony.
"She make experiments you carry? She so tiny." Mriya said as the three of them towered over Twilight.
"Yes, well what I may lack in physical size in comparison to you I more than make up for in ingenuity in my experiments that are to be taken up to orbit. I've created a highly sensitive and heavy satellite that I don't trust with a rocket, but it's outside of the payload of the other shuttles. Buran offered to carry it up. It was designed to fit in a shuttle, but I went a little overboard with cramming research equipment on it." Twilight said as she talked to them all about the satellite she designed.
"Where is sputnik?" Mriya asked as Twilight more than happily lead them to a clean room where you yourself were also looking over the satellite.
"Twilight this satellite is massive. How in the world do you expect to get this in orbit without putting it in a rocket?" You ask as the four of them walk up to you.
"Buran. His payload is 10,000 lbs more than the shuttles correct?" Twilight said.
"Sounds about right. So he's carrying this up, just this?" You ask as You look at Twilight with a bit of concern for Buran.
"Well, I've calculated his payload capacity and believe he can carry two additional experiments made by my colleagues. Both of those experiments are less than 2500 lbs. so in reality he's carrying about 55,000 lbs up to orbit, about 5000 short of his maximum capacity." Twilight said as you take a second to think it over.
"Buran, you ok with this?" You ask as you look back to him.
"Da. I am good. I want to." Buran said answering your question.
"Ok, so it looks like you've got your launch platform Twilight. I've got to say, using Luna like that as a pretext to be here when your satellite was delivered by Galactus, that was pretty clever, but, I'm sure the Princess wouldn't approve of that." You say as you cover an eye to see what Morgan's up to.
"Your link with Morgan, it's only getting stronger isn't it?" Twilight asked.
You laugh and say "how could you tell? Because I covered an eye to see what she and the Princess were up to?"
"Exactly. Now about Buran, Sadie has expressed some concern that his processors are not up to speed." Twilight said.
"Well from what Mriya told me, he's pretty much original equipment, no upgrades or damage. And that's old tech even for me. If Buran chooses to accept I'll bring him up to the shuttles' level of computational electronics. Which shouldn't be too hard, just a bunch of plug and play cards." You say as Buran looks at you with a bit of confusion.
"Did you want an upgrade or would you prefer to stay all original equipment? OE may limit you on your capabilities to process experiments." You say
"Make me smarter than Challenger." Buran said as you laugh a little
"I can do that. Twilight was kind enough to donate the appropriate upgrades for you, at cost thankfully, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to even look at them. Then again, I probably could have programmed them myself." You say making Twilight frown.
"Are you saying that you're a genius from another world?" Twilight asked with a bit of animosity in her voice.
"Hey just saying I built Morgan from plans I've seen twice, from memory. I think I could have rustled up a solution, unlike your jimmies, which are clearly rustled." You say pointing a small old internet joke at her.
"Yes, anyways, I've brought the upgraded solutions with me. Anon will be doing the work of course, since he knows the internal workings of you all better than I can hope to comprehend." Twilight said as you move your hand mimicking her mouth as it has not stopped moving since you've been in this room.
Buran and Mriya thought it was funny, being simple pony folk. Sadie on the other hand had some confusion as to why you were.
"We can either do this today or tomorrow, it's still pretty early and for once I don't have anything on my regular schedule so I'm good whenever Buran." You say as you found a rolling chair and were now propelling yourself across the floor out of boredom.
"Today, if she needing satellite up soon, I need upgrade soon. Know I can function without it, but would help if more precise." Buran said as Sadie smiled and Twilight brought forth the padded cases containing the new hardware that would update the hell out of his software.
"Come with me please, we'll be upgrading you in another clean room." Twilight said as she lead you and Buran to another hangar.
Seems that she had subsidized the construction of this facility in Avalon's Shadow, perhaps because it was far from Celestia. Then again, if this brings in new business, that's great for you and the ponies here as you can buy more new parts not half new half refurbished, if they're lucky.
Perhaps this balancing act of parts acquisition is something a leader would do. Yes most of it is their money, but a good chunk comes from you as well.
Anyways, into the clean room you go, dawning a "bunny" suit and a mask to keep yourself from contaminating Buran after he got decontaminated and brought into the clean room. Twilight made you enter with the case, she stayed outside, she may have built her satellite, but Buran was something that was completely foreign to her.
"Alright Buran, I'm going to need you to open your entry hatch so I can go in and change up some electronics, you may fall asleep, so I do suggest lying down and not moving very much." You say as he lies down and closes his eyes.
"Good, I take nap, make things easier da?" Buran said as you smile.
"Da, make things easier." You say as you hear him shut down and you enter bringing a padded tool bag and a light to see inside of him with all power off.
"Damn the kid's smart." you say as you forget you've got a mic on you.
"What?" Twilight asked.
"Buran shut himself down, made it real easy for me to change the cards out without risk or worry of damaging them or him." You say as you share your revelations with Twilight.
"Well, that's good, he's smart enough to mitigate damage to himself already." Twilight said as you started to change out some of the periphery processors.
"I'm almost afraid to change the core processors, might change his personality." You say as you are sliding old periphery cards out and putting a new one in it's place.
"Well, I didn't make any new core processors, just high speed periphery ones, they should help augment his abilities. Didn't take you as one to worry about something you hardly know." Twilight said.
"Twilight, if you knew what I did about them, after hearing Challenger is still here after STS-51. You'd be shocked to find him let alone Columbia. Buran is something that well, where I am from was destroyed." You say as you finish leaving all the core cards in place