Catalyst 2.0: Protocol

>The world thumped around you.  Light and sound, viciously compressing down around you, causing your very clothing to vibrate.
>Though, who's clothing was this? Asymmetry, your right shoulder and flank had some kind of thick pads.  They were purely for show, hanging pockets with zippers that held nothing familiar.  The entire ensemble was black, with jagged patterns that bore a luminescent green glow in the dark.
>Jesus, how goddamn tacky.
>It was tight. Constricting.  Hot.  The world around you was humid from the body heat of dozens of ponies, clamoring amongst each other during some beating, initially unfamiliar song.  Though you were blinded at first, your eyes adjusted as if waking from sleep, and you could feel the vibration of stomping hooves.
>Glass to your left.  Stars and sky, partially lit windows in the distance. A jagged, poorly lit skyline viewed while nearly blinded from lasers visible through dry ice fog.
>Your body was shaking.  The feel of residual excitement, and something resembling being overcaffienated.  You were dizzy, but you still felt quite sober.  No, more than that- You were goddamn wired.
>Your heart was beating violently fast, and was almost painful.  Your skin nearly burned, but you were not yet sweating.  The world seem ever so slightly slower.
>You took a moment to look at something your hoof had been holding before coming to. Some kind of plastic cylinder.  A circle at the end, and a button upon a metal ring that tapered off to a point.  You pressed it, confused, and heard a quick hiss.

>You'd seen these before.  Pressurized drug syringes, delivering the stimulant to the bloodstream through the skin.  You'd recall using them on your chassis in the fields.  It had the same effect- losing a few seconds while your programming adapted to how your body was acting.
>What were you doing here, though? Why had you needed it?
>You dropped it to the ground and it rolled. You put the hoof to your head, and saw shreds of overly gelled, neon pink mane.
>Your mane had NEVER been pink.
>”You alright?” a strange pony asked.  She was yellow, with a brutally bright red mane.  It went over half her face, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses that shimmered with AR rectangles.  She got really close, and cuddled up to you to whisper. “Babe, you alright?”
>She kept looking at your lips, a half-hidden smile on her face.
>Oh, fuck this.
“Bathroom.”
>You couldn't hear yourself over the music. But you knew you'd said it, because it hurt your throat to do so.
>Water.  You needed it.  Your gullet felt as if it had met with some serrated kind of wood, that had left splinters.  She stared at you a moment, and stood away from you. She watched you, curious, and gestured with her head.
>You began to move through ponies.  Not willing to stand for their bodies being in the way, you start to shove and shoulder your way through, pushing several surprised equines to the side.  There were a few belligerent replies, and glances from bouncers as they point you out.
>You looked for the ping; an AR hex arrived and showed the stallions room. So, in you went.
>You found the sink straight away.  You didn't even bother to search for knobs or buttons; you shunted the safety layer on the maintenance ping and turned the faucet on.  You leaned in, tilted your head, and started to drink.

>God, was it wonderfully cold.  You had to take several breaths between gulps of water, finally sitting back on your haunches and looking up into the mirror.
>In it, you did not exist. Some metrosexual with a poorly dyed, stiffly styled mane. A blue body hidden in tight fishnet and black body suit full of fake tears.  Eye shadow. Goddamn EYE SHADOW.
>Had Luna put you up to this for some reason? Was it a joke?  How long had you been deactivated?
>”Babe? You alright?”
>The pony from before entered the room.  Now that you got a look at her, she was in some ludicrous take on daisy dukes over a tight set of thermal pants, with a patten of belts and buckles that led all the way down her rear legs.  She was smiling a little, and had pulled off her shirt.  She gripped it in her teeth as she approached you, and you regarded her with a mixture of confusion and misanthropy.
“Fine, now. I guess.”
>Your voice... It was strange too. Before you could try and place it, if you even could-
>She laughed. “You sure?”  She peered down to your other flank. You looked back and moved your hoof to it.
>There was a plastic bottle, strapped to your side. It was full of water.
>The strange mare tilted her head with a smirk. “Damn, filly. Never done this in the guys room before- you're getting brave, huh?”
>Then, holding the shirt in one hoof, she leaned in and kissed you.

>You held it for a second, unable to manage a cognitive response immediately.  Then, without any effort on reserving consequence, your let your combat filter kick in.  You raised a hoof, crossing it over to her opposite shoulder, and used the leverage of your weight to shove her forcibly into the sink.
>The impact of her own body against it, though you hadn't intended to be quite that strong, cracked the mirror as her head whipped back and struck it. She fell the ground, and you backed away from her slowly, keeping her in view the entire time.
>She coughed awake, trying to stand.  She stumbled a bit, her eyes wide and trying to conceive the world around her. Looking at you in surprised anger, she said: “Girl, what the HELL is wrong with you?”
>You took a glance in the mirror.  The curves of your muzzle, the... eye shadow.
>Oh, FUCK THIS.
>The bathroom door hissed open. You stormed out, your head lowered, your heart still throbbing as if it was nearing some kind of critical mass.  She'd tasted of bad lip gloss, and consequently, made you feel both shamed and filthy.
>The music and dank, hot air moved to consume you, as if you'd walked into a heated fog.  The light glittered off dancing and conversing ponies. Had they talked how they dressed, all you would have heard was inane jibberish made to sound edgy.
>Where?
>Your GPS kicked in after a few moments, buzzing and filled with noise.  Each thump of the bass forced the screen into a shallow distortion.  It placed you at the LunaCorp. Social Hub, the off-duty hotspot for employee connections... In more ways than one.
>But, why were you here, in this body? That hadn't been part of the protocol.

>You were searching for something, anything familiar. The music, you recognized. You scanned your files for it, though you found nothing precise.
>The light patterns, too. While they seemed to be random, they were not.  You tried to search where you had seen them- no such copyright ideas on a cosmetic laser pattern existed.  Yet it was there...
>Your deep data.  You closed your eyes tight and shook your head. The world turned to a dull warble.
>Then a text file came to mind.  An ancient log. You opened it, and read it.  No... Re-read it.
>Vinyl: So, who here works for our beautiful, shimmering lady?
>Then, it was there in your skull.  A set of glasses, a flare, and a horrid, terrifying stillness in your body.
>Vinyl Scratch.
>You dug deeper, stepping away from the bathroom as you heard the voice of the other pony trying to reach out to you.
>Vinyl: Boys and girls, I wanna hear you scream so loud, she'll hear us from here!
>No. This was not happening.  It felt so real, though, that it-
>Your deep data files. They were all in HD. Perfect reconstructions of stimuli, hearing, taste and sound.  You couldn't fucking stand this one.
>It was synched with the current song.
>What she did to you. What she did in her apartment with that gray bitch.

>When you finally cram the file back down into the depths of your brain and seal it off, your body is shaking restlessly.  Like it's about to burst into flames, the heat permeates your flesh and skin.  You look up, toward the stage.
>Glasses. Dark, polished glasses.  A grinning white mare, bobbing her head as the other gray whore repeatedly slit the neck of a bizarre instrument. It gave off a beautiful, but electronic squeal in tune with the thumping beat.
>It didn't make sense.  The reconstructions you had were from at least two years back.  You had other memories, magnetized to vivid violence and followed orders.  Friends, griffons, weapons...  Those were all so very professionally brutal. Why were you back here, in the midst of civilian chaos?
>Is this what Luna had meant by “Trusted Recovery Unit”?
>Taking you out of your body, to get you away from Rarity?
>Putting you with THEM?
>You clenched your teeth.  You lowered you head, glowering toward the stage. As if hearing and feeling clicks upon unseen joints in your frame, your safeties on the implanted combat code Luna willingly unsealed.
>”Look babe, you're just on a bad trip. Come on, I'll take you home and we can-” she put her hoof on your shoulder.
>Unwilling to react how you did, the combat code moved for you. She gasped as your teeth sunk in.   You twisted the hoof, simultaneously pulling.  It yanked her forward, and with a sharp tug, you flung her to the ground, bleeding.  She screamed as you pulled, a long, drawn out wail, before you whipped your head down and away.
>It threw her to the ground, and she looked up at you in the most pitiful expression of shock and fear you'd seen.  It drew every eye in the club toward you, as conversation drained and attention focused.

>Vinyl and Octavia were looking straight at you.  As you yelled, your voice carrying over the music and silenced ponies, it merely confirmed the idea that you were in some mare's body.  You sounded feminine in every sense of the term.
“Yeah, I know what you did to me, you cunts. FUCK, YOU!”
>The two looked at each other as bouncers approached.  They looked to one another, and even at her distance, Vinyl smiled.  She sent out a message; you saw the AR on several local ponies light up out of of the corner of your body's eyes.
>Vinyl Scratch: Oh, and what was that, hm?  Don't tell me it's something you regret, cutie.
>Fine. You could play that game. You open a channel, and your speech unfolds in text on every local ponies AR.
Anonymous3: “You sure as hell don't like giving people choices in the matter do you?”
>Your voice cracked and split.  You exhale a hiss, cracking your jaw.  When next you speak, another voice comes, to nearly filter out the girl you're occupying over the audio channels in every earpiece in the room.
>It's yours.
Anonymous3: “I'm going to make damn well sure you NEVER forget what you did.”
>The thought that the message was a mistake only occurred to you after you'd sent it out.  Something stabbed at you- not a memory. Part of the core functions you had adhered to, before your visit back to the surface.
>You weren't meant to be noticed here.  Your very name was dangerous.
>You didn't have any real concept of just how.  It was confirmed, however, when every civilian pony in the club reared back, and started to give themselves distance.  The bouncers were given pause.  Vinyl and Octavia went wide eyed.

>Some sort of subroutine attempted to activate inside you.  It failed, and returned an invalid upload message to you.  What the hell was it?
>From one of the far tables, you hear somep0ny scream. “She's infected!”
>You see many of the other ponies start to move away.  Even the yellow pony below starts to back away, however wounded she is, as you crouch into a runner's start.
>You begin a rush. Far from a blind attack, the installed subroutines already had red pings lighting up the bouncers you'd seen in the club already.
>The first stallion tried to stop you dead with his mass.  You crouched and slid before you even reached him, quickly standing and stiffly lifting your head.  Your skull cracked his jaw from below, and you felt something sever.  The idiot had his mouth open.  Standing up so suddenly with the force of all four legs had slammed his jaw shut, so hard his own teeth had neatly snipped away the tip of his tongue.
>You barely felt any pain in your head.  You turned to the side with your free legs, another hooked below his front leg as he fell; his own weight let you force his leg out sideways away from his body.  You held it aloft for just a moment, having snapped it cleanly at the joint closest to his torso.
>Before he even began screaming, your face was at his flank. You tugged away the rounded disc there; your subroutines had also tagged their weapons.
>TZ-42 tazer grenades.  Conductive gel with metal chaff, several high-output batteries inside distributed an electrical current throughout to disable victims.  You didn't even have to think before two of the bouncers were on the floor coated with the gold tinted goo, caught in spasms and arcing blue current.

>The combat code, when in action, was certainly thorough. You didn't have to react when it was on; merely think. It did the precision work for you.
>You took his other grenade and lobbed it haphazardly to your side.  Several civilian ponies had started approaching you.  A play at numbers, no doubt.  Not to mention a genuine urge by all of them to keep you from getting any further, toward their false idol.
>After the compressed air dispersed the gel, however, they were not so brave.  Many were not conscious.
>You had barely lost a step, passing by one of the twitching bouncers and using your teeth to tear off his grenade saddlebags. Using your momentum to bound up past the high edge of the stage, you pinged the grenades with your wireless link for a slightly longer timed fuse.
>Both Vinyl and Octavia had gotten only a few steps toward where you knew they would be heading.  You recalled that much, from the memory of where they'd taken you originally.  As the pouch of grenades entered their cylindrical lift at the back of the stage, that pre-fabricated escape route, they backed up in time to see a wad of the electric gel burst out from the pouch and fry the electronics inside the elevator.
>Vinyl turns in time to see you galloping toward her. Around your body, a feel of weightlessness begins to surround you as her horn glows.
>So, you do the one thing she doesn't expect when she's trying to levitate you. You jump.
>You might be getting lifted, but you were not without mass and density.  The initial lift carries you much, much farther than it should have, and far before she can adjust for the sudden change in your gravity.  You slam into her, your tackle augmented well by the initial loss of inertia. Her glasses skid across the floor.

>Now atop her, she looks at you with those magnificent magenta eyes. She evens her gaze with yours, and you begin to see a violet, brilliant flare.
>You slink back slightly, but only to gather space for what you are about to do. You rear your head back, and bring it down directly against the front of her nose.  You hear a sloppy, ignoble crack.
>Her hooves go to her face as she winces. She inhales wetly after a long hesitation, and then lets out a muffled, shuddering whimper.
“Do you have any idea what you did to me?!”
>She opens one tearing, shivering eye.
>Vinyl: I know I did more than you realize
“Where is my body? WHERE?!”
>Thump.  A heavy slam at your back brings you down atop her.  Not so heavy, though, that you cannot stand back up before another comes, bringing you back down.
>Octavia is on her rear hooves, brandishing her instrument like a bludgeon. Holding it by the neck, another strike comes, and you realize she isn't going for anything vital.  You are, after all, atop one of her best friends. She doesn't want to miss.
>You wait.  One, two strikes. You calculate her motions through the pain.  You edge to the side, to tempt her to get a heavier hit in.  The audience is cheering.
>As she pulls it back, holding it with both hooves to bring it down on you, you push against the stage with your front hooves.  Fully exposed in her standing position, your rear hooves connect in a full-force buck, one at each spot where her legs connect below her waist.

>She is frozen at the strike.  Dropping her jaw and her instrument, you yell as the second buck connects. Both hooves aimed, you hit her directly at the front of her groin.  You feel her flesh compress against bone. It has enough force to transfer the impact completely, leaving her to deal with it rather than kicking her legs out and having her fall atop you.
>Octavia gags, falling to the side before coughing up a mouthful of bile.  She clutches at herself with her forehooves, curling up in a combination of shock and terrible pain. The audience goes silent.
“Where is it?!”
>Vinyl: a burnt hole in the ground
>You lift your forehoof.  Before you can crush her head, that sensation of impending delight so close, her horn wobbles in light.
>Your ears pop.  A slew of code passes in your head, and like a switch turning off, you're left staring at her, breathing hard, but not bringing yourself to strike. Clutching at her broken nose, her white hide is blemished with oozing red and pained tears.
>Vinyl: don't you remember? Your body doesn't matter any more.
>Another snippet of code.  Was she trying to control you again?
>She was opening something.  She was accessing your deep data files.
>You pushed her away in your head.  Your mind was screaming. Reeling and thrashing.  How had she gotten access so quickly? So completely?
>The body you were inside was still.

>Visions played out in an instant, real-time experiences condensed into moments thanks to the processor clock on whatever you had been uploaded to on this body.
>Rockets curving away from you. Detonating and leaving splashes of charred red mist.  Bullets, shredding you to pieces.  Shunts to new chassis, just like how you'd appeared here, where the cycle repeated form different angles and upon different targets and even in different places.
>The files in your head revealed that you'd died.  Dozens of times, already.  All but the more recent shunts were blurry and pointless; memories lost to their priority, the worthless ones fading first.  Every time, the safety protocols had brought you back.
>The safety protocols...
>They'd kicked in when you were talking with Rarity. When the guards came to protect her.
>They only activated on two occasions. Failing life signs, and discovery by certain individuals that could compromise knowledge of your existence. They recited in your head.
>In the event that unit Anonymous3 should occupy a chassis quickly reaching a fatal incident, or the integrity of secrecy be compromised by his own actions, the program will automatically upload to the nearest suitable LunaCorp. Node and send a location ping for retrieval.
>You had been in the parking lot with Rarity.  The guards had approached.  So the protocols had started.
>It was then you realized. You harbored no rage. No hate or fear.  Not even passion.  The inhibitors were active.
>You were Anonymous3 again.  The program was in control.
>And Vinyl's club had been your upload point.

“This form was the only suitable node.”
>Vinyl: makes sense.
“I have to leave.”
>Vinyl: good luck with that.  Your other body had the self-destruct. You need to find another way.
>She was right. As you looked about, the access nodes in the room were dark.  Standard LunaCorp. defense protocol was brought up to your inquiry, mentioning the severing of internet connections for data based attacks.  You recalled the old body, likely no more than a crater in the parking lot, was like your supposed original. That one had a very powerful wireless connection, and you'd had sub-orbital storage units into which you were meant to go to.
>Your position here had been an unfortunate glitch. Interference with the satellites, perhaps. It didn't matter; you'd figure it out later. Now, the only places you could go, were into the still active nodes on varying ponies looking onward at your discussion with Vinyl.
>The only place you could willing upload, was to them.
>Hooves began to clamor from outside the club. You saw several cobalt pings- Uninformed LunaCorp. defense units, coming up from whatever was beyond the doors.
>The other standard protocol that stood out, one you were intimately familiar with, was that constructs were to be immediately destroyed if they ever committed to violence.
>Your preservation code deemed this unacceptable.  All an antagonist would need is a delete key.  On a public server or even another pony body, you would be seen instantly as from outside and simultaneously malicious.  You would be seen as a virus.
“What floor are we on?”
>Vinyl: Good idea.
>She sat up, grimacing while bleeding, and pointed. She let out a barely audible cough.  She fell back to the stage, and rolled with her nose in her hooves.

>You ran to the window at full force.  You slammed your shoulder into it, over and over again, until you realized you couldn't shatter it with such simple means.  So, you turned, and started to buck.
>Confused and frightened, the other ponies looked at you while you hammered away at the glass.  It crackled like melting ice, and in one final hit, splintered outward into glittering shards and a resounding crash.
>It gave way to harsh, cold wind.  The collective heat of the club vented to a rain-darkened skyline, rife with the jagged edges of tall, faceless buildings.  You looked up, letting your AR vision pass over the sky.  Where, oh where was it?
>A single bright blue ping dimly glittered in the sky.  You only recognized it out of the sea of stars because it had a label next to it.
>LunaCorp.
>You opened it.  It prompted you for a passcode.  One you did not have.  You tried accessing various files; deep data, core functions. Even the protocols themselves.
>A safety lockout brought you intense pain on a particular file- the protocols had their own access codes.  A whine in your ear, shrill and powerful, felt as if your body was about to shake apart. The longer you tried accessing the file, the harsher the tone.
>Apparently, that passcode was something even you were not allowed to consciously access.  Something administrative...
>You turned at the sound of a barked order.  Several LunaCorp. defense were there, clad in dark blue, and formed two lines behind you. The front line was crouching, the others standing tall for a clear lane of fire.
>Another set was behind those. They were pushing off other scrabbling ponies, trying to keep the area clear.

>The yellow pony held up her injured hoof, standing atop a stool in order to look at you.  She was crying while she watched you from afar.
>Well, no.  It wasn't really you to them, was it?
>Your preservation code, however, made no specific mention of avoiding the death of the p0ny you were occupying.  It was certainly more concerned with other p0nies. A slight elevation of importance for LunaCorp. Employees.  When it came to you, though- in comparison, you were priority.
>They start to try and negotiate.  Yet, there isn't a thing you want from them.  There isn't a thing they could give you.
>It would be more dangerous for you to be taken into custody. Your specific existence was such a travesty to the society now, by varying admissions, the punishment for salvaging and maintaining you would fall on Luna.
>Oh, and they'd probably delete you.
>You couldn't allow that.
>You would not die with her.  It was the best route.
>You stand tall and shake your head at the yellow pony. She puts her hooves to her mouth as you inhale sharply, then turn around, and leap.
>This would most certainly do.  You try to do a distance check on the ground; you don't have the sensors for it, so you decide to divert priority to boost your signal.  Floors blur by, and you refuse to close your eyes.
>After all, the protocols had to see it. Otherwise, the emergency upload might not kick on.
>The air chills you more, the faster you accelerate.  As you tumble, you make it a point to try and land on your rear hooves.  That was the best bet- even though the uplink nodes were quite small and would likely be impossible to land on, you had to dull the impact enough to give it the nanoseconds it needed before breaking.
>A text came before you hit.  You had just enough time to read it.
>Vinyl: See you soon.
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