Screaming Yourself Horse

"Ow! Ow! Stop it! Please! I can't take it anymore!"

Darius Mason let out a sigh, dropping his talking weapon and whipping out a plasma cannon to finish off the remaining mutants. Bad enough that they'd broken out of the Marauder temple. Bad enough that he was the one being blamed for it. But what really topped it off was that his most powerful weapon not only had low...ammunition, but it kept insisting on making him aware of that fact.

"See, you don't need me," the weapon piped up cheerfully as the last mutant exploded into a sea of orange innards and black skin (assuming it was skin). "You can do fine just by yourself."

"This time at least."

The weapon didn't answer. Bastard.

"On a war-torn planet," Darius murmured, holstering the plasma cannon and checking the ammo he had left for his pistols. "On the brink of Armageddon..."

"Think we've already reached that."

"Mars's last hope..." the engineer continued, ignoring the interruption, "lies with one weapon."

"It's me, isn't it?" the weapon piped up. "Oh, do say it's me."

Darius grunted. It was him. It was the weapon. It was the one thing in this universe that could be more irritating than Sam.

Mister Toots.

Darius was admittedly sceptical when he came across the My Little Pony toy left behind by some EDF members back in the 2120s. Bad enough that the thing had come from Earth of all places, but it was...well, it was plastic, annoying and made a party-popper noise every time you squeezed it. However, one fusion cell later, and Darius had realized that Toots was a weapon rivalling the power of that of the Nano Forge.

"I don't get it," Darius mused, looking down at the plastic pony, its rear end still sparking with all the colours of the rainbow (whatever a rainbow was-some Earth bullshit probably). "You're a weapon. Why would the EDF design a weapon capable of thinking?"

"You have one," Toots pointed out. "Your AI."

"She...it...isn't a weapon. She's a tool."

"I heard that," SAM piped up, the miner's wrist device glowing to signal that. "But don't pay attention to me."

Darius grimaced. Despite all that happened, he did pay attention to his situation awareness module. If only because of the fact that she...it...shared the nickname of the grandmother he never knew.

So why was he being so hard on Mister Toots then?

"We should move," the engineer murmured eventually, moving over to pick up his pony. "If the Plague comes back, I'll need you to help fend it off."

"Oh yes," Toots said sarcastically. "More farting lasers. More screaming myself-..."

"Screaming? I've never heard you scream."

"Then you're not listening," the pony snapped, making his plastic eyes line up with his owner's organic ones. "That 'party pop,' as you call it? That's me. It's the sound I make every time you squeeze me and force me to send out laser beams out my arse."

"But that's what you're meant to do," Darius pointed out.

"So? You were meant to live a quiet life on this world, free of the EDF and the Ulthor Mining Corporation. Doesn't mean you've actually achieved that." Toots put on a sneer, which coming from a plastic toy, seemed more chilling than aggravating. "It's so good to know that your ancestors actually made a difference on this world."

"You're speaking out of your arse, Toots," Darius snarled.

"No, I'm speaking out of my mouth. If I was speaking out of my arse, you'd have been reduced to your constituent atoms by now."

Silence fell over the man and beast, as Darius reflected on what the pony had said, and how as much as he wished otherwise, the plastic toy was right. Here he was, continuing the work that his father and grandfather had continued, the same work that, if he remembered his history correctly, Parker and Eos had begun...or continued themselves. Good men and women, fighting to be more than cogs in the machine. The machines changed over time of course, whether it be Ulthor or Earth, but the cogs remained the same. Human beings. Beings that, now that he thought about it, should be able to treat other beings as what they were-individuals. And as much as he hated to admit it, Mister Toots was one such individual.

And what have I been doing to him all this time? Squeezing him for the sole purpose of using him as a weapon.

"Look..." the third Mason Red Faction member murmured, kneeling down to face the pony. "I get where you're coming from. But like it or not, Mars is depending on me...I mean us. And if it has any chance of surviving, I'm going to need you to endure being...squeezed."

Mister Toots remained silent. Overall, Darius couldn't blame him.

"Yes, I just realized how...sexually challenged that might have sounded," the engineer continued. "But Toots, you're the best weapon at my disposal. But you're also the only weapon that's capable of being more. So, if we both accept that..."

Toots said nothing. Instead, he let out another squeeze of his rear...

...and fried the mutant sneaking up from behind.

"All good," Toots said. "Let's go."

A/N

In theory, a plastic horse shooting lasers out of its rear should be instant win, and for the most part, \ it is. However, it doesn't help that Mister Toots always looks like he's screaming every time he's fired. Anyway, came up with this as a result.