Rainbow Dash and Gilda flew over the Everfree Forest, their eyes scanning the ground.
 
Since the Darkening of Equestria, mortal ponies fled into the Everfree Forest and the mountains to escape the Vamponies that had now dominated the once bright and colorful land. The Everfee Forest had become a favored hunting ground of vamponies. Every night they’d hunt the mortals, drain their fill, and be off.
 
The mortal ponies lived in constant fear, huddled in hollowed out trees and dank caves. During the “day” they would slip into the vampony towns to forage for supplies. Food that their vampiric oppressors no longer ate. Medicine that their supernatural bodies no longer needed. More often than not the supplies would be left out as a trap.
 
Gilda spotted something down below… two small puffs of black smoke was escaping from a clearing.
 
“Dash, I found some!” Gilda called out to Rainbow Dash.
 
The two landed in the clearing to investigate. What they saw was not a campfire, it was something far more peculiar.
 
It was a rather large brass construct, somewhat bigger than a pony. It stood on two mighty legs and had two hands that gleamed in the light of the dead sun. Two smokestacks protruded from it’s back and pumped black smoke into the air. With each step, it made steam shoot from its feet with an oddly satisfying hiss.
 
Its arms, while made of brass, had red painted fingers. On the back of its forearms were peculiar cannon-like objects. Double barrelled with a single gap between the two barrels.
 
A single bright lamp was fixed into the front of the robot, but a light in the “cockpit” illuminated its operator: a mortal pony wearing a pith helmet, a red scarf, and peculiar goggles. When he was not pulling the levers to move the golem, he was sipping from a brass thermos.
 
“How the hell did they build a robot?” Dash asked, keeping hidden in the shadows with Gilda, watching the thing.
 
“Just another stupid attempt to protect himself.” Gilda scoffed.
 
On all her hunts, Gilda had taken everything from knives to bullets. They all heal up fine. So she was pretty sure a robot was no different. She stood up from her hiding place and stepped forward.
 
“HEY, YOU! YEAH YOU, THE DWEEB WITH THE TRASHCAN!” she called out.
 
The robot seemingly ignored her. Perhaps it was the engine sounds that were drowning out her challenge. She kept calling out to it, but it was as if the pilot couldn’t hear.
 
She picked up a rather large rock, about the size of a fist, and threw it at the robot’s back, denting the bronze plate in the back adorned with two letter Fs. The pilot jolted to his senses, turned the robot around slowly to face the vampire gryphon.
 
“GOT YOUR ATTENTION NOW, DIDN’T I!?” Gilda yelled out, striding over to it.
 
The pilot pulled a few levers, causing the robot to raise its fist and aim its cannons at Gilda.
 
“Oh shit! Dash! This one’s packing! Bail!” Gilda sarcastically bellowed, barely containing her laughter. Dash could be heard laughing as she stepped out of her hiding place, scythe in hand.
 
“Put that thing away before you put someone’s eye out!” Dash said, laughter building as she tried to finish the sentence.
 
The pilot calmly reached for a rather large red handled lever, watching the two laugh at him… then he pulled.
 
Two boas attached to small cannonballs flew from the cannon with loud swooshes and coiled themselves around Gilda’s chest and her ankles, incapacitating the gryphon and knocking her to the ground. She looked at Dash, and Dash looked back, with mocking worried faces… then they started laughing.
 
“BOAS? That’s your defence? Are you fucking kidding me?” Gilda called out.
 
The vampire gryphon had been in many traps before. Nets, tripwires, the occasional bear trap, she could break out of anything. This boa would be no different. She made a half ass attempt to burst out…
 
… then an adequate attempt…
 
… then she started to thrash around in an effort to break free. She wasn’t laughing anymore.
 
“Dash! Little help here!?” she said.
 
As Dash ran to untie Gilda, the robots other cannon fired it’s boas and nailed her the same way. Both of them fell to the ground, squirming frantically against the strong bindings as the robot stepped closer and the engine stopped.
 
The stallion took his mask off and sipped from his thermos. He cleared his throat.
 
“This ‘trash can,’ as you flying rats like to call it, is the Flim Flam Bros. Slaver Mk. I.” He said, leaning over the control panel. “Steam-powered, made from the new AG-50 alloy. Just like those Boas.” He said, motioning to the boas with his thermos.
 
“The fuck is AG-50?” Dash said, struggling against her boas in her feeble attempts at freedom.
 
“Damned if I know, but I love it. When you absolutely have to capture a freak from another dimension, accept no substitutions!” he said triumphantly with a flourish.
 
The pilot sat down again, with a few flipped switches and pulled levers, the robot’s firey engine roared to life. “Now then… ready to see your new home?” he asked as the robot picked up the two. Dash upright, Gilda upside down. The robot shook the helpless gryphon for a few seconds to the sadistic glee of the pilot before he took control of the legs and made it walk off into the dark.
 

 
If you are a metallurgist, mechanic, robot fan, or steampunk who would like to shout at me for my inaccurate depiction of steampunk robots, the line starts over there behind Jules Vern and H.G. Wells who want to bust a cap in my ass.
 
Yes, this is a crossover between Elements of Nightfall and Steam and Slaves. I throw out one idea in Discord and those two are like “Okay yeah, let’s do it.” A few brainstorming sessions later, the two commission-based series get drunk and give birth to a mutant butt baby.
 
For those that are wondering/care, this crossover takes place after the POSSIBLE endings of both. As to what this one entails, it should be fairly obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway: the Bureau’s attempt at breaking and enslaving vamponies, because for some reason they decided atomic bomb tests were too safe.
 
Elements of Nightfall assumes that the sun gets destroyed and everybody is a vampony. That weird black thing in the sky is what used to be the sun. Just a corpse sucked of its life essence but still has an unnatural glow to it. Just enough to barely see. Almost everybody’s been turned. The princesses are all vamponies. Starlight Glimmer is still out there (dressed like Carl Fairburne from Sniper Elite for some reason) trying to survive the vamponies and get the hell out of Equestria.
 
Steam and Slaves assumes that the mane six’s rebel plot got fucked up royal and Equestria continues its spiral into brutality and insanity with no visible bottom to hit. Oddly enough their rise in technology grows in stark contrast with their descent into madness. Their technology has reached a strange limbo state between still using steam power and being able to rip open portals in space and time. Yet, treatment for gryphon slaves is somehow GETTING WORSE. The mane 6, obviously, are in deep shit for their attempts to overthrow the current system and are all sent to the Bureau.
 
This whole thing is a joint commission between shadowdath and hunter117x and there is MORE ON THE WAY!