An Exercise in Inter-Universal Politics

Janeway stood up and looked over Chrysalis' unconscious body, barking at the other surgons in the room.

"McVine, you're the abdominal surgery specialist. We have to remove the growth immediately, or—"

"McVine has fainted, sir!" a nurse shouted, crouching down to make sure the surgeon hadn't injured herself when she collapsed.

"Dorian, can you shoot her with some adrenaline or something?" Janeway asked, not even taking the time to make a noise of displeasure at her misfortune.

"I guess," Dorian replied, "but she'll be so jittery afterwards that I wouldn't want her to cut a steak, much less perform surgery."

"Fuck," Janeway stated, closing her eyes. The surgeon turned to Twilight. "Do you have any ideas?"

The alicorn shook her head. "None. I—I just assumed that the organism in her abdomen had to be a battery of some kind! Something to feed Chrysalis love so that she could easily survive, not—Not a stack!"

The queen groaned at the mention of he name. Next to her, Dorian's machine started beeping slowly.

"Janeway, can you do it?" Dorian asked, stepping away from his machine. "You're literally world-famous, one of the greatest surgeons period. It's just like an appendectomy. That has to be child's play. Shit, I haven't done any knife work in years, and I could probably slice it out."

"I guess you're right," Janeway snapped. She turned to Twilight. "Are you certain that it won't explode outside of her body?"

The alicorn blinked. She hadn't even considered that possibility, but—that was very possible. In front of her, the damn machine started beeping faster.

"Uh—It may. It may be able to." she said.

Dorian and Janeway shared a look.

"Alright," Janeway muttered, "alright. So we just... disarm it. Can you do that?"

"It's—It doesn't work like that," Twilight stuttered. "A magical stack isn't a very complicated warlock structure. It's just a dumb container for spells. There's nothing to disarm, the—the spell has already been cast, it's just in stasis."

"So we have no way of stopping it?" Janeway asked, voice a bit higher in pitch.

Twilight swallowed, feeling her mouth get drier. "I—I can teleport away with it!"

"But are you going to be able to get away before it blows?" Dorian asked, slamming his fist on Chrysalis' machine, which continued to beep. Next to him, the Changeling gurgled.

Twilight closed her eyes, trying to shut herself off from the glare of the overhead lights. After thinking about it for a moment, she shook her head. "No, I don't—Come to think of it, I doubt I could even teleport once."

Twilight felt her breathing increasing in frequency. She wasn't exactly afraid of dying herself. After all, she had done more than enough good in the world to receive a reward in practically any of Equestria's religious systems. This particular way of dying was even close enough to a battle that she could probably make it into the ancient Griffons' conception of Valhalla.

The problem was, if she died, Equestria had no chance. She didn't doubt that the humans had the ability to make an inter-universal transport within a few hundred years, yes, but that would probably be far too late. Whole generations would have grown up enslaved. The Equestria she knew would be thoroughly destroyed.

Marshal stepped forward, ripping Twilight's contemplation apart as he put a hand on her neck.

"Your safety is priority number one," he stated, as if he was listening to her thoughts. "We're getting you out of here now."

Chrysalis made a startled noise.

"What about Chrysalis?" Twilight asked. The Changeling made a noise that seemed to be in agreement with her.

"She's—We can't do anything about that," Marshal said, trying to stay calm. "The important thing is you."

Chrysalis gave a groan.

"I—I can't!" Twilight shouted. "If I get more than ten feet from this thing the stack can unwind and everything in the immediate vicinity is dead, including me!"

"Are you sure there's an explosion spell?" Marshal asked. "These guys haven't been very effective in the past. Maybe it's something else?"

"I already performed a stack trace!" Twilight shouted. "The spell was there. Explosion, thirty foot radius."

Marshal's brow gained a few wrinkled. "Maybe we can..."

"There's nothing!"

Twilight's voice was fully screaming now, echoing off the walls of the room. The alicorn stood with wings spread, neck down, and ears flat.

"You all have to get out of here, right now! I—There's nothing I can do!"

The room stood still for two seconds. The surgeons who hadn't ran stared at the floor or at their equipment, trying not to make eye contact. The beeping of the monitor faded into the background. Twilight could hear herself breathe, hear the air rush out of her lungs as her chest fell.

"Twalughit" Chrysalis weakly mumbled. Twilight jerked her head in her direction.

"Did you just try to say my name?" she asked.

"Teluphauny," the Queen gurgled.

Twilight squinted. "Teluphauny." Telephony? Why would Chrysalis... Oh, telepathy. Chrysalis obviously wasn't able to speak normally, but apparently wanted to chat anyway.

Twilight mentally cast the spell. Normally telepathy was extremely tasking, but Chrysalis' skull was quite literally open, so the spell was trivial.

Yes? she asked, in the Changeling's head.

Stop panicking, you blasted idiot! the queen snarled. One of our kingdoms has already been lost due to rash decisions. I do not wish to have it be both, or for you to die before those hairless apes can extract my revenge for me.

But what am I supposed to do? Twilight asked. I can't—I can't think of anything!

You can, Chrysalis retorted. You ascended to royalty because of your cleverness. You have found a way out of every impossible situation I have seen you in. This should be no different! A mare with your intelligence, charisma, bea—

Chrysalis' suddenly cut off.

Is this still working? the Princess asked.

Yes, the Queen replied. But you should stop it. You need to use all your energy to get us both out of this situation.

Twilight cut off the link, closing her eyes. So she had a stack in the middle of a Changeling's body. A stack with three spells. She thought back to her first metamagic class, back at Princess Celestia's school for gifted universe. A stack had two basic operations, push and pop. One added a spell, the other removed it, respectively. A stack could store a limited amount of spells, and would overflow and stop working if pushed over capacity.

So. How could she use this information? Well, popping the spells was useless. That would just kill them all faster. So she could try to push some spells onto it. Perhaps a teleport spell, so it would remove itself from the area before it killed everybody. But a magical null field was incredibly difficult to cast as-is. She doubted she could do anything more complicated than levitation at the moment. So, what else—

Twilight bolted upright. A limited size! Stacks had a limited size! If she could just fill it up, it would overflow! That was the solution!

"I've got it!" she shouted. "I just need to cause a stack overflow!"

"Oh, you're shitting me!" Dorian shouted.

Twilight paid him no mind. She was too busy casting as many "light" spells as she possibly could. It was the simplest, fastest spell for her to cast. She was probably doing this at almost fifty a second. She could feel it draining her magic, but she had no other choice.

Twilight cast the spells for ten minutes. At minute seven, she collapsed to the ground. Marshal and the others rushed to her, but she shrugged them off. She could do it. She knew she could.

Twilight strained, trying to finish. How many members could this stack take? There had to be thousands of spells on it. Tens of thousands. Why wouldn't—

Twilight felt a jerk. It—It overflowed. It was broken!

"I did it!" she mumbled.

With that, the alicorn collapsed.

Janeway and Dorian shared a look. Slowly, both looked at Chrysalis, waiting with baited breath.

When the changeling did not explode, they both rushed to Twilight. Dorian put a finger on an artery in her neck.

"Is she alright?" Marshal asked, face betraying genuine concern.

"Uhh... No," Dorian said. "Her pulse is so extremely low. Lower than that of an unconscious person. I think..."

"She's catatonic," Janeway said, completing his thought.

"Great," Marshal said, rubbing his forehead. "Just great."

Well, you've done it, internet—Twilight Sparkle and Chrysalis are both now in the top ten for our list of characters. In three weeks! Let's hope their homelands aren't offended by this sort of thing, because at this point I don't think there's any stopping you...

>>12398042586

Ok, seriously, mods, ban this fucking idiot. Evil Geniuses does not have an advertising deal with this horse, no matter how many photoshops you make.

What's weird about it? I make songs about important issues, and yeah, I'm making a song about this horse. It's not a gimmick, it's a fucking alien. It's the most important motherfuckin' thing to ever happen to our species, so yes, I'm writing a song about it. And I really do have a lot of those conflicting feelings, that's not me bullshitting. This is the kind of shit that keeps me up at night.