Project: Underground

I wanted to pass out again and let the horrible truth pass over me. I dropped the note to the floor, letting it flutter down slowly as I tried to think of what to do next. I didn't even know exactly what was going on... How long had I been out? Who was the bad guy now? There was no plan at this point...

As far as I was concerned, Luna and Boldkey were probably far from where I was now, so chasing them down was probably useless by now. And about Pick... He couldn't be dead. Not now.

I quickly got back up on my hooves, quickly arming the gun as I grabbed the note again and hastily stored it. Placing the gun in my mouth so I could have all four of my limbs free, I shined the light down the hallway towards the lobby in hopes of finding Pick again. Slowly walking down the hallway, I had some interesting thoughts that sparked my curiosity: What exactly was Pick? Where did that blood even come from?

I had no more time to think of it, because before I knew it, I was back in the dark lobby. The door was back to being in a state of destruction, and the floor was back to being riddled with the shattered glass that came from the ruined fluorescent lightbulbs. I reclaimed my gun with a hoof and aimed it upwards and above the destroyed door, finding the familiar air vent to still be dripping blood from the metallic casing. I wanted to see inside, but I didn't know how to...

Wait... My wings. I looked back to find a feathery pair of dark green wings on my back as I got an adrenalin rush just from the sight. Looking at them on my back was crazy enough... However, the sight of my wings was kind of painful. I couldn't actually feel pain from the wings, but a small drizzle of blood coming from the joints connecting my spine to them hinted that I should. Luckily it wasn't bleeding anymore, but the dried blood still made me cringe.

Pushing past that, I went into a state of deep concentration in an attempt to fly. Trying to think of what it would be like to flap wings, I moved felt my wings gracefully floating up and down, quickly but powerfully. When I opened my eyes to see what was going on, to my own surprise, I had already climbed a couple meters off the ground and was now in the air. I suddenly got a giddy sense in my stomach as I saw my own hooves dangling there, far from the ground. My gut fluttered; all of a sudden, I realized how much I wanted to see what I could do with these things.

With little physical and even less mental effort, I was soon looping around the room, powered entirely by the powerful, feathery engines. Eventually, after I was sure I had exhausted the uses for them in such a small area, I finally remembered what I was going to do before I started flying: Find Pick.

I gracefully floated up to the bloody air duct and pulled out the gun again, shining the light down the metallic box as I peeked my head into it to get a better look at it. Lying down in front of me, with blood leaking from his dark blue head that was turned away from me, was Pick. I rattled my hoof around the vent in an attempt to wake him up.

"Yo! Pick! Wake up!"

His head suddenly jolted up and hit the top of the duct, making a loud noise and completely waking him up.

"Wha-a? Who are you? Where are you? Where am I?" He mumbled.

"Behind you. It's Starnote. You're sill in the air duct."

His head turned around as I jumped in shock. Brightly lit by my gun's flashlight, and clearly attached to Pick's forehead, was a dark blue horn. Dried blood was in a ring around the base and had already flowed down his face.

"Holy shit..." I said out of surprise.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Well, nothing's really wrong, it's just that... well..."

He noticed that I couldn't stop looking at his forehead and looked up himself. Slowly peering up, he found his eyes fixed upon an ivory horn above him as he nearly jumped through the roof.

"Hooooly shit. What the hell. Does this thing work?"

"Well, I would guess, saying that I got wings and they work..." To emphasize my point, I floated up further and climbed completely into the air duct, showing him my new pair of wings.

"Wow." He gave a hollow but excited laugh. "Wow. I gotta try this..."

"First, can you help me up into here?" I asked.

"Yeah." With those words of his, he closed his eyes as I felt my entire body become weightless as a light blue haze appeared around me, lining my entire body as well as his horn. I was slowly dragged further upwards until I finally hit the top of the air duct with a comical "thud".

"Yo. Too far."

"Sorry..." I was lowered a couple of centimeters, then brought towards him a few decimeters before being set down on the shelf of the duct in a lying position, directly facing him.

"Alrighty then. Talk to me. What did you see while you were out?"

He dazed out for a second. "Yeah... Yeah, I remember what happened. I think I... Wait. Ooh no. This makes too much sense now... The time I was out was really weird... I woke up in the lobby we were in before I got pulled up here. Except it was new again... All of the lights were still there. So I'm kinda weirded out by now, so I look around the room for answers, only to find unfamiliar ponies wandering around. But the craziest part was that Celestia came up to me and said that I had somewhere to be. She called me by a different name though... Tank. She called me tank. So by this time I'm all thinking that I'm back in time, you know? Anyway, she said that I had to go to the third door on the left. So I went over there, and all of a sudden, I was in a viewing area for an operating room. There were also a few other ponies in there, too. There were four others."

I cut him off there. "Wait... Was one of them a gold pegasus?"

"Yeah. There was one like that there."

"Hahaa! That was me! Whatever. Continue."

"So you went back in time too?"

"Yeah."

"Woah. Well, anyway, in the operating room was this purple Earth Pony. She looked familiar, like I knew her already. I knew it was the one from the photos and her name was Violet Rose, but I felt like I knew her as a friend. Anyway, they did this weird procedure on her where they put wings and a horn on her... I admit, I threw up. It was horrible to watch. After that, she woke up and went on a rampage, killing everyone who worked on her. One guy set off an alarm, and then some weird ponies hauled us out of the room. Before I know it, I'm in this weird chair, and this creepy pony is telling me that he's planning my new life. So he holds this screen in front of me, and it had details of my entire life before the earthquake happened. Then I woke back up here."

I was nearly speechless. "Holy shit. That exact thing happened to me..."

He gave me a jumpy, hollow laugh. "No shit, eh? Crazy..."

"So now, my question is, what the hell do we do next?"

"How the hell should I even know. I mean? Who's the enemy in this situation? Somepony is going to pay for this shit. I just don't know who to blame."

"Me too... For now though, where do we even look for answers?"

His answer slightly shocked me. "Outside."

Getting Pick down from the ceiling was kind of comical. It was pretty far up for somepony to drop down from, about five or six meters, so I had to lower him manually. And although I could guess that my wings were only made for one pony, the addition of a second didn't obstruct my flight nearly as much as I thought it would. As I set him down, he asked me a question.

"Why do you think Violet Rose gave us our abilities back?"

"Maybe she felt bad for the memories of us being erased. I dunno. My theory of what happened afterwards is that my wings and your horn were sent off to some other tests... Honestly, if we could, I'd like to learn a little bit more about Ingot. I could guess that you would like to learn more about Tank, too... I mean, the lives that we remember were just made up. From scratch... Can you remember anything more about Tank now that you think of it?"

"Sadly, not really."

"Ah, well. Want to give me a hand with the door?"

Our hearts skipped several beats as we heard another voice behind us, this one female.

"I got this."

Before we had a chance to look back to see who it was, our attention was directed in front of us once again as the poor vault door was ripped from the cold metal grip of the twisted doorway and thrown down again with a deafening crash.

We looked behind us, fearing the body the voice belonged too. It was Rose.

Both of us had dumb looks plastered on our faces for the next good ten seconds until Rose broke the odd silence that came with it. Even though her face was mangled and bloody, she managed to show happiness with a dry smile as she reached out and hugged us with a powerful grab, completely taking Pick and I by surprise.

Squished next to both her and Pick, it was kind of hard to squeak out anything, let alone the important question I was trying to ask her. "Um, could you politely explain what the fuck just happened?"

She put us down. "Gladly. But we need to start walking. Like now. That way." She pointed towards the open vault door hastily as she started scootching towards it in a comical fashion. I remember her being like this... I'm just glad she stayed like that. I just hope she was prepared for the load of questions we were about to ask her...

Finally walking down the hallway, Pick tried to get a conversation going. "So, why exactly did you give us our wings and horn back?"

"Isn't it obvious? I just wanted to try to restore Canterlot to what it used to be."

We weren't really surprised, but I tried to pipe in anyway. "But why did I remember you after my memory was erased?"

"Magic can make exceptions, I found out..."

Although I was still confused, I didn't have time to ask for an explanation; Pick had already asked her another question. "So how long ago did you become an Alicorn?"

"About two weeks ago."

He asked another. "Then what have you been doing for those two weeks?"

"Rampaging, destroying this place, scaring the shit out of everyone in Canterlot (Celestia in particular), sitting in here, pouting, practicing magic and flying, and then finally realizing that I was the only one that could restore the stuff I destroyed. That's when I found out about the memory erasing thing, so then I searched through some databases to find the changes in memory. Hacking it meant Celestia found out, and that's why she set off the earthquake. It was an attempt to kill me. She came down shortly after to see if I was dead, but simple mind-altering tricks sent her back the way she came. Then you guys showed up. Where are the other three of you, though? There were five of you, right?"

I figured I might as well answer this one... "Yeah... Peirce and Grey flame are dead because of this, and you scared the shit out of Bolkey and Luna, who then ran off. I was going to escape with them, but then that crazy time travel ordeal happened. Oh yeah! Funny story. I killed Grey Flame, Celestia killed Pick, and Boldkey killed Celestia. Almost forgot to tell you."

She suddenly looked shocked. "You killed Grey Flame?"

I immediately regretted telling her that right off the bat. I had to think of a legitimate response fast... "Out of self-defense, yes."

"What the hell. I thought you guys were friends..."

"Maybe two weeks ago, but not any more. I didn't even know any of them at the start of this little episode of ours."

"That reminds me: What happened with Celestia?"

"Well, Pick, Peirce, Boldkey and I bumped into her on the way down here. We were scared when she told us that we shouldn't be there, but we still refused to move. So, she stared interrogating Peirce, which eventually ended up killing him. Eventually, I pulled out my gun and shot her, which angered her, but gave us enough delay to let Luna make an appearance, who helped Boldkey kill Celestia. Make sense?"

"Yeah, probably a little too much."

"Why 'too much'?"

"As you could probably tell, Celestia went insane with this obsession of making Alicorns, while at the same time, Luna went insane with an obsession of stopping her."

"Ooohkay. That makes more sense." I was glad that the pieces of this puzzle were falling into place fast.