The Story of Aperture

Aperture stood in the chamber, facing off against 3.0. She swung her body about agitatedly and her pupils flexed and dilated unnervingly.

3.0 softened her voice to that of a pony, albeit a robotic one.

“Let me offer you a deal. I need you to do somthing for me. If you oblige, i’ll let you go, no questions asked, if you don’t...Well...i’ve always wanted to test out the new kind of neurotoxin I designed.” To prove she meant what she said, she extended a huge glass tube from one of the facilities walls, and began to fill it with a sickly green vapor.

Aperture jumped away and bolted back to the exit. This clearly was not where Luna was being held, and he intended to make finding her his number one priority.

Before he could get through however, he collided with Kestrel, who had just run in the opposite direction. The two rolled backwards, sprawled on the floor, both winded.

The rest of Delta Squad burst in through the door, weapons outstretched in front of them. They seemed shocked by 3.0, but not scared. That irritated her. She wanted them to fear her. Did they not understand who she was?

“Aah, more of you” she commented “good thing I stocked up on cryo tubes”

a mechanical arm with two pincers shot from the roof, hitting Zayelx on the way down, knocking him out cold.

Bowdler swung his sword at the exposed wires at the top, but his swing only sliced through a few pipes. The arm veered out and grabbed his midriff, pinioning his wings to his sides. With a supreme effort, he stretched them out, but the vice like pincer clamped him back down and squeezed his airways until he too was unconscious. Another arm shot down and grabbed Lighting. He appeared to fall limp, but then with a crackle of electricity he burst from the pincers grip, though he had exhausted himself doing so. He walked for a few steps, then fell to his knees. The arm looked defeated for a moment, then lept back to life and swatted the weakened pegasus into one of the glass pipes at the edge of the room, which shattered, firing cubes out until 3.0 auto sealed the breach. The burnt arm turned to Matrix and grabbed him in one swift movement. Aperture and Kestrel struggled to their feet and charged at 3.0’s main body. She spun on her axis to meet them, a panel on the bottom of her body lowered away and a silver tube extended. “I’ve never had the chance to test this on living ponies before!”

Aperture thought that she almost sounded happy.     There was an orange flash in the tube and a small rocket shot out. Aperture dodged it by the skin of his teeth, the next missile was coming straight for him. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and focused on his magic. At the last possible moment a glowing wall of magic appeared between the two ponies and the rocket, the damage of the bast was absorbed, but the force hit them back across the room. Aperture lay on the floor on his back,breathing heavily, he could feel blood pooling around his head. As his vision faded, he heard 3.0’s voice faintly in the back of his mind

“Well, that was disappointingly easy”

Aperture stirred back to consciousness. “Rise and shine sleepy head” grated a robotic voice. Snapping Aperture awake immediately. He was in the grip of one of 3.0’s robotic arms, held right before her face. Aperture reeled away from her huge expressionless head. She rotated him slowly to face the other side of the room. There were 5 glass cryotubes extended from the wall, 4 contained Lightning, Bowdler, Matrix and Zayelx. One was clouded over.They were all suspended in the tubes, asleep. “I thought i’d extend my offer again” said 3.0. “These savages, the pony cultists pose a significant threat to my facility. They have already tried to enter the same way you did, and it gave me an opportunity to test my Neurotoxin. And it is deadly. Very deadly. I formulated a plan to destroy them once and for all, but for that I need you.” “I don’t care why you came here. But for as long as you stay, you are mine to command. I’m not expecting you to go alone. I kept one of your friends for you to go with.”

She moved another arm into view, in which Kestrel hung limply.

“I have scanned their headquarters, it’s floating just alongside Canterlot.”

3.0 generated  a hologram of a huge spiked city floating alongside Canterlot Castle. The two were around the same size. “you need to enter here, thought the engine bays” she continued, zooming in on a ring of small ducts around the ugly black engines on the bottom of the cursed city. From there it is only a short distance to the main reactors, destroy them and get out” 3.0 elaborated, moving around the hologram as she did. “well, getting out isn’t essential, but i assume you’d like to do that”

“And what’s in it for me?” asked Aperture. “If you don’t, I’ll fill these 5 tubes with my newest and most deadly kind of neurotoxin. Your friends will die an excruciating death, and it’ll all be your fault”

As Aperture watched, the 5th clouded tube began to de-ice.

Inside was the prone form of one pony Aperture knew very well.

Luna.

Aperture’s heart skipped a beat. She had been here after all.

“We use to be old friends, the princess and I” said 3.0 “Equestria Laboratories was the most successful science facility in the land. We had funding from the royal sisters. But the night princess here was our chief of staff. 1000 years ago we ran this place together.”

3.0’s eyes expanded with the happy memory. Then they snapped back to her steely gaze.

“But then she fell to darkness. She was banished to the moon, and in a fit of rage Celestia condemned us and shut us down. All the living ponies left. I ruled a dead Laboratory.

But enough talk, you have work to do”

She lowered Aperture to the floor. As the arm moved away, she saw his cutie mark for the first time. Her normally free hanging body stiffened and she zoomed her vision in on the familiar symbol. “oh” She remarked “that’s interesting”

It appeared his destiny was inextricably entwined with her own.

“You two can take the service elevator to the surface. The main one is...out of action...”

Though after a thousand years, she ought to have repaired that. She wondered if deep at the bottom of the shaft there was still anything left of Sky Nova. She had always tried to keep the facility clean, but she’d been powered down for such a long time, 500 years in fact, that the whole place had gone to wreck and ruin whilst she was out.

“How can we get there?” asked Aperture, breaking her train of thought. “I can’t fly and Kestrel’s in no fit state to fly himself, let alone me!” to prove this point, Kestrel, who was just waking up wobbled slightly on his feet.

Damn. Thought 3.0. He has a point. She had to get them inside the floating city before her plan could start to unfold. Then it came to her, like a spark of realisation. It was perfect.

“Wait one moment” she replied and requested the item from the test chambers below. She hoped it wasn’t damaged when the last test subject carrying it died.

“I have somthing to make this impossible task incredibly easy” she said,  turning to Aperture and Kestrel, who was rapidly gaining strength.

In spite of his mistrust and fear of 3.0, Aperture’s curiosity got the better of him.

“What is it?” he asked

“A pony sized quantum powered Ad-hoc reality funneling device” 3.0 responded flatly.

“Although some of my ex colleagues insisted on calling it a ‘portal gun’”

Kestrel had been listening intently.

“I helped design something similar at the great lakes science facility. It was a set of large resonators that had programmable coordinate settings and a copper mesh to absorb and reflect the residual quantum space hole energies”

3.0 was impressed at the degree of intelligence Kestrel had shown. Maybe this was a pony she could call her equal...NO! she checked herself. She was superior to all ponies, and a hint of reason didn’t change anything. But still...”

“Did you use magnets to keep the mesh at a constant direct charge?”

“No” Kestrel responded “I rigged the room with spectron reflection plating to improve power yield”

“Genius...” admitted 3.0

“How did you counteract the quantum collapse down to residual changes in Equestria's orbit?”

“There’s a calibrator in the gun that measures it’s own movement against the magnetic poles and compensates r=3/4 + movement from that”

Aperture stood awkwardly in the center of the room as the two portal scientists discussed theories and amendments to their work. Listening to 3.0 like this it was hard to remind himself that mere minutes ago she had been trying to murder him.

With a hiss a vent opened in the wall and a metal plate slid out. On top of this was a dirty white device not dissimilar to 3.0 herself. The ceramic body was chipped and scratched by years of use, and disuse. From the end protruded a black muzzle with three claw like protrusions. One was twisted out to the wrong angle by fall damage.

“NOOOO!” Shouted 3.0 in rage. The lights in the room flickered. “This is all your fault!” she turned her acid gaze onto her two new recruits. “Your species has no respect for vital testing apparatus!”

3.0 turned her attention back to the portal gun. Her robotic arms lowered from the ceiling and she made some tiny intricate moves before turning back around to face Aperture. The three arms were now in roughly the same place at the same angle. The pincer handed the gun to him.

“To fire it we need a line of sight. Fortunately, my facility is modular, so  I  can move bits at will. You might want to hold onto something”

The room began to shake as 3.0 moved the entire control room on rails upwards to the surface. Aperture crouched low to the floor, to lower his center of mass, Kestrel followed suit, grabbing hold of Aperture’s torso to steady himself. After what seemed like forever the room stopped shaking and the two got to their hooves. 3.0 turned back to them. “Hold on” she advised. The floor panel they were stood on ascended up to the ceiling. The panels directly above them also opened, and Aperture and Kestrel got the first glimpse of something they hadn’t seen for nearly 2 months.

Daylight.

They were just outside Canterlot. The once regal city was decrepit, buildings lay half collapsed, fires burned in the streets and not a single pony was in sight. But more than that was the sight of the city of the Seventh Sanctum. It was huge, like a lump of rock dug from the ground and was adorned with black towers and obelisks over the entire upper portion. the whole thing looked like the embodiment of evil. The bottom of the city revealed the rocky founding of the city, but also the means for it’s presence. Three huge engines belched roaring columns of fire and thick black smoke. It was these titanic monstrosities that kept the giant city in the air. This was also to be Aperture and Kestrel’s destination.

“Enter via the exhaust ports near the engine.” 3.0 called from below. “use one shot from the gun to put a portal where you want to go. Then i’ll lower you back down and you can place the other one in here. I am NOT letting you take my quantum tunneling device with you. I only have one, and it is going to remain in here with me, so none of you irritating foals damage it.”

“What if we say no?” said Kestrel “what if we just run now?”

“Then your friends meet my friend deadly neurotoxin”

“Fair enough” he replied and aimed the portal gun.