A Game of Two Halves.

It had been a fairly relaxed day at Canterlot. Not much had happened and a giant monster hadn't decided to attack in two days (a new record). But deep beneath Canterlot castle, in a series of tunnels created after the Queen Chrysalis invasion, nothing could be further from the truth. Celestia herself had been called to the tunnels by one of her officers, Guard Major 2nd class Lemmor.

"Lemmor, you do realize that I ordered you to only call me here if it was for a good reason?" Celestia asked

"Yes ma'am. Its urgent." he replied.

"Well, are you going to tell me whats going on or not?" she asked angrily as Lemmor escorted the ruler through the complex, bustling, tunnel network towards his office. Lemmor was not the strongest guard, being exceptionally lanky by anyponies standards but made up for this in brains and endurance. Having graduated from Canterlot University with a degree in Old Equestrian, he was immediately noticed by a high ranking officer within the guard. Eventually, having risen through the ranks, he assumed command of Black Wolf division, the intelligence section of the Royal Guard answerable only to Celestia after his previous boss suffered an "accident".  Upon finally reaching his office, deep below ground did he finally speak, "Well ma'am. Our codebreakers just intercepted this. You may want to have a look at it." he finally said as he slid a piece of paper across his desk appearing to contain pure gibberish.

ا0129394857958.

2268453029346-r0/251300 26202. 08_04_199

"What does it say?" she asked seeing the newfound urgency of the situation.

"Thats the problem. We don't know." Lemmor replied, his face etched with worry "Its a code thats so old none of the books we could find have it documented and it appears to mutate of its own accord, destroying all work we have and resetting itself."

Celestia stepped back in shock. Nothing of this complexity had ever been seen in Equestria. Certainly, there had been some codes before now similar but not identical to this, but this was an altogether different situation.

"I want a team assembled within 48 hours. This is to be given Tier X classification and is only to be seen on a need to know basis. Understood?" Celestia spoke as her mind finally snapped back to reality.

"Yes ma'am. I will get to it at once."  Lemmor replied and immediately began trawling through paper to find the names of the top Equestrian scholars. It was only after Celestia left the room that he realized the mammoth task ahead. He sat back in his seat and sighed before pouring himself a shot of Equestrian Whiskey.

"What in Equestria is going on?" he muttered as he began to plan his first course of action. At last, an idea appeared in his brain. He got up and moved over to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room and pulled a file out that read,

"Top Graduates from all Equestrian Universities from 1935 to 2010."

His eyes began scanning the lists until he finally narrowed his list down to four ponies. He noted down their names and basic details,

"Twilight Sparkle. Graduated Canterlot University in 2008 with degree in Advanced Mathematics.

  Night Glider. Graduated from Manehattan University with degree in Physics.

  Doctor Whooves (not real name). Graduated from Manehattan with degree in History.

  Octavian. Graduated from Stalliongrald University with degree in Magic."

He looked at the list before him. It was a short list. It would take more but in the meantime it would do.

"Time to truly test them then." he thought putting quill to paper as he began to write out his orders.