“This is where you found me?” Sweetie asked in amazement as Rarity ventured further into the cave. “You’re certain?”

“Absolutely!” Rarity said with equal awe. “I was seeing if there were any traces of gems, then I just got curious as to how deep this cavern went.”

The unicorn gestured for her friends to follow as she continued into the darkness, stopping when the cave opened up into a modestly sized chamber.

“Right here, yes, right there in the center is where you were standing.” Rarity said, pointing to a spot illuminated by a small shaft of sunlight shining through a hole in the chamber’s roof. Sweetie stared at it as the lights across her body blinked in a random and confused manner. Next to her, Spike arched an eyebrow as he surveyed the chambers very plain and unremarkable features.

“So, the Cutie Map summoned us here to check out the place of Sweetie’s birth?” He asked. “I mean, that’s interesting, just… I was expecting something a little more… uh… fancy, I guess?”

Sweetie sighed then smiled at her dragon.

“Well, I don’t know if this really qualifies as the place of my birth. I wasn’t active at the time, not until Daddy switched me on once Rarity brought me to our home.” She explained.

“Indeed. I thought you were a statue at first, or possibly a cute doll someone had lost. You were just standing there, so small and pretty… though quite dusty too.” Rarity added with a hint of nostalgia. “I thought I should at least take you back and clean you up. Let your foalish beauty shine unmarred.”

Sweetie turned to her sister, and felt her face heat up again as Rarity gave her a loving smile. Overhead, Rainbow Dash did a quick circle of the chamber and furrowed her brow.

“Yeah, adorable as that is, it does bring up the question of who the heck just abandons a foal, robot or not, in a random cave in the middle of nowhere.” She said.

“Well, it seems that’s what we’re here to find out.” Twilight replied as she scanned the rock face with her horn. “To start with, Rarity, you said Sweetie was covered in dust when you found her? Like she’d been here for quite a while?”

Rarity nodded.

“It was quite dreadfully filthy. Indeed, it still is.” The unicorn scowled. “Not much has changed since I was last here.”

Twilight hummed as she walked around the circumference of the chamber, slowly running her scanning beam across the walls and the floor.

“So there’s no hoofprints, or signs that anypony else was here before or after you, could that mean...”

The alicorn closed her eyes and made her beam wider. She swept it up and down through the air, then from side to side.

“Ngh… wait… it’s faint, but...”

Twilight focused harder, gritting her teeth as she searched with her magic for something only she could apparently detect.

“So faint… so long ago… ugh...”

She finally shut off her horn and sat down.

“There’s a very small trace of magical residue… like from a spell. Only it’s been here so long and is so badly degraded it’s almost impossible for me to determine what kind...” The alicorn groaned while rubbing her head. “However, if we’re to run with the assumption that Rarity was the only one to have come here… yet Sweetie somehow ended up in this chamber before she found it… I wonder...”

Twilight looked to the robot, narrowing her eyes as an idea slowly took root.

“Sweetie, could you help conduct a quick test?” She asked while standing up again.

“Sure, what do you need?” Sweetie replied. Twilight gestured to the spot in the small pillar of light.

“Scan that area for a teleportation spell. Admittedly, this is jumping to a conclusion, but the evidence points towards that being the only means by which you could’ve ended up in this cave.” The alicorn explained.

Sweetie nodded and cast her own cone of light from her horn, slowly sweeping it across the center of the room. Her eyes slowly dilated as she picked up the same faint signature Twilight had, only with her machine abilities she was able to determine aspects about it the alicorn wasn’t able to purely with magic.

“I.... yeah… I think you’re right, Twilight. It’s slightly more concentrated here, just a little bit more than around the walls...” Sweetie replied.

“As I expected. Now the question is...” Twilight walked over to stand next to the robot. “What if we try to track it? Cast a reversal spell and see if it teleports us back to wherever its point of origin is?”

The alicorn took a deep breath and channeled the spell through her horn. A bubble of lavender bloomed and floated off from the tip, dancing down through the air to rest at the spot illuminated by the light overhead. It then began to grow in size, while on the floor around it, several other lights of varying colors began to flash into existence.

“Whoah… uh… okay, that’s something.” Spike said as the ball of Twilight’s magic slowly grew to encompass its brethren of illumination...

Whereupon it proceeded to pop like a balloon and went out, as did the light around it.

An awkward silence fell as the cave was returned to its dormant, darkened state.

“Er… well, it WAS something at least.” Spike added. “What happened?”

Twilight snorted in disappointment.

“I guess there wasn’t enough residue remaining for the spell to track. Darn.” She bleated. Sweetie furrowed her brow and stepped into the pillar of light.

“Well, hold on. If that was the means by which I ended up in here, then what if I try something...”

The cone of neon blue stretched out from her horn, sweeping across the floor again.

“I think I can match the frequency if I just concentrate...”

The robot bowed her head as her light rotated around her body. To the amazement of the other ponies, the other lights on the floor began to blink again.

-Yeah… ngh… it’s like… ngh… trying to remember a math equation… or no, a code!- The robot said, her voice slowly gaining a metallic edge. -Ngh… scanning… scanning… locking coordinates...-

The lights around Sweetie began to flash at a faster rate as she closed her eyes.

“Okay, now this is getting a little freaky.” Rainbow Dash said.

“Not to mention itchy.” Applejack rubbed at her neck in bother. “Mah fur’s standing on end… like when a lightnin’ storm is about to...”

CRRRAAAAAAACK!

The ponies jumped back as a jagged bolt of ionized lightning split across the cave, making it shudder with the ensuing thunderous report.

“Eeep! Yeah… like that.” Applejack concluded as Sweetie’s eyes snapped open.

-Locked. Destination confirmed. Ngh… initiating teleportation in 20 seconds. All personnel please step inside the designated area.- She stated mechanically. Another peal of lightning flashed through the cave as the now swirling rainbow of lights shot up from the floor to form a larger column around Sweetie.

“Uh… should we be doing something?” Spike asked in concern. Twilight shook off her momentary surprise and cleared her throat.

“That… depends. I guess if we want to follow Sweetie, we better do as she says. If you want to play it safe though, just stay where you are.” She said while stepping into the column. “Personally, I’m now curious as to what’s going to happen.”

Spike balled his fists and ran in after the alicorn.

“Well, I sure as heck ain’t staying behind if my marefriend is about to vanish to parts unknown!” He declared.

“I second that. Where my sister goes, I go!” Rarity joined her friends, and her mane promptly frizzed out from the growing electric charge around the cavern.

“Erm...in hindsight perhaps I should’ve brought my mane curlers and brush...” She lamented.

“Oh! Right here!”

Pinkie ran into the technicolor vortex next, pulling the requested grooming supplies out of her own mane.

“You ask, I deliver!”

Fluttershy bit her lip as the light show grew increasingly violent around her friends. On one hoof she didn’t quite feel the same motivation to throw herself into who knows what kind of danger...

...then again, on the other there was lightning now striking the ground all around her, and none inside the vortex where her friends were.

“Wait… I’m coming!” The pegasus flew into the storm.

Sweetie rotated her head left and right, as if tracking the number of other ponies she would be taking with her.

-Teleportation in 10 seconds. All personnel please step inside the designated area.- She repeated flatly.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash looked at each other.

“Well I didn’t have anything else planned today.” The blue pegasus intoned.

“So long as Ah get back in time to let the cows out to pasture...” The farm pony replied. “Eh, let’s see where we end up.”

They leaped into the cyclone of color, with the repeated lightning strikes closing in behind them.

-Teleportation in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1. All personnel brace for impact.- Sweetie stated as the storm engulfed everyone, and in a flash they vanished from the cave.

***

At an undefined point in time, in an undefined region of reality, Spike, Sweetie and their friends hit bottom. The immediate sensation was of being zapped by several million volts, enough to toss them into the air and let them crash back onto the ground again at high speeds.

As the resulting flash of light faded away, eight bodies groaned and pulled themselves up from their crash arrival, finding themselves in a much larger and far darker area.

“Oooogh… ow. Okay, so when you said brace for impact, that wasn’t a figure of speech.” Spike muttered as he got back to his feet and cracked his back. Sweetie’s lights flickered back into life as she shook her head.

“When I said… wait, I said what?” She asked, looking at her surroundings in shock. “Uh… what just happened? I… I think I had a momentary blackout, or something.”

Twilight activated her horn and cast its light into the darkness.

“I can only theorise that you must have activated some dormant sub-routine in your system trying to track the residue. Something that let you home in on the means by which you were sent to that cave from… well, here I guess. Wherever ‘here’ is.”

The alicorn whistled as her light fell on a wall of finely polished metal. She tracked upwards, finding it rose to a ceiling plated in the same manner, and a wall on the opposite side with the same flawlessly clean shine.

“Well, this is fascinating.” Twilight said with growing excitement as her light revealed some manner of high tech control console mounted on the far wall. “Seems we’re in some sort of highly advanced underground bunker, or possibly a lab… somewhere where… AIEEE!”

Everyone turned as the alicorn took several steps forward, and promptly dropped out of sight.

“Twilight!” Spike ran over as there came the sound of Twilight rolling down an unseen decline. The dragon promptly stopped as he felt his toe claws encounter the edge of a platform, and he beheld the body of his friend lying about a foot or so below where she’d been standing.

“Twilight, are you okay?”

The alicorn coughed and got back up.

“Uh, yeah. Fine. Should’ve watched my step, I guess.” She turned her light to see a short row of metal stairs leading up to the platform her friends were standing on.

“Oh… oooooh!” Twilight’s tone went from pained back to excited as she studied the platform, noticing it had a circle of lights mounted on its base that matched the colors which had manifested around everyone in the cave. She raised her horn and revealed a pair of curved pylons arching over the platform, both of which had thin plumes of smoke rising from them as if they’d just gotten fried by some manner of high voltage.

“So that’s it! This is indeed some sort of matter teleportation apparatus, that Sweetie was able to remotely activate!” She declared, to several confused looks.

“You can do that?” Spike asked his marefriend. She blinked and cocked her head.

“Uh… same question, Twilight, I can do that?” She asked as the alicorn turned to survey the rest of the darkened chamber. “I mean, well, evidently I can, just how?”

Twilight’s eyes sparkled like her namesake as she illuminated other bits of extremely advanced and alien looking technology all around her.

“I don’t know, but I bet we’ll find out if we do some exploring. Come on!”

She trotted away into the darkness. Sweetie switched on her night vision and felt a strange spark shoot through her systems as she beheld the room in much clearer detail. It held all the traits of a futuristic subterranean complex, though she could only guess at its purpose, given everything looked so foreign and advanced it was impossible to tell what anything did.

“So… this place is what? Where I was created? Where I was stored? Are we even still in Equestria? Heck are we even still in the present?” She asked with growing apprehension.

A warm hoof gently rested upon her shoulder.

“It’s where we’re going to finally get some answers, together.” Rarity said softly while brushing the frizzes out of her mane. “I know it’s a shock, believe me, we’re all feeling the same way. But it seems some power that be has decided since you’re letting everyone see the real you, then you should know everything there is to know about who you are.”

“Exactly, I understand you’re nervous, Sweetie, but please take heart that we’re here, and I’m here beside you for this unexpectedly monumental discovery.” Spike soothed, while taking his beloved robot’s hoof. “Now, let’s do as Twilight said, and explore this place together!”

Author's Note

So thought I should at least post a short snippet of what I've got done next, even if I'm still debating on the exact details of Sweetie's origins. I'm set on her being built elsewhere and sent to Equestria, but as to why, well I have at least three possibilities, and frankly I kind of like all of them.

At the same time, I'm also kinda curious what might happen if I just leave this here and let the readers form their own theories. Who knows, one of you might suggest something that changes my mind.

Read, enjoy, and please discuss!