Author's Note
This is very random.
You have been warned.
Nuclear Meltdown
She couldn't know – not yet – it was impossible to know, considering she was surely the first pony to synthetize it.
Twilight observed with the keen eyes of a science hawk, that floating bubble of something, spinning in a seemingly lazy rotation. That little thing inside was the prime result of her latest researches, it was a very unstable element that she carefully coated with a magic shield, as a little snow-globe wrapped in cellophane. It was a gift to herself, surely.
The alicorn was very interested in the various ways that chemical elements could combine to form new molecules, shapes, things. Chemistry had this slightly divine aura for her – in her mind only – and she struggled every single day to unlock one by one the tiniest secrets of that sacred science. The laboratory was her church, and every new atom was a key piece of a god in debris.
Twilight carried a clipboard as she paced around the circular stone pedestal, over which floated that dim bubble.
She sketched quick notes with a floating pen, turned her head to the side, observed the unknown material from many perspectives. It was hard to know what it was, there was no certainty about anything – except that such an element could be dangerous – but Twilight Sparkle was sure she had dealt with far too dangerous substances and circumstances, to bother about the potential hazards of her little experiment.
What could go wrong?
Nothing – she said to herself, writing down the last notes and comments of the night.
It still needed a name; Twilight wouldn't surrender to sleep before naming it, she never surrendered to sleep before finishing a thing.
"Astatine!" She shouted, ignoring the other ponies that were probably in their deepest dreams a few floors above. "From the Greek, Astatos. Unstable." Her pen scribbled it down on the paper.
The bubble sparkled, as if accepting the baptism name. It stole a smile from Twilight's neutral expression.
She sighed, resting the clipboard on the counter and turning around on her hooves to look at her newest element one more time.
"I'll see you tomorrow." She blinked – a blink that would melt any stallion's heart.
It wasn't the case.
That blink would only lead to a nuclear meltdown.
The next morning, Ponyville awoke surrounded by stripped yellow and black fences, plastic walls, and an army of masked soldiers with their beeping Geiger counters. The center was under a dome of bluish magic and nopony could go in or out.
There was silent fear and noisy fear. Ponies were locking themselves inside their houses, slamming doors, blocking windows with furniture; it was a naive sort of panic. As if those thin wooden walls could protect them from the radioactive air, that leaked all night long from the basement of the friendship castle, and left a weird metallic taste under their tongues.
What was in the wind?
Nopony knew. The guards in gas masks hadn't a single idea, their superiors knew it was radiation, and Princess Celestia suspected it was something worse. In any case, the substance itself was unknown and magic wasn't very good at containing its effects.
Only Twilight could say for sure what was that. But Twilight was sealed inside the castle in a catatonic state, and if it wasn't for Spike – whose organism felt absolutely nothing abnormal – not even the princess would've known how to proceed.
"How is she?" Celestia asked, looking at the dragon through the glassy magic barrier dividing the town.
"Well..." He rubbed his scaly neck. "I c-can't say for sure... I mean--"
"Spike." Celestia raised her brow.
"She has three pairs of wings, two tails, an additional horn-thingy behind each ear, and it's glowing in a very, very odd color." He burned the words out, literally, with a burp and a green flame at the end of the sentence.
Celestia's hoof trailed down her face.
"Anything else I should know?" She inquired with worry.
"Oh – yes, nearly forgot – The thing is called Asta... Astatee... Astatine!"
"Have you seen it?"
"Not really." Spike flinched. "I think she ate it." The dragon suppressed a chuckle."Something about protecting the world and absorbing its powers."
It was disastrous, but Spike couldn't help but laugh at Twilight's insanity. Nonsense it could be, but Twilight ate the Astatine sample anyway.
"I'm glad you've sent me the letter." Celestia murmured, casting a protective spell around her body, and walking into the dome. "That'll be the last time Sparkle will be playing with her chemistry set."
Spike followed the princess, as she muttered stuff to herself.
"First the methamphetamine, now this!"
'Dear Astatine, I carved my deathbed with my sins.
Yes I'm astatine, I'll live and die in insanity.'
That wicked tune echoed through the halls. It gave them the creeps.
"Gosh, she does sounds insane." Spike muttered.
Not only she sounded insane; the amount of Astatine she ate apparently wasn't enough to kill her, and for reasons still unknown, the instability of the element was mitigated by her alicorn body structure. The radioactivity leakage was contained – inside of her. However, fatal or not, it was more than enough to mess with her mental functions, among other things...
"Twilight Sparkle!" Celestia yelled. Stomping a hoof on the stone floor. The bizarre melody came to a halt. "I'm going down."
With the tip of her hoof she pushed the basement door open. It was unlocked, and a hazy atmosphere of purplish vapors escaped from the cracks, up the stairs.
The princess took a deep breath inside her bubble, and cleared her way down the stairs and into the laboratory-turned basement. The purple haze had a mixed density, concentrating in a few specific places, dissipating in others, the patterns followed with accuracy the places Twilight had passed, it remained behind like a ghost of her presence.
Spike walked around the laboratory as if breathing that atmosphere of deadly fumes was part of his daily activities. The advantages of being a dragon.
"It smells like molten silverware." Spike said.
"It smells like trouble." Celestia noted. "How do you even know what molten silverware smells like?" She tried to conceive such a smell.
"Ah... Uh... Well, It sort of happe–"
"Welcome, princess!" A bizarrely charged voice came from the densest part of the haze. "Welcome."
"Twilight, what did you–"
"We saved the world."
From the purple depths emerged a being so mutated and odd, that the Equestrian literature lacked words to describe it in all its nuances. Twilight, or what remained of her physical self, had absorbed all of the Astatine, and its properties, in a way that would impress Discord himself.
Celestia gasped at the sight.
Unstable, as the element itself, Twilight Sparkle had become a glitch.
"We?" Celestia inquired.
"Yes. The Astatine and I." She said.
Twilight was covered in what seemed to be the incarnated visions of an acid trip gone terribly wrong.
"My dear student... You need to come with us."
"It's too late, Princess. I've seen too much..."
Spike suppressed a laugh.
"Twilight, you're hallucinating. Your cells absorbed whatever you created – it may have saved the world, who knows – but it's not saving you. You need help." Celestia stated, observing with worry the bizarre sequence of tones that replaced Twilight's lavender coat.
"I brought it from the future. Astatine; technically it hasn't been created yet. A bomb, I must destroy it, before they detonate it."
"No Twilight, you are coming with me at this very moment." Celestia stomped a hoof again, calling the guards at the entrance "You had enough of this."
Twilight panicked at the thought of being dragged away from her Astatine. No, they couldn't. Not now.
"You don't understand– The year... 2017. The humans they–"
"Hyu– What?" The princess frowned. She heard that word before, but... Where?
"Equestria has a president, we are toys, they walk on two legs and... and..." Twilight curled herself in a corner, muttering things to herself.
"This makes no sense! Guards, take her, quick! To Canterlot." The two masked unicorns nodded, grabbing Twilight with a spell.
"You're making a huge mistake! Astatine will evaporate from me, but not from the future."
Poor thing...
Celestia thought, caressing twilight in the head as she was carried away.
"It will be okay, Twilight." She murmured.
"No, it won't!" She screamed. "The astatine bomb– Donald Trump– internet! Comic sans!"
"The future it's fucking lit, and..."
"A E S T H E T I C"
