S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Discordant Emissions

Lab X-16

I woke again in the morning, it was foggy this morning and I couldn’t see too much further than our camp. I had decided to go back to sleep then Coach’s shift at guard for the night ended and Stone took up his position, rousing the others from their sleep and seemingly the rest of The Zone, as I could now hear plenty of noises coming from around the general area, including the sound of rifles being fired, after all, it just wouldn’t be a morning in The Zone if there weren’t ponies trying to kill each other. When I had properly gathered my bearings I noticed Sweet, Night, and Swift were in the process of stoking the fire that Coach had lit to keep himself warm and were also preparing to cook some breakfast.

“Morning girls” I said getting up from my spot on the ground, yawning as I walked towards them.

“Morning Middy, nice to see you conscious again” said Swift, shifting to her side to make room for me around the fire. I noticed she had bandages wrapped around most of her body, her injuries seemed considerably more dire than I had originally thought, whoever it was that got the counter-strike in was quite powerful.

“You recovered from magical exhaustion pretty quickly, that spell felt like it used a lot of magical energy, and in comparison to your stores you shouldn’t be able to cast that spell safely. To use it, not only in a state where you already had partially depleted stores and not die from it draining your life to make up the rest of the cost is extraordinary.” Said Sweet, giving me a look over from her spot around the campfire with her magical spell, “And yet now, normally after complete exhaustion and then some, it would take days for you to come out of a coma, let alone be up and moving and also have almost half your magic stores back in as little as a day and a half. You sure are a weird unicorn Middy, I don’t suppose you could teach me your secrets could you?”

“I don’t know how to explain how I’m awake and have my stores at half capacity, but the spell is different; while normally using that spell would kill me by draining all of my magical energy and life force to make up the rest of the payment for the casting, my runes are what prevents that. Much like a philosopher’s stone to alchemy, my runes negate any extra magical energy while also enhancing spells, but it still needs enough of my magical energy to cast, so I can’t keep casting spells with my runes after complete magical exhaustion or my spells may fizzle if there isn’t enough to fully cast only partially, or it will break down completely and I’ll be hit by the feedback.” I said to the unicorn who was still studying my body with her spell, trying to find the mystery of my magical energy recovery. “As for teaching you how you can use big spells that you normally wouldn’t, you need an affinity for runes to be able to use them properly, otherwise they’ll kill you just as effectively, but we can give it a shot another day if you’d like.”

“That would be nice.” Said Sweet, releasing me from her spell, unable to find what the source of my recovery could be. “I’d like to be able to use them to enhance my spells as well as maybe use a few large spells that can heal more than just one pony, if I’m shown to have an affinity can I study under you Middy?”

“Of course you can, but only if you have the affinity, I don’t want to be responsible for you killing yourself by teaching you how to use runes” I replied to Sweet Tree. “How are you Swift, Coach told me you got a nasty slash from one of the bandits during the fight, and I noticed how much bandaging you needed” I turned my attention to the pegasus.

“I don’t know how but the leader of that group of bandits somehow parried my strike, then disarmed me and got a good shot at me with my own knife; good thing I decided not to use the poisoned blade so that I wouldn’t accidentally kill anypony. It was one of the best parries I’ve ever seen, even more so that it was against a strike as fast as mine. As for the severity it wasn’t that bad it was just long and a little deep, Night just went overboard on the bandages, even suggesting that we throw some over the bandit base we passed as a prank.” She replied, Night just laughed and smiled when the idea of covering a bandit base with bandages was brought up.

“Actually because she used so many bandages we’re starting to get kind of low in supply of them, know if there’s anywhere in Yantar where we can restock on supplies?” Sweet asked me while sorting through her bag, taking stock of our supplies.

“I agree I need some ammo” said Coach, hefting his rifle back around over his shoulder after it had slipped down and was knocking against his legs.

“We haven’t shot anything since last night when that bloodsucker strayed over to our camp, you can’t have used that much ammo” said Swift, checking her own stockpiles of ammo.

“Uhh... I may have kinda accidentally dropped some while running away from the bandits” said Coach with a slight shuffle of his hooves.

“Aw well, last I was here there was a small settlement, but this place is usually filled with zombies, I’m not even sure where they keep coming from” I said to them, I took out my PDA and checked the map, the region hadn’t changed since I was last here, I don’t think the few ponies that reside here would have moved, nor would the zombies have moved against them, after all they don’t seem to be capable of conscious thought anymore. The ponies that had lived in Yantar when I was first here were a peculiar group of scientists that were contracted by the military to study the effects of a particular emission of something that effects the minds of ponies that go near the laboratory in the southern part of the area. They called these emissions psy-emissions and said they emit psy-waves, probably for a lack of a better description other than it does psychic stuff; they also theorised these waves caused the zombies to act the way they do, as they are unsure of their source, and whether they were ponies who walked too close, or had died too close.

“Hey, the fogs cleared up now, and I can see a bunker with some ponies around it down there” said Night, looking towards Yantar through her binoculars; she had spotted the scientists’ bunker. The scientists lived in a bunker that the military had flown into The Zone, although they hadn’t left any soldiers to protect it and had paid a few loners to guard the scientists while they worked.

“Good, that’s where we’re heading, I wasn’t sure if they were still going to be here, they should have made advances in their work since I was last here. Aw well, maybe they have a new contract and are studying something else now.” I said, standing up and pouring some water onto the campfire, which caused the others also to stand before heading down the hill to go down to the scientists’ bunker.

“Look alive men, seems like we’ve got some bambis coming” said one of the mercenaries under the employ of the military to defend the scientists from the dangers of The Zone.

“Bambis? What?” I asked as we drew closer to the mercenaries and the bunker they were protecting, they all kept their rifles pointed at us, not trusting that we wouldn’t try something against them.

“It’s just something that I call the new people to The Zone, what are you doing here and not closer to the cordon?” the leader of the mercenary group asked us as more of his group came out from around the other side of the bunker, and even a couple from inside.

“Midnight? Midnight Shade?” a voice asked.

“Who’s asking?” I asked nopony in particular, who here would know me; everypony I knew from The Zone would most likely not still be here, if not dead.

“I am, have you already forgotten me?” said a yellow pegasus stallion, with a sun rise for his cutie mark, who had come out of the bunker and was standing on the walkway leading around the top of the bunker. I realised that this pony was my friend from before I had been locked up in a cell, his name was Day Break, and he was the best pony to have at your side if everything went wrong.

“Wow Day, gone a long way from roaming The Zone killing bandits, soldiers and mutants alike to being a guard for the military. How have you been since I left to get out of here?” I asked my old friend.

“Yeah, I got picked up by a patrol, I was given the choice of going to their jail for five years, or come here and guard these scientists til they finished their work. Although speaking of you leaving, what are you doing back here after all that work you put into getting out of The Zone, I wasn’t expecting to ever see you again. I had heard news of Spectre causing all kinds of trouble throughout The Zone, killing ponies without any kind of discrimination, even killing the people who healed his wounds after he got munched on by mutants. I hope that wasn’t you, otherwise I’d have to shoot you where you stand, the spectre I’ve heard about isn’t like the one I know, after all, we hunted the ponies that preyed on the unknowing, the kind of ponies this Spectre is.” Day Break said to me, the mercenaries around him retraining their guns on me when he talked about possibly shooting me after they had lowered them when they realised that we knew each other.

“No that isn’t me, don’t worry, we’re doing the same old thing that we used to, hunting the notorious bandits of The Zone, with Spectre being our target. As for why I’m back here, I got an offer from the military like you, but mine came after a two year sentence, ‘to discover, and possibly rectify, the cause of expanding emissions’. We think Spectre has done something in the centre of The Zone to cause it, so we’re going to check it out and I personally want to see who’s putting my name to shame.” I told him; causing the mercenaries to lower their guns, wouldn’t be good for them to shoot somepony in the employ of the ponies who write their cheques.

“Sounds like a good time to me, I’d love to join you on your journey but, I’m not allowed to leave until the scientists finish their research. I’m sure they’ll let you come in and stay if you need to.” he said to me, opening the airlock for me and my party before walking back inside the bunker from his spot on the walkway around the top of the bunker. “Oh and by the way, come in one at a time, the airlock isn’t big enough for all of you.”

“Let’s see what these scientists have to trade, and I’d like to see what they’re researching if they haven’t finished it in all these years.” I said to the others who had sat back and watched the exchange between me and Day Break, I saw they had questions they wanted to ask me, but none of them voiced their concerns at the moment and would probably wait for another time.

The scientists pointed us to their resident gunsmith and trader for all of our needs for supplies, and also repaired our weapons free of charge.

“So you’re the friend that Day Break told us about when we asked him about his experience in The Zone. My name is Doctor Shield, I make gear to protect ponies from the various hazards of the world; I used to design the armour used by the royal guards to defend them in the event of an invasion. Now I design armour for use in The Zone, one day hopefully creating a suit that protects the wearer from all harm, including the anomalies in The Zone, as well as the brain scorcher that surrounds the lab here and we suspect may surround the reactor in the power plant.” said one of the scientists after we had finished trading with the gunsmith who introduced himself as Hammer Pin.

“Yeah that’s me alright, he told you about our bandit hunting and all that or something?” I asked him; his understudies that were actually doing the research while the doctor talked to us just watched the exchange while completing their work at the same time.

“Yes we heard all about that, although we had known about that since before he came here, you two were an infamous pair, every bandit knew your name, and it was great to see them actually fear somepony rather than just continuing their pillaging of anything that moved. Pity they heard that you had both been picked up by the military, it took that fear away from them and they just got progressively worse.” he said. I was embarrassed by him bringing up our reputation as bandit hunters and how we had killed enough to be known all throughout The Zone.

“So, how’s your research into your armour going? I know that you guys have been here a while, surely you must be nearing completion?” I asked the doctor, maybe I’d be able to test it for them... actually on second thoughts, walking into anomalous fields to test something that may not work sounded like a terrible idea.

“Yeah... about that... we’ve only gotten a prototype for protection against the brain scorcher at the moment, but we have a pretty good idea for how we’ll implement it all, particularly the protection against arms. I do have to admit that our idea isn’t really that intuitive, but the systems required to get it to work correctly are going to be pretty complex. In short our idea is to make a suit rather like the idea of a tank, essentially a pony covered in steel, requiring hydraulics to operate it, and inbuilt life support systems and such to heal the operator in the event they are injured somehow. We’ll call it an exoskeleton.” He said, excited by describing the idea for the exoskeleton to me.

“Sounds interesting, wouldn’t they be pretty expensive to make on a large scale?” I asked, intrigued by the idea of the exoskeleton.

“Maybe, but we have plenty of bits at our disposal, after all, we are being contracted by the military to make these.” He replied. It made sense that the military would cover any costs, and therefore the government would use the taxpayer’s money for it, but I guess it would mostly come from the treasury as the princesses amassed vast amounts of money to cover the costs of anything without having to take money from the citizens.

“So, tell me about everything I’m missing by picking this rather than prison” said a voice behind me, I turned to find Day Break was seated on a couch in the lounge that was opposite the gunsmiths’ workshop. I got the impression he had been sitting there for a little while now, he never was one for interrupting conversations.

“Absolutely nothing, quite a terrible place, the guards tend to take it upon themselves to beat up the inmates” I said, walking over to the lounge where the others were also seated, I took a seat next to Day Break who shifted to make room for me.

“That bad huh?” was his reply

“Yeah, nothing really interesting has happened since I left to get out of this place except for my little mission that I have now, and these guys.” I said to him, motioning to the other five members of our small group when I brought them up.

“What exactly is your mission though?”

“It’s like I told you, to discover and if possible fix the cause of the emissions expanding in size.”

“And you just think this Spectre guy has something to do with it right?”

“Yeah, apparently he’s been pretty deep in The Zone recently, and it coincides with the increase of the emissions radius, so it seems reasonable to assume he did something he shouldn’t have.”

“That and everypony wants him dead, even the bandits think he’s going too far, now that’s saying something about the guy.”

“Does everypony include you Day Break?” asked somepony else from back over where I was talking to the doctor. “I am Doctor Wave, I’m the head researcher here, and therefore everyone answers to me, I’m also in charge of the production of the pieces of our armour that will protect against anomalies.”

“Of course I want a piece of this guy, not only does he steal my friend’s name to perform all of these horrible tasks, but also to restore the old glory of our names as the best hunters in The Zone.” said Day to his boss.

“Ok then, I have a proposition for you then Midnight Shade, test our helmet, and if it works properly, disable the brain scorcher within X-16, the laboratory to the south. After you do that you can take Day Break with you, as long as you promise to also bring back any documents you find in there and any other labs you come across in your journey.” He said to me.

It really wasn’t that hard of a decision, even though it had been years since I had last seen Day Break he was still one of my best friends and I trusted him with my life without a second thought. I didn’t doubt my other friends’ abilities or anything, but my history with Day just made him something that they couldn’t yet be, a reminder of the old days.

Day had also been a worker at the ENFPP, while I didn’t know him then we had crossed paths a couple times, and when we crossed paths in The Zone later and recognised each other we got talking about what we were doing back here; me for my memories and photos, him because when ponies found out he had been here when the meltdown occurred they treated him as if he was carrying a contagious disease. I had also experienced ponies treating me like a zebra in older times but for the most part the ponies in Fillydelphia either treated everypony like that or just didn’t care because they were practically breathing smoke from the factories rather than air.

I stopped moving and took cover near an abandoned wagon as I heard a noise from the hill I was about to crest, it sounded like a zombie or two were on the other side of the rise. This had been the seventh encounter of the other local inhabitants of Yantar since I had left the bunker, while they had once been stalkers and even a couple military ponies, now they didn’t have any allegiances to anypony but each other. I crept up to the top of the hill as quietly as possible, how visible I was in this position didn’t matter. The zombies seemed to lack the eyesight they used to have before being turned into what they are now by the magical radiation, they more than made up for it with their hearing, able to hear the slightest of sounds that even the most alert bandit would miss. There were indeed two zombies a little bit down the other side of the hill, which really wasn’t much of a hill, the zombies, if they were in the right state of mind, would probably tear each other apart as one was a stalker and the other a bandit. Testing to see if my telekinesis had returned to normal strength, I tried to raise my rifle, and easily did so, taking aim at the bandit of the pair as that shotgun he held would tear me to pieces if he hit me with it, where as the stalker seemed to only have an SMG. I planned to spend two shots on each of the zombies, first to kill them, the second to make sure they don’t get up again, as I prepared to fire I noticed one of the bandit’s ears twitch, he had heard something, but rather than turning towards me as I expected him to do, he turned towards the entrance to the lab that I was heading for.  The pair of zombies started to stumble towards the lab, along with a few other zombies that had been standing around waiting for someone to approach them.

“What the fuck?” I had nearly said aloud but caught myself in time for it to be only a thought, either something had caught the attention of all these zombies or somepony was controlling them, I was leaning more towards the later otherwise the zombies would be making more of an effort to move towards a sound.

“Midnight, we’re detecting a rather high psy-wave reading, are you in the lab now then?” asked a voice that I guessed was Dr Shield, something was interfering with the signal and had distorted the voice.

“Not yet, I’m about 150 meters away from the entrance” I replied.

“Odd, we don’t usually get these sorts of readings until we’re practically inside.” The voice replied. This was worrying, there was something odd going on inside the lab and maybe the source of the psy-waves had caught wind of what I was planning, maybe even drawing it from my thoughts. That doesn’t explain why the zombies are all converging on the lab though, I think I might have a look around for some documentation of what we were doing here and see if it will give any insight, I’m sure the doctors won’t mind if I read any documents before giving them over.

Celestia damned zombies, after I had entered the lab it hadn’t taken long before I had to start shooting through the undead guards of the complex. I thought I had brought plenty of ammo with me but it seems I was wrong, and now I was running low, either I needed to get lucky that somepony had left some pretty uncommon bullets lying around somewhere or I would have to start using one of the many guns that had been dropped by the zombies I had killed again so far. While I could use them and would most likely be familiar with most of them, they’re all in disrepair and lacked the stopping power of my rifle, but at least there would be plenty of ammo from the other zombies carrying similar guns.

“We- close- to the source- Midnight.” A garbled voice said between bursts of static, I had just finished clearing a small squad of zombies from the office I was now searching; I reloaded my AK-74u that I had picked up off the body of a zombie, now entirely out of ammo for my rifle. I had mended one of the wounds, but my skills with sweets spell may have done just as much damage as healing to a wound in my flank so I decided to bandage the other two and let sweet deal with them rather than trying again, after using it the first time I had noticed a distinctive lack of power and a little difficulty during the casting, it seems I hadn’t actually fully regained my magic. My search of the office yielded two documents, a status report to the mother company of this lab, and a journal entry from a lead researcher; I decided to read the report first.

We have made significant progress on the single unity project; we have discovered that the central unit performs best when there’s an even balance of races in the composition, when there’s a dominant species the unit tends to take on particular aspects of the race of the dominating donor. There have been proposals for three extra units to be made, each one entirely composed of a different race to the other two, for use in other sectors, particularly agriculture and technology for the earth unit, magic for the unicorn unit, and combat for the pegasai unit. Although for our purpose I doubt we will have any use for these, we aren’t trying to make a large scale mass produced product here. We will be ready for production by the end of the week, we will send more details when we think we are ready but for now there isn’t much more to report that we didn’t report last time.

I was beginning to wonder about what they were trying to produce here but the report didn’t contain much information on the project itself, only about what stage the researchers thought they were at with it. I hoped the journal entry would hold more answers for me.

Everything is still in test stages at the moment, but so far the project has been returning positive results and with the inspection next week we might be moving into production stage soon, hopefully the inspector is the one we chose or we’ll be in big trouble and maybe even Celestia herself will come to deal with us. I don’t like the thought of being on the moon for the rest of eternity. We are also having problems with supply, apparently word spreads about missing ponies pretty quickly, hopefully with the end of the next test we will have all the information we need of the characteristics of a pony that made them most compatible with the unit. If we have to keep testing, in a few weeks there won’t be any new places to make into the unit, it would only be a matter of time until the disappearances get tied with the company and therefore us. We are also in need of a new neurologist apparently; Dr Synapse decided that he couldn’t take any more innocent pony lives to be harvested and made into the units and is now on a permanent vacation according to management. At least now we all knew what happened to ponies that want out, although it was to be expected, our use of pony brains to make a supercomputer capable of running everything by itself is apparently highly illegal, no matter how useful our advancements may be to all ponykind, and would earn us all a ‘banishment’ that we would never return from, even after a thousand years.

This is what ponies thought the next step for advancing technology would be? That it was fine to kill innocent ponies to make supercomputers to do our jobs for us? But then... Hadn’t I also taken lives before? While in my opinion they weren’t innocent but I didn’t always know for sure, does that make me just as bad as these researchers? No, no I was even worse, these researchers were trying to improve the quality of life of the nation; I had shot ponies who were in the wrong place at the wrong time because I believed it would improve the quality of life in The Zone. I feel as if I shouldn’t even call myself a pony anymore, no, from this day on I will no longer call myself a pony, I’m just a stalker; maybe even just a bandit, but I will call myself a stalker. Not wanting to read any other entries I decided that I should continue with my mission, I took solace in the fact that there was someone worse in The Zone than me, Spectre, I will redeem myself as a po... stalker, and kill Spectre, and him alone. Figuring out the source of the waves will lead to finding Spectre, Day would be a great help in finding Spectre, he was always a much better tracker than me.

It was a giant brain... These researchers had possibly finished their supercomputer, but the explosion from the reactor had affected it, the central processing unit, the brain, now glowed with magical energies, seemingly able to command anything in the area with the power of its thoughts. Was the collection of brains that had now formed the singular mass of tissue floating in suspension in the liquid filled column that was the centre of the room sentient? Or was this a result of the radiation and magic?

“you there, pony, why do you not bend to my will?” I heard a voice, but it didn’t sound like it came from anywhere particular, I thought that in a large room like this sounds would echo, particularly a loud voice like that. “That’s because I’m transmitting my thoughts to you, you aren’t the quickest are you?”

“You can read my thoughts? And transmit your own into mine?” I said aloud, turning towards the brain, realising that it was indeed sentient.

“Indeed, now answer the question” the voice in my head said to me “also just think about your answer, don’t speak, I don’t have ears to listen so it’s just wasted breath.”

“Oh, right, I guess my helmet stops you from controlling me then.” I replied in thought, if it couldn’t take any direct action on me and just relied on thoughts what was the brain planning to do.

“Would you kindly remove your helmet then” asked the voice, and for a moment I nearly did remove my helmet before I snapped out of it and dropped the telekinetic sheathe around the helmet. This was not good, being this close to what I guess would be the source of the waves reduced the effectiveness of the helmet, and made me vulnerable to its will.

“As you climb the stairs there will be levers, three in total, pull them within 3 minutes of each other and you will force a shutdown” A different voice screamed in my head before being replaced by the first one repeating it’s command. I was horrified, it wasn’t a collective sentience, but a collection of a few still sentient beings being dominated by a singular strong personality. This other one must of broken through for a short while to ask me to relieve them of their torment. Knowing that this pony was in need of help I was easily able to ignore the command to remove my helmet.

“You won’t succeed; I will force you to take off your helmet.” The first voice was back at full strength, he, for I felt that this one was male, knew what I intended to do and would try his hardest to stop me from enforcing a shutdown. I moved towards the central column, there was a metal staircase winding up around it, with three landings with consoles on each landing, this would be easy, I could see the levers from the base of the stairs, I would just pull them with my magic from here. Or at least I tried to, I had underestimated the will of the brain and the only magic I could gather was focused around my helmet, looks like I’m going to have to hoof it to each console.  I started up the stairs, fighting my magic trying to lift my helmet off, I reached the first landing a few seconds after starting my climb, I saw the first console and the lever labelled ‘emergency shutdown: level 1’ I readied myself, and started running up the stairs to the next level to pull the second lever.

“Emergency shutdown procedure initiated, level 1 lever  starting source, time remaining for level 2 and level 3 to be activated, three minutes” A speaker somewhere higher up in the room broadcasted, the race against the clock had begun. I ran hard, and reached the second level and lever, I had misjudged the distance to this second level and as I pulled the second lever the same broadcast system announced that I still had two minutes to pull the last lever, this would be easy. Or so I thought, I noticed while climbing that I was getting closer and closer to where the brain was suspended, and the fight against my magic was becoming a losing battle. I reached the console, I had crawled over to it from the top of the stairs the presence of the will of the dominating personality of the brain was ever present and starting to feel as if it was a physical force trying to stop me, I reached out to pull the lever.

“You will fail to stop Spectre” the brain had stopped asking me to remove my helmet for a moment, “Spectre will crush you and your friends”

“No, stop it” I responded to the brain, it’s presence and suggestions had paralysed me, still reaching for the lever to end all of the torment of the other personalities within the mixture of the brain. The brain continued to torment me with all of my secrets, feelings and horrors.

“Would you kindly remove your helmet and take a flying leap off the stairs, your wife will be waiting for you in Tartarus.” No. I had stopped myself as I stood near the edge of the stairs reaching for my helmet while also stepping towards the edge. “What? How are you able to resist me?” I stepped towards the console, without the will of the brain hindering me further. “How are you not even slightly effected anymore?”

“Nopony talks about my wife like that” I said aloud as I pulled the lever.

“Emergency shutdown protocols met, initialising shutdown” announced the loudspeaker, I looked at the console, it was stuck on displaying the counter for how long I had to pull the levers, it read 00:01.38. I had only just accomplished the shutdown in time, I doubt I would have been able to do it again, I would have ended up removing my helmet and becoming a slave to the brain.

“Heh, well done kid, I thought I had conviction but you are something else” what, this wasn’t a different voice in my head, the pony who had tried their hardest to stop me from shutting him down had given up that easily? “Kid, many others had come before you, none had ever reached the third lever, I wasn’t being seriously malicious in my intent, I was just looking for that one pony who had the unwavering conviction to push through all that I could throw at them from their psyche. I believe you will be the saviour of The Zone, don’t let your past cloud your judgement, or shape who you are now, that’s all gone, what matters now is what you do with your unwavering conviction, and killing this Spectre fellow seems to be the path for you. All I can say is that your wife was lucky to have such a loving partner, to be honest I thought you were about to fail before you turned around and just strolled up to the lever. In all seriousness though, me and my brother thank you for relieving us of our eternal tomb and for reminding us of the good days, you remind us of our friend, she was just as determined as you and lead us into some pretty hard times and places but we prevailed because of our friendship, so you should keep those friends of yours as well.”

“I... I don’t know what to say... thank you I guess” I was lost for words, these ponies, these brothers were right, I can’t let anything lead me astray from my path, no matter how much blood I had spilt before now, the rest of my path will only be coloured by the blood of Spectre. “What are your names so I can remember you and your advice and give you a proper memorial, even if it is just a personal one for me?”

“I am Straight Arrow and my brother is South Light” he replied “farewell Midnight Shade, we may meet again one day yet”

“Emergency shutdown procedure complete, shutting down” announced the loudspeakers, the lighting in the column fading into darkness, I stood and stared at the now non-functioning brains of two ponies who had given me a new outlook on life, even though it had only changed in the first place a few moments before coming across them, I was still in their debt.

“Middy, can you hear us?” a voice I recognised as Sweet’s came over the radio, of course now that the shutdown was complete the signal wouldn’t be jammed by the psy-waves.

“Yeah, I’ve got a little bit of a story to tell when I get back, I’ll be there soon” I replied, looking around the room from my vantage point I could see that there was a door opposite the one I had entered the chamber through, and through this door I could see daylight so I assumed this was an exit.

I entered the bunker and found all of my friends waiting for me, receiving a tackle that turned into hugs from both Silent Night and Sweet Tree while the others looked on with big smiles on their faces.

“When we heard that we couldn’t contact you over the radio we got so worried that something might have happened to you but we couldn’t go check because we didn’t have the protection from the waves so we had to just sit here and wait.” gushed Sweet Tree, sounding rather flustered. “But then we couldn’t detect the presence of the waves any more so we assumed that you had shut down the source so we got to the radio as quick as we could to try and get in contact then you replied and washed away all the worry, thank you for coming back Middy, I couldn’t take the loss of another friend.”

“Personally I trusted that you’d get the job done, Middy, that’s quite different from the strike fear into the heart of bandits name you used to use.” said Day Break from the back of the group, he was barely stifling a laugh, after all he was right, from being known as the bandits’ worst nightmare, Spectre, to now being called Middy was quite the contrast. “You said you had a story to tell? I suppose you mean the nature of the facility, well let’s hear what happened.”

After I had finished telling them of the details of what had happened, minus the personal details of my conversation with Straight Arrow, I got a bottle of water out of my pack and let the story sink in before waiting for reactions.

“You mean that there are ponies in this world that were making supercomputers out of ponies? And I thought the bandits were bad enough” said Coach who was the first to react.

“As to what they were planning on doing with these supercomputers, I think the answer might be in amongst all these files here, I decided to just take as much as I could but didn’t have the time to sort through it while I was there so I don’t know the details of what I brought back.” I said, handing the stack of papers and folders over to Dr Shield, who was writing down notes about how to improve the helmet so that it would easily resist the commands of a similar system, but was mumbling about how he would test it. He decided that he wouldn’t look into it further unless he heard about a similar system so that he could test his ideas and instead started reading through the files over in the corner of the room, while the rest of us discussed what had happened in the facility and theories on what the supercomputers would be used for. The discussions had turned to where we would go next, eventually deciding on going to skadovsk because Day said he met a stallion who would be able to guide us through the anomalies between us and the ENFPP.

“I found what they had planned on using the supercomputers for. Whoever this company was, they were planning on waging war on somepony, the worst part is I have a feeling that this is a shell company that was under the control of some members of the advisory committee that are now in power. Somehow I don’t think that this will be the last such computer to be made, and that there may be more outside The Zone being built now.” Said Dr Shield, walking over from his corner and interrupting an argument about whether I would be able to traverse the anomalies and whether we’d need the guide.

“Really? It’s a government conspiracy?” said Stone, “Damn it, I knew I should’ve gone with my first instinct.” Commenting on the fact that he had made a bet with Coach about the nature of the supercomputers, he had said that it was a government conspiracy but changed his mind when he noted that this first computer was made while the royal sisters were still around; he had settled on it being spies from a different nation while Coach decided that it was a drug lord making an automated system to run his business as if he wasn’t there.

“Yes, I have fears for what might be going on with our leadership now that the royal sisters are gone. I don’t think I will report the findings of our research just yet, if they found out that we found files that lead back to the producing supercomputers from ponies brains they might eliminate us. I need to think about how to progress before I go saying anything.” Dr Shield said, he was right, after all their effort to keep a project like this quiet if somepony pointed out who was behind it they might end up targets for assassination. “That can come later, for now it’s starting to get rather late in the day so you can rest here tonight before you head out tomorrow, this will also give you plenty of time to pack and resupply Day Break. See you lot later” he said to us before walking away in the direction of his office.

“Speaking of rest, I’m going to sleep, wake me for dinner” said Coach, Dr Wave motioned for Coach to follow him before leaving the room in the direction of the dorms.

“So, I’ve got some questions to ask you two” said Swift Strikes. The next couple hours were spent answering various questions about mine and Day’s past, particularly about how we became such renowned hunters in The Zone, to the point that we had become the number one target of the military and bandits. Before too long the others had run out of questions and we ran out of stories to tell, we decided that it was a good time to grab something to eat for dinner, the rest of us went to the small cafeteria to grab something to eat while Sweet went to get Coach from his room; they joined us a few minutes after we had sat down to eat.

After dinner I questioned Day about what had happened after I had left to escape The Zone, while he asked about what had happened since I had returned to The Zone. We had talked about our new experiences for the next couple hours before I felt too tired to properly continue the conversation, so I took my leave and headed for the dorms, most of the others had decided to follow, except for Night and Swift, who stayed in the lounge talking with each other, possibly about improving their skills. Today had been a rather odd day I thought as I climbed into bed, but couldn’t continue that thought as I fell asleep a short while later.

I was dreaming again, this time though it was as if I was being railroaded through the experience, I couldn’t take control of any actions my body took. Although as I looked at the magic floating the quill as I was about to start writing I had the feeling that this wasn’t my body, the aura of my magic is normally a dark blue, this was close to a lavender sort of colour. I started writing.

“Dear Princess Celestia, after our last fight with Discord I noticed a change in his personality, the first time we fought him it was more of a game, this time he was all business, I fear that the elements can’t hold him properly and that he may break loose again soon. I also fear that he might try something drastic that might destroy Equestria and that we might not be able to stop him this time. To prevent him breaking the seal again I have developed a new form or magic that I want to use to seal him again, but I need to talk to the others about it and also have you and Luna approve it, although I somehow think that may be a difficult task. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”

Oh okay, my subconscious was writing letters to Princess Celestia as Twilight Sparkle, what caused this though? It wasn’t normal, particularly as I can’t consciously control anything that’s happened but I can monologue all the same. I, or rather Twilight, turned towards a blackboard and studied what she had written on it, I also studied the blackboard, she had written runes from the Harmony Circles on it. The Harmony Circles made particularly strong bindings and very strong seals on the target of binding so they don’t tend to break loose often; the runes that Twilight had chosen were to make the most powerful binding I had ever seen, this binding used not just one or two of the master marks but all six of them. This was the kind of binding that would take multiple unicorns to cast, if one were to try it by themselves, even if she was the most powerful mage of her time, it would no doubt kill them to make up the difference. She turned to the pages of what appeared to be her research that were scattered over the floor, the basis of this research was soul gems, particularly how to make them, what was Twilight planning to do with these magics? Does she not realise that if she makes one false move with these spells that they were fatal? Not even just with the soul gems but also the runes, if she accidentally poured her magic into the master marks when she was writing them down on the board that they would combine and cast the binding even if she didn’t intend it to.