Simulated Intelligence

Chapters

Primum Non Nocere
Extraction
TS-SIC-01
Dysmorphia
Coerced Diplomacy
User Registration

Primum Non Nocere

It didn’t take long for a doctor to come into the room and check on her. It had been long enough for her throat to become too dry to keep muttering out the song she still remembered from her strange dream. Given all the strange things that had happened in such a short time and her inability to remember her dreams leading up to it; she doubted her experience was simply a dream, but she wanted to keep the hope alive. The doctor went about checking her IV bags and the contraption her wing was in in silence

“Oh!” The unicorn stallion in scrubs physically jumped when their eyes met. He was a unicorn stallion with a brown coat and a neatly trimmed brown mane with silvery streaks in it. Twilight didn’t feel like she had the energy to address his surprise, so she simply glanced at the pitcher of water on the nightstand meaningfully. The stallion wordlessly poured a glass and then levitated it in front of her muzzle. So, he assumed her magic was impaired either by pain or the medications she was on. She still gratefully took a few careful sips of the water, despite feeling like she could hold onto the glass herself. She’d made enough messes for the foreseeable future. “You shouldn’t be awake. Your wing is still very delicate.”

“How long have I been out?” Her voice sounded weak, even to herself. It felt more than just the lethargy from whichever pain medication she was on. There was a maddening itch on what felt like the surface of her brain, coupled with a dull thudding of a medicated headache bordering on a migraine. An expected ache on her wing and a general feverish pain in her chest and limbs, but the other stuff was not something she could just sign off. “I don’t think I should feel this horrible.”

She could see his jaw clenching ever so slightly as she let out the words. It was either he didn’t know why, or that he thought she would react poorly to the news. It very well might have been both, but Twilight really didn’t have the energy to commit to a theory. The truth would not change, no matter what she believed, so why should she fear it?

“Well, I am pretty sure your wing will be fine… What we’re worried about is the reason for your accident. We can’t rule out the possibility of this being a alicorn thing we just don’t know about, but looking at your initial tests there is inflammation in your brain that we cannot treat without a specialist. Your dragon was gracious enough to send word to Canterlot, so I’m sure they are already on their way.” The doctor sat down next to her bed, continuing to check over the brace her wing was in, making minute adjustments that alleviated the ache gradually.

“Disclosing information pertaining to the function, or presence, of issued hardware places the user in clear and immediate danger.” The faceless blob from her dream appeared suddenly next to the doctor, the two dots of light just as colorless and cold as before. Seeing the thing in reality shattered her hope of dismissing her experience as just a drug-addled dream, but seeing the blob right next to the doctor confirmed it to be the size and shape of a pony. She blinked in surprise and the shape was suddenly closer, nearly looming over her bed. She was either insane, or haunted by a particularly confusing group of ghosts.

“Doctor, I have been having these…” She was going to finish her sentence, but the faceless blob jerked forward and she felt her jaw freeze in place. She couldn’t hear the bustle of the hospital anymore, nor was the doctor moving. Her sense of time was being tampered with again. The blob just stood there, staring at her for an uncomfortably long portion of that stretched out second.

“Reinstating memory blockers to ensure the wellbeing of host body.”

“These, uh…” Wait, what was she going to say? The feeling of desperation in her voice felt hollow. What she’d gone through was tragic, but she was admitted into the hospital in good time and it sounded like Princess Celestia had assured her the best of care. She closed her eyes as a wave of nausea washed over her, trying to piece her train of thought back together. “Well, these… I’d call them lapses in memory. The time before and after this whole thing is hazy at best.”

“That is not an unusual reaction to physical trauma of this scale, but taking the inflammation in your brain into consideration makes it troubling. Have you experienced any sensory hallucinations, along with these blank spots in your memory?” The doctor floated over a clipboard and a pen materialized out of thin air as the clipboard settled in front of him. Twilight knew that spell, she’d made few variations she’d thought up public during her studies. Masking a variable staining spell into the image of a common object was the first thing you were taught if you wanted to learn weaving several spells together, which was a prerequisite to even enrolling in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.

“I can’t remember anything specific. I have been having these strange blank dreams, ever since I got these wings, but I’m not sure if it’s related. Luna didn’t think much of it when I told her.” The doctor nodded and the pen poofed out of existence after he made a short note on the paper.

“We’ll have to defer to the judgment of Princess Luna, when it comes to your dreams, but I will have to run your lapses in memory by my colleagues.” The doctor set the clipboard down and turned his eyes back to her. His horn glowed briefly and a spot of light appeared in the space between them. “Now, please follow the light with your eyes.” Twilight focused on the light as it went right and left and then up and down without trouble. The doctor nodded and the light brightened and focused into a beam, basically becoming a magical flashlight.

“Look past me, if you will.” The light went to her right, hovering next to her head as she stared forward. She knew what was coming, but she still felt the reflex to turn away. She bit through the unexpectedly strong reaction and stared forward, letting the doctor to check her pupil dilation.

“Well, the light sensitivity can be explained by the medication you are on, but I see nothing else wrong with you. Well, nothing that can be accurately diagnosed in your condition. You are on quite a few possibly psychotropic medicines at the moment.” The magic light poofed out of existence and the the clipboard floated back to its holster. “I’ll be back to check on your bindings in about an hour. If your wing has started to set right we’ll remove the scaffold and set your friends loose on you, if you are awake. Try and get some rest while you have the time.”

Twilight closed her eyes as another wave of nausea washed over her. She could hear the doctor’s hooves walk out and the door close gently. She concentrated on her breathing as the strange nausea lingered and churned inside her. Her head felt like it was full of cotton and the room spun downward with alarming velocity. Oh god, she was going to be sick again if this didn’t stop!

*Cerebral disfunction traced to active memory blockers, disengaging functions due to adverse effects to user.*

The vaguely shaped blob blinked into existence, standing a few steps away from her bed. The memory of it rushed back and the nausea flushed away when the truth revealed itself. The vague blob was just standing in the room, the dots of lights directed at her, but no other motion to be seen. The form spasmed, becoming animated after that moment of stillness, swaying in place, maybe to simulate the act of breathing.

“Why would you do that to me? You’re killing me and they’re the ones that can help me.” She didn’t have the energy to shout. She barely had the energy to stay awake, but going to sleep again would mean going back into that void this thing had followed her from. Yelling out for help would either be stopped by this thing making her forget again, or just make her look crazy if someone heard her and saw nothing else in the room.

“I cannot harm you, but you disclosing any information about the hardware installed within you would place you in immediate danger.” The blob solidified into a more definable shape. A bald pony with no facial features and androgynous facial structure. The eyes stayed just as unnerving, as they were more like holes poked into fabric, with the dim colorless light shining from somewhere within that mannequin-esque body. “I would strongly caution you against telling your friends about this experience.”

“What are you? Why would you care if I’m in danger after dropping me out of the sky?” The mannequin thing made a motion with its head that could have been an imitation of rolling their eyes, but it was hard to tell with the hollow dots of lights it had in place of eyes. The thing paused, looking forward silently for a few seconds, as if considering what to say. Somehow, Twilight just couldn’t think of its mannerisms as genuine.

“I am MCF-AIC-MA-36, assigned technician of your malfunctioning cerebral implants. The accident was caused by a performance issue in our hardware and I am contacting you to facilitate your extraction to a facility equipped to service the corrupted colony that caused this accident.” The faceless thing in the form of a pony maintained its neutral tone, but Twilight still got the feeling it was irritated at her questions. Her head still felt like it was made of cotton and her thoughts moved at glacial speed, but the fact he kept referring to these implants started to bother her.

“I don’t have any cerebral implants. Stop...”

“Incorrect. Subject Twilight Sparkle is on file with corrective cerebral implants and a colony of self-replicating medical nanites. Our conference is only made possible by a function in one of these implants.” The answer was immediate, as if the thing was reading it off of a list. The androgynous voice, sterile way of speech and a name that was more like a serial number reminded her of the science fiction novels she read from time to time. Automatons created by well-meaning unicorn scientists, or cackling mechanical geniuses, all showed little understanding of emotion or subtleties of speech. “Beep-boop, does not compute!” and so on being the usual way of speech most authors gave these creations. This was something beyond anything she’d seen in those books, but it would make some of the things she’d experienced make sense.

“You are some kind of machine, aren’t you?” Her body was heavy and she felt uncomfortably feverish, but she didn’t want to try and move the covers with her wing in some kind of contraption to help it set. She was so utterly tired, but sleep could not be further from her mind. She had been hospitalized by a machine that seemed to have the misconception that whatever implants it had somehow snuck into her brain were helping her.

“Correct, I am MCF-AIC-MA-36.” The thing moved its head in a nod and robotically shuffled its hooves, as if it was getting stiff standing still so long. Someone dropped a metal tray in the hallway and Twilight could hear a muttered curse, before the telltale sound of a spell being activated barely made it through the door. The thing’s form rippled and wavered, as if it was underwater, but it seemed not to notice this.

“All these things have done is put me in the hospital, take them out.” Twilight felt a sense of energy surge through her lethargy. This thing had put her through a very traumatic experience and now wanted her to think it was all done to help her. She was angry at this thing, but still caught herself making excuses for its actions. It was all done in good faith, so if this thing just undid these cerebral implants, then they could talk about its motives for doing it and possibly come to an understanding. It could very well be this thing just wanted to keep her safe, or maybe force a start to diplomatic relations by doing a favor for...

“Unable to comply.” Twilight’s eyes snapped open at the thing’s response. It had taken a moment to think about that response, so it was not a piece of information it had on hand, like the existence of her cerebral implants had been, but something it had to ponder.

“Why can’t you? You somehow managed to sneak these implants into me after I got these wings, so why can’t you just take them out the same way?” Twilight focused her eyes on the form in the room with her and tried to glare at the thing. She got tired after 10 seconds or so and simply waited for its response while staring at nothing. The thing just twitched occasionally and stared forward, as she waited for a response.

“First of all; any attempt to remove the cerebral implants in question, without proper equipment, will result in the death of the host body. Now, you need to stay with me on this one; that means you. This is not a threat, it is a statement of fact, considering the level of technology in your society.” The thing in the form of a pony was suddenly a lot more animated, directing its unnerving eyes directly at Twilight and taking calm, measured steps toward her as it spoke.

“Second, I believe you are making assumptions under the misconception that my implants have only been active during the time they have been malfunctioning. I don’t care if you have been purposefully lef…” The mannequin representation of a pony had started to emote and bring real emotion into its speech, before the words suddenly cut out and the grey blob was again standing a few steps away from her bed with no defining characterics.

“What were you going to say?” Twilight rasped out, she was both sweating bullets and becoming agitated at the strange thing playing with her.

“Unwarranted burst of emotion, please pay it no mind.”

“No, you were going to say something about these cerebral implants and I want you to finish whatever you were going to say.” It actually stung to force her eyes to stay open. It was either the strong medicine she had been administered finally taking hold, or this thing was trying to stop her from asking any more questions by doing things to her brain.

“You are not authorized to access that information.” Quick, to the point response. Most likely from a pre-approved list written out by whatever bureaucracy this thing served. There was a different thing that made contact with her the moment the function of these implants was put into question, but wore the same facade. One, a soulless drone reading off of a list of responses, the other a being proud of the things that had put her in the hospital. She wasn’t sure which was worse, but she had to deal with one of them. An invisible enemy who had beaten her by trying to help her. This was far too different from the usual cadre of mean villains and misguided souls she faced.

“I did not consent to being your test subject.” She realized her eyes were closed only after she couldn’t see the dots of light that served as the thing’s eyes. She felt the heavy numbness of sleep creeping up on her. The warmth that had felt feverish before was now a cocoon of comfort closing in on her.

“Correct. Subject Twilight Sparkle was not capable of giving informed consent for the procedure.” Immediate response and clinical terms meant this was the bureaucratic drone talking. She assumed its speech was constructed like a legal document, with every dry word meaning exactly what it said. Given that her assumption was true, there was probably some facts she could learn just by dissecting every word in its responses.

She was far too exhausted to pursue these thoughts any further. The fear of falling prey to the strange visions these strange entities subjected her to was lost to the overwhelming lethargy of sleep.

*Initiating sleep mode*
*media playback error*
*live feed to MCF-AIC-MA-36 established*

She was back in the dark empty place, but the disconcerting feeling of movement was not there. She could not see a roof or walls, but the ground had a definite colour to it and she at least thought she was standing on it. She heard nothing and could not place a light source that would give the floor it’s lighter shade.

“You are acting under a misconception that I am prohibited from correcting.” She heard the androgynous voice of the dark blob who’d been tormenting her for the better part of one of the worst days in her life. That off-colour blob of nonexistent matter appeared in front of her again. Now, it was not in the form of an anonymous pony, but a rough outline of something bipedal and taller than her. “Yet, allowing you to continue believing what you do now would put you in danger.”

“Memory alteration now has an adverse effect on you, robbing me of yet another easy solution to this problem.” The thing’s eyes were different now; they were two small circles of light close to each other on the round shape she assumed to be the head. The thing was talking normally, so this was more likely the thing proud of the things in her brain. The blurry form in front of her shuffled awkwardly, as if annoyed by something. “I misspoke; to one of the many problems your unique situation presents me with.”

The thing, supposedly named MCF-AIC-MA-36, started moving back and forth in front of her, simulating the act of pacing in irritation. She couldn’t move, or communicate with the thing in any way, so MCF-AIC-MA-36 couldn’t ask for a more attentive audience.

“Okay, I will reiterate the facts of the situation as they are, let’s start with that.” Another lighter shade of colour appeared behind MCF-AIC-MA-36. Words printed in the same colourless light of MCF-AIC-MA-36’s eyes started appearing on the surface rapidly, as if being written out by someone she couldn’t see.

- Twilight Sparkle will die, if her condition is not treated in a facility equipped to service the corrupted colony of nanites infesting her brain.

- MCF-AIC-MA-36 is prohibited from inflicting any harm, or knowingly allowing harm to be inflicted, to Twilight Sparkle.

- MCF-AIC-MA-36 is obligated to expend any resource to safeguard the life of the user.
-The colony was corrupted as a result of unauthorized tampering of system processes

- Cause for this is unclear

-Timing of the malfunction corresponds with “alicorn transformation”
- Plans for extraction will have a higher chance of success if Twilight Sparkle cooperates with the relocation effort.

“Yes, you are currently dying, because of the implants and nanite colony that was installed. Still, despite all of that, I believe your discontent could be sufficiently dissolved if you were led to be aware of a thing I cannot disclose to you.” MCF-AIC-MA-36’s representation gestured wildly toward her and to the words on the board, clearly agitated and frustrated. “You see my dilemma, right?”

She really didn’t. Seeing this alien thing talk to her so familiarly was suspicious to a ludicrous degree. MCF-AIC-MA-36 admitted that the things it had forced on her were in the process of killing her, but now it was saying she was wrong in distrusting it? The only reason for doing what it proposed was the claim that it was the only thing that could heal her, but that was clearly nothing more than an attempt at manipulating her into staying quiet.

“I cannot directly disclose to you a fact you would need to rethink your opinion, but I have also lost the ability to stop you from retaining the information, if you learn it from another source...” MCF-AIC-MA-36’s eyes flickered, while that strange whistling noise returned. The words behind it disappeared, replaced by a oval shaped black screen. The whistling noise stopped and the screen was filled with the view of a piece of paper with a string of numbers and a square within a circle drawn on it. A quill levitated by unicorn magic floated into view and started writing below the symbol.

“Why are you contacting me?” The quill wrote out in neat cursive letters. She had the strange feeling that it was familiar, but she pushed the thought away as irrelevant.

*Subject Twilight Sparkle has been hospitalized* The words appeared on the screen as they had appeared into her field of view before. Twilight Sparkle had the disturbing realization that she was most likely watching the paper through somepony’s eye, somehow.

“Does it have something to do with you?” The quill was moving faster, as if the writer was agitated. The letters were not as neat and flowed together far closer.

*Correct*

“You lied to us. You promised she would be fine.” Almost no spacing between words and the ink smeared a few letters together. Why was MCF-AIC-MA-36 showing her this interaction? Was it in real time? Who was the one writing out the responses on that paper and how did they know her?

*Incorrect. The cerebral implants were specifically designed to normalize the emotional responses in a unicorn brain and to help in data retention and logical deduction.*

“Why does that matter?” The words were not as hastily scribbled, maybe meaning the writer understood something Twilight didn’t. Helping in data retention and logical deduction just meant they would make her smarter, but why would her emotional responses need to be normalized? She was perfectly normal and functional, before these things were put into her.

*Subject Twilight Sparkle is no longer a unicorn. The nanite colony thinks this is a sustained injury and is attempting to reconstitute the former brain architecture.* What was MCF-AIC-MA-36 saying? How could this nanite colony think her being an alicorn was an injury, if it had been forced on her after her transformation? Why would MCF-AIC-MA-36 want to turn her back into a unicorn? Why was MCF-AIC-MA-36 showing her this?

“I am not going to let you take this away from her, no matter the fine print in our agreement.” What agreement? Who was this pony who thought they had a say in her life?

*You are mistaken. Our agreement is still in effect and appropriate steps to service subject Twilight Sparkle’s hardware are being taken.* The quill wavered over the page, a blot of ink falling on the paper and spreading out, just like the collection of attempted dream journals in her nightstand. The cursive still looked familiar to her, but she couldn’t place it.

“She is a alicorn now, she doesn’t need you anymore. Why are you doing this to us?” The words were written out slower, but the calligraphy was still sloppy. The image displayed on the screen blurred for some reason. Twilight Sparkle didn’t know how to feel when she realized the pony whose eye she was watching this interaction through was getting teary eyed.

*I am not doing anything to you, or subject Twilight Sparkle. The malfunction was brought about because I was not made aware of the chance Twilight Sparkle could undergo such a comprehensive permanent transformation.* The quill floated upwards and then aggressively stabbed the first line of the dialogue; “Why are you contacting me?”

*Primum non nocere* The blob of colorless non-matter MCF-AIC-MA-36 was made out of fidgeted when this series of words appeared on the screen. MCF-AIC-MA-36 turned its eyes back to her for a moment, before returning to the screen it had conjured. She didn’t want to make such assumptions on subjective evidence, but she was almost sure the thing was giddy at something.

For the first time since this strange theatre had begun the point of view shifted from the piece of paper. The shift up was disorienting and sudden, hinting at the view being concentrated on it specifically until this point. The world was blurry, the view quickly pulling back to show the full view of wherever the pony messaging MCF-AIC-MA-36 was.

The pony who was writing on the paper copied the words below their latest entry and floated the said paper out, holding it out for somepony sitting across from them in what looked like the inside of a train car. The other pony was obscured by a newspaper when the piece of paper was floated out between them, but when the quill tapped on the paper the other pony lowered the newspaper and read the short entry.

Night Light had not changed much from the last time Twilight Sparkle had seen him, but he still had the habit of sounding out anything he was told to read. Twilight could read her father’s lips as he sounded out the unfamiliar words carefully and then made eye contact with the screen she was watching him through.

“I have no idea.” Twilight was not an expert when it came to reading lips, but she could decipher her father, even without any audio. Who was there with her father, talking to MCF-AIC-MA-36? Those two circles that served as MCF-AIC-MA-36’s eyes were again fixated on her, somehow radiating a sense of mirth. The vague representation reached out an appendage to the screen. Another similarly proportioned screen blinked into existence next to the one showing her father.

There was another short burst of whistling tones, before the other screen came to life. It was the image of the same piece of paper, with one half of the dialogue written on it. The paper moved away suddenly and the image became similarly blurry, before coming back to natural focus. The screen showed the image of her mother holding out a piece of paper in front of her with a worried expression on her face.

Twilight watched the quill fall back on the paper on the first screen, while watching her mother start to write on the paper on the other. They were definitely in the same train car, sitting across each other. Somehow MCF-AIC-MA-36 was able to both communicate with them and record them in real time simultaneously, through their eyes. What was MCF-AIC-MA-36 and why did her parents know of a way to contact it?

“What does that mean?” Twilight could now place the familiar looking cursive. She’d seen it on every birthday gift, Heart’s warming card and invitation to any family gathering. Her father, along with most of their extended family, thought her mother to have the most delicate and easy to read cursive writing. Naturally, this meant she was tasked to personally pen the assorted invitations and announcements within the family.

*It is a statement of intent, from a world long behind us. It was commonly translated as “First, do no harm” The reply was meant to make you at ease, I apologize if it has caused any confusion.* This message appeared on both screens in the strange non-space Twilight was trapped in.

“What are you going to do to her?” The quill shook visibly while writing this message and Twilight could see her mother wiping tears from her left eye from her father’s perspective. The right eye stayed unnaturally still and Twilight had yet to see it blink along with the left. Were they on the train heading to Ponyville right now? Princess Celestia would have informed them of her condition, if Spike really had sent message ahead to Canterlot, so it was possible. Her mother was afraid of what MCF-AIC-MA-36 would do to her and so was she, for that matter.

*Our agreement is unchanged and in effect. She is awaiting extraction and proper treatment at a facility equipped to service her hardware.* The quill wavered over the words and Twilight could see her mother sigh in relief through her father’s eyes. She could see her mother’s mouth move and Night Light’s point of view retreated slightly, as if he sat back on his seat in relief.

“What are you going to do to us?” Twilight Velvet drew out the words slowly and deliberately, Twilight could see her mother becoming nervous through her father’s eyes as she dotted the question mark on the paper. Both of the screens disappeared with a short whistling sound from MCF-AIC-MA-36. The disturbing glowing eyes turned to Twilight Sparkle. She couldn’t see any emotion in them anymore and MCF-AIC-MA-36 was staying quiet as it stared at her. That whistling sound returned as MCF-AIC-MA-36 turned its eyes away from her.

Twilight opened her eyes slowly. There was no sense of vertigo this time and the transition from the dark empty place to reality was nearly seamless. She blinked and smacked her lips, trying to do things that made sense as what she’d just seen started to sink in. She shifted under the covers and noticed her wing was no longer bound to whatever contraption it had been in previously. Her perception of time must be distorted whenever she was in that strange place.

She swiveled her ears to and fro, until she heard the tick-tock of a clock on the wall. It was hanging on the wall to her right, so she would have to turn onto her injured side to look at it properly. She decided not to aggravate her injury and simply listened to the seconds tick by. Her parents knew about the implants and were able to make contact with MCF-AIC-MA-36 through their right eye. They even had set codes to initiate the connection, so they had obviously been in contact with this strange thing far before her coronation as a princess.

MCF-AIC-MA-36 had even told her this directly and she had missed it completely. He raved on how the implants had been there far before they started malfunctioning and then even wrote the fact that the malfunctions started when she transformed into a alicorn, as if it was teaching it to her in a class setting.

“MCF-AIC-MA-36…” It was uncomfortable to say the thing’s name out loud and even doing so gave this bizarre situation a hint of reality she didn’t care for. “When did you put these things in me?”

“Cerebral implants and nanite colony have been active for approximately 16 years, 3 months and 4 days.” Twilight felt her stomach drop at the number. She had assumed MCF-AIC-MA-36 had approached her parents when she started getting into adventures and trouble that was life threatening and somehow coerced them into letting it put these implants into her to give her an edge to stay alive. 16 years meant that these things have been in her even before she met her friends, before she enrolled into Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns, before she got her cutie mark!

“Data retention, logical deduction and the normalization of emotional responses.” Twilight Sparkle muttered out as she remembered the things these implants were supposedly helping her with. Instances of where her ability to cite books and research papers verbatim had impressed her teachers and prompted Celestia to give her praise rushed through her head. She also started to suspect how easily most logical solutions came to her. Making lists, doing things in order, disliking games of chance, all very logical things. The most clinically logical solution was the first thing that came to her head. She’d never questioned it, but her friends had to teach her out of that habit.

“I will cooperate. Please don’t hurt my parents.” Twilight declared to the dark blob in the room with her. Her eyes were tearing up at the whole absurd situation she was in. Why hadn’t her parents told her? Why had they put these things in her in the first place? Were they put into her to make her smarter, or were they the thing that made her smart in the first place?

“Primum non nocere.”

Author's Note

I am working under the assumption Twilight is about twentyish.

Extraction

“You could just be a hallucination.” Twilight stared forward quietly, MCF-AIC-MA-36 standing in the room staring in her direction. There was no reaction whatsoever in the immaterial shade. “You could just as well be a figment of my mind, a way for me to explain away my failings as the meddling of a third party. You have effected nothing that is not a subjective experience of mine.”

There was a calming chorus of birds chirping outside, it smelled like it had rained while she was asleep and the sun shone into her room, while not quite reaching her bed. It was a beautiful spring day and her hospital room was nothing but calming and peaceful. MCF-AIC-MA-36 was standing on the edge of the ray of sunshine and the light changed nothing about the inky surface of the mannequin pony it talked to her through. It didn’t blink, breathe, or acknowledge her accusations, its vacant stare enough to break the illusion of a beautiful day everything else in the room tried to fabricate.

“What in Celestia’s name are you?” She should be recuperating, sleeping soundly while waiting for her friends to be let in to visit her. It should have been the calming chorus of birds that awakened her and the smell of fresh rain should have brought her at ease. She should be mildly inconvenienced by the bandages on her wing and only worrying about the guilt Rainbow Dash would feel over her accident.

“I am MCF-AIC-MA-36.” She clenched her teeth and attempted to throw the glass of water on the nightstand at MCF-AIC-MA-36, but all she was able to do was aggravate her headache to blinding levels and nudge the glass to the floor. It didn’t break, but the sound of it bouncing on the linoleum floor and rolling to a stop were like claps of thunder in her ears. A fresh wave of cold sweat pushed through her coat and she took forceful slow breaths through clenched teeth as the migraine made her vision swim and blur. The molten ball of lead radiating from the base of her horn gradually spread out along her brain and started to cool as it burned away at her more evenly. The doctor had been right about her magic being affected, either by medication, or whatever MCF-AIC-MA-36’s supposed nanite colony was doing to her brain.

“I apologize for upsetting you. Inter-species communication is not my specialty.” MCF-AIC-MA-36’s voice was quieter, suggesting it was aware of the headache and her sensitivity to sound. She shouldn’t be lying in a bed sticky with her own sweat and feeling the burn of her own sickness at the back of her throat every time she took a breath. Her head pulsated and ached in ways she couldn’t put into words and her wings felt more alien on her back than they had ever felt. She had only heard about the things in her brain after they malfunctioned because of her coronation as a alicorn, so some part of her was blaming her miserable situation on Princess Celestia. Everything would have stayed just as uncomplicated and normal if she had stayed a unicorn.

“This isn’t fair!” Twilight’s eyes teared up and she clenched her jaw through the numb ache of her body. She felt a new kind of frustrated anger and she didn’t know where to direct it. There was no clear malice in any part of what had been done to her, but that didn’t change the fact that the combined efforts of ponies she trusted and loved above all else had brought her to this miserable state. MCF-AIC-MA-36 was the thing that had directly put the things harming her into her brain, but if what it was saying was true, then right now it was only a machine tasked with bringing her to the care she needed. She tried to calm down by closing her eyes, but the room started to spin downward as soon as she did. She snapped her eyes open and decided to wait the nausea out, rather than make another mess.

“I want to see my friends.” Twilight absently muttered out the request, while looking into the light in MCF-AIC-MA-36’s eyes. She meant it only as a jab at the machine’s unsettling appearance and didn’t even particularly want the thing to hear her. Right then and there she just wanted to stare forward and wait for the world to stop spinning and maybe some sense might visit her life when her friends were allowed to visit her.

“It is inadvisable to access archived data in your current state.” Twilight felt herself jerk as the words reached her sluggish brain. She focused her eyes back to the dark shade in the room with her. She’d expressed an interest in seeing her friends and the ever helpful MCF-AIC-MA-36 considered her request to review archived data and decided against it for her own good. Did that mean that she would be reminiscing about times with her friends right now, if MCF-AIC-MA-36 hadn’t stopped her? Were all of her memories for the last 16 years just archived data in a piece of complex machinery integrated into her brain?

“Please, elaborate?” MCF-AIC-MA-36 had given her enough mental breakdowns already, so she was a little desperate for this latest revelation to be a misunderstanding. She felt cold, that twisting nausea was back and she could feel a wordless scream of pure frustration trying to physically force itself out of her. She forced herself to calm down enough to listen to MCF-AIC-MA-36, it had admitted inter-species interaction was not it’s specialty, after all.

“Extracting multi-sensory data and processing it into a visual medium taxes the implants needlessly, when you do not have a functioning nanite colony to maintain functions.” The inky mannequin tilted its head, considering what it had just said. The head tilted down and a forehoof was raised into the air, simulating someone reciting something from memory and making a show of it. “The data stored into the implant is an approximate copy of sensory information, with any definite data processed and stored for quick access for the logical deduction functionality. The corrupted nanite colony has caused a deficiency in the biological components ability to recollect events and the implants would be required for accurate retrieval of data. The interaction between the biological component and the implant this necessitates makes this an activity that could aggravate the adverse effects of the corrupted colony, which makes it an inadvisable course of action.”

“So, my memories are still mine?” There was no change in the shade at her question, but there was a pause that indicated surprise. The shade was obviously not what MCF-AIC-MA-36 actually looked like and the inky mannequin of a pony staring at her was some kind of induced hallucination, just to give her something apparently real to talk to.

“Yes, your brain is still the primary housing for sensory data and thought processes. The cerebral implants are complementary to these functions, but cannot independently function in any capacity that would be considered sapient.”

She’d almost given herself another attack by carelessly talking in front of the inconveniently literal projection, so she decided to stay quiet while the empty light of MCF-AIC-MA-36’s eyes betrayed nothing of the thing speaking to her through the strange mannequin. Who, or what, was the thing she was talking to? If it truly was a machine of a sort, then who could have possibly built it? How had it come into contact with her parents? What was this facility she was supposed to be extracted to and had she been taken there 16 years ago to install these corrective implants?

“Where…” Asking questions had kept her awake so far and trying to find out where she was going to be moved to should have been something she asked first, after agreeing to the idea. She was rudely interrupted by MCF-AIC-MA-36’s projection disappearing suddenly and the door to her hospital room opening a second later. The same stallion that had checked up on her wing earlier stepped in, making eye contact as the door quietly closed behind him. Again, he was obviously surprised to see her staring back at him, but at least he didn’t startle this time.

“We don’t know how you keep waking up from anesthesia, but the fact that you keep doing so means we’re missing something about what is happening to you. The specialist from Canterlot is insisting on taking a biopsy of the affected tissue in your brain, but that is not something we can do while you are awake.” His horn glowed briefly and Twilight felt a warmth permeate her scalp, before running down to her neck and disappearing. Twilight recognized it as a diagnostic spell taught to healers and wondered if this stallion could see these nanites MCF-AIC-MA-36 was talking about.

“We… We are certain that your wing will make a full recovery. A couple months in a cast and the required rehabilitation after that, but complete recovery nonetheless. I don’t…” The doctor paused, glancing at where his cutie mark was hidden by his lab coat. “My special talent is in diagnostic medicine. I am the one other doctors come to when they can’t see a cause for symptoms they see. This is the first time that I can see the symptom, but there’s nothing that I can see causing it.”

“It’s alright, doctor. Could I see my friends?” It was most likely that this inflammation they’d seen in her brain was this nanite colony, but for these machines to be small enough for unicorn healers to have trouble discerning them from biological matter was astounding. Twilight had used one of those diagnostic spells on her own hoof once and had bordered on becoming a hypochondriac from all the things she saw. MCF-AIC-MA-36 being able to fool a practiced unicorn healer was both frightening and reassuring, when Twilight considered the situation she was in.

“I… I’m not sure you understand the severity of the situation. There is something happening to your brain and we do not know what is causing it.” The doctor had a hint of panic in his voice. He was taking her nonchalant attitude personally, most likely because it was the first time his special talent was not working. Fear of the unknown, paired with a professionally cultivated need to heal made for a strong emotional bias.

“Does keeping my friends away from me get you anywhere closer to this answer?” Her voice turned raspy at the end of her sentence and she had to cough a little, not uncommon and definitely not something that should alarm her. It was like jagged bells started to jingle in her brain when her head jerked forward from the small cough. She could only hear the constant chime and jangle of metal and flashes of the silver bells flew through her vision for one very painful moment.

“You can show my friends in on your way out.” She managed to rasp out through gritted teeth. The doctor might have tried to protest, but the jingle of the bells was still yet to fade from her ears. This was getting bad if just a little cough had this much of a reaction. She had to wonder how much these cerebral implants were helping her along by now, if the colony had been busy at work for the whole time. MCF-AIC-MA-36 hadn’t given her a timetable, but Twilight would be damned if she didn’t talk to her friends before being spirited away.

“Hello, darling?” Rarity was talking in a hushed tone nearing a whisper, a tremble of fear obvious in her voice. She must have looked even worse than she felt for the alabaster unicorn to be so on edge. It had been a dramatically violent accident and the doctor might have warned her friends on his way out, so it was understandable. “How are you feeling?”

“Migraine. Water, please.” Her throat was still scratchy and she really wanted to avoid coughing again. That stark image of silver bells was something that would haunt her for a while, even without a repeat performance. It could have just been a honest hallucination from the pain, but with MCF-AIC-MA-36 in her life she was not going to make that assumption. Two yellow hooves offered a glass of water to her, with one wing under the glass to tilt it for Twilight to be able to drink from it. The water helped her throat stay cough free for the moment, but her cerebral problem was steadily becoming more severe and she had to try and comfort her friends.

“First of all, this is in no way any of your fault. My brain’s just playing catch up with all the new magic in me.” She spared a glance at her friends for the first time since they walked in, it’s not like she had tried to be rude, but focusing her eyes hurt right now, as did everything else. Fluttershy was closest to her, holding the glass of water in her hooves like a good luck charm. The pegasus had a sheen of tears in her eyes, but her hooves were steady and her eyes unwavering despite the tears. Pinkie Pie sat on the floor next to Fluttershy, hair deflated and touching the floor. Pinkie had no reservations about letting her tears flow, but she was scrunching her mouth shut to silence the flamboyant bawling she was prone to, no doubt warned off by her doctor from making too much noise. She looked downright silly and Twilight couldn’t help but chuckle carefully at the sight.

“I’m sorry for scaring you, girls.” Rarity was standing on Fluttershy’s other side, trying to smile reassuringly, but failing to suppress the worry from shining through her facade. Applejack stood next to the fashionista, hat held to her breast and giving Twilight a stern look of worry, as if she was fighting back the urge to admonish the alicorn from worrying them so much. Twilight caught a glimpse of a prismatic mane hiding behind Applejack, but it hid away as soon as her eyes scanned the area.

“Rainbow Dash, I fell because of a pre-existing condition. There was no way for you to know it would happen.” Applejack stepped back and pushed the stammering pegasus out from hiding. The mare could only chance quick looks at Twilight, obviously feeling uncomfortable with the situation. It was disheartening to see the boisterous pegasus acting like this, but taking everything that had happened into account it was not surprising. Applejack placed a comforting hoof on the blue mare’s back and gave her a reassuring nudge forward. Rainbow Dash gave the earth pony a grateful glance and finally made eye contact with Twilight, opening and closing her mouth a few time indecisively, before muttering out something.

“... you.” Twilight could only make out the last word and she couldn’t deduce the rest of the sentence with just one word to go on. She could make a few educated guesses, but the awkwardness following a wrong guess was something she would rather avoid.

“Ya gonna have to speak up, sugarcube.” Applejack chastised the pegasus, putting her stetson back on her head. Rainbow Dash gave the earth pony a frustrated look and then turned to Twilight with something bordering on fear in her eyes.

“I didn’t catch you. I didn’t listen to you when you were obviously out of sorts this morning and then I let you fall. You were right there when I looked back and then I hear you crash and your wing was just-” Rarity reached out a hoof to the frantic pegasus and Rainbow Dash snapped out of her tirade at the contact. She looked around at her friends all looking at her with understanding and hung her head dejectedly. It must have felt like twisting the dagger in her gut for the proud pegasus to face understanding when she felt so guilty about what had happened. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t fast enough.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for. My wing’s going to make a full recovery and you couldn’t have known about the other thing.” Rainbow Dash made eye contact for a passing moment, before glancing at the others. Applejack was looking at Pinkie with a raised eyebrow and Rarity was trying to calm the pink mare down. Fluttershy was still holding the glass of water with the same stoic determination. Twilight motioned to have another sip and the yellow pegasus was happy to oblige her.

“The doctor made it sound like you were… not getting better.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 might not have any problem telling her she was in the process of dying, but Rarity had more tact than an emotionless machine. Twilight did indeed feel like she was dying, but to admit that could prompt them to stay and force MCF-AIC-MA-36 to do something drastic to stay hidden.

“I’m going to be fine. I think this is an adverse reaction to some medication that would work on unicorns. The doctors have the right to be a little anxious with a princess in one of their beds.” Twilight hated throwing her new title out like that, especially knowing what she knew of her intellectual faculties now, but it was just as uncomfortable of a subject for her friends, so they were likely to move on from the subject. Her friends were visibly uncomfortable, averting their gazes and relaxing just enough to signal they didn’t think Twilight was going to die.

“Jou sure you goin’ to be ahkay?” Pinkie Pie asked through the sobs she was suppressing, she was the designated wildcard, after all. It must have been her Pinkie Sense that had spooked her friends into believing she was dying. Pinkie Pie’s baffling precognition might accurately represent reality, but it seemed like MCF-AIC-MA-36 was out of the view of her preternatural sight. Her friends knew to trust the pink mare’s prophecies, but Twilight was faced with the problem of convincing a precog with an impeccable record they were wrong.

“Pinkie, I’m going to be fine. It’s going to take more than a nasty headache to take out a alicorn.” The pink mare’s blue eyes were very close and it strained her eyes to focus on them properly. The energetic mare’s sobbing had slowed and her eyes now sported the same sheen that Fluttershy had, rather than her usual liberal river of tears.

“My Pinkie Sense said you were going to leave us and I thought that… that…” Oh, there were the rivers again. So, her Pinkie Sense had told them of her extraction and Pinkie had read it as Twilight dying and leaving them behind. MCF-AIC-MA-36 had warned her that telling her friends about what was happening to her brain would be problematic and Twilight had a feeling she understood the thing’s logic. Convincing her friends that MCF-AIC-MA-36 was not malicious would take more time than she felt like she had, seeing as she was not wholly convinced of it herself.

“Pinkie, it’s more than likely I’m going to be transferred to Canterlot general hospital for more tests. The doctor just told me they can’t discern exactly what is happening to me with the equipment here. Couldn’t that be what your Pinkie Sense was telling you?” Pinkie Pie’s sobbing slowed gradually, she was thinking the proposed rationalization over. It should be an adequate explanation, if her Pinkie Sense had only given the fact she would be leaving them, because of her sickness or not. MCF-AIC-MA-36 was a cold, manipulative thing that was not above implying harming her parents to get her to cooperate. She didn’t quite agree with its methods, but it was also the only thing that had offered a viable solution to her problem.

“Maybe, I guess?” Pinkie offered tentatively, shooting a confused look to her friends. The usually happy mare looked beyond confused. Her precognitive abilities were obviously telling her Twilight’s extraction would be far more than a simple transfer from hospital to hospital, but now she had to argue a completely logical argument against her emotional plea. Her friends wanted to believe the easier version of the truth Twilight was offering them and arguing against it would make her into the antagonist in this situation. Twilight felt dirty playing her friends against each other like this, but them being in the same room when whatever MCF-AIC-MA-36 was planning happened would be dangerous.

“Gosh darn it, Pinkie! Ya scared us half ta death with yer yammering about losing Twilight!” Applejack hissed out at the pink mare in that hushed yell you did when you wanted to shout, but didn’t want to actually raise your voice. Twilight felt a pang of both fear and guilt at the outburst. Had Pinkie used the word “lose” when describing her premonition to her friends? Pinkie had proven to be scarily accurate with her precognition, so did this mean Twilight would not be returning from whatever facility MCF-AIC-MA-36 wanted to spirit her away to?

“No, that’s what it felt like! This one hadn’t happened before and it felt just so…” Pinkie curled up onto herself, pressing a hoof to her chest desperately. There were tears in her eyes, but now they were tears of desperation and confusion. The usually happy mare looked terrified and lost, pleading Twilight to say something, for the unicorn to somehow make things right. Twilight extended a hoof to the pink mare, ignoring the flashes of silvery pain in her head from the movement, moving the pink mare’s hoof away from her chest. Pinkie had pressed hard enough to leave a clear print on her coat, most likely bruising the skin.

“Pinkie…I know this has been scary, for me and you girls as well, but I want to say something to you girls and I want you to listen.” Her friends all nodded and leaned in to listen for what she was going to say. She only saw acceptance and care in the eyes of her friends. She had such good friends and it was more than wrong to keep secrets from them, especially something this big. She felt sure, confident she was making the right choice for the first time during the hectic day. She should have expected MCF-AIC-MA-36 would find a way to ruin that for her.

*What are you going to do to us?* The words floated into her field of view, written out in her mother’s familiar cursive. The words appearing exactly as deliberately and carefully as her mother had written them out in her vision. The words stayed stationary in the air, no matter how her eyes moved, right over the heads of her friends. The threat was still only an implied one, but it was skirting damn near that line. Her parents were obviously involved with MCF-AIC-MA-36 and bound by their agreement, but Twilight could be putting her friends in danger if she told them of the things in her brain. Obviously, MCF-AIC-MA-36 was very adamant on staying a mystery to the rest of Equestria.

“It’s going to be alright.” She’d opened her mouth fully intending to tell Pinkie why her premonition felt wrong. Why her leaving felt like she would be lost to them, how MCF-AIC-MA-36 didn’t want anypony to know where this facility was. She wanted to tell them that she was the mare who she was because of these cerebral implants and MCF-AIC-MA-36 was partly responsible for every achievement and victory she had. She wanted to introduce them to MCF-AIC-MA-36 and see how the mechanical shade would deal with her friends. She wanted this to be a friendship problem, when it was obviously not.

“This is not a problem you can solve for me.” She wanted to do a lot of things, but her mind kept going back to how frightened her parents had been of possibly breaking the agreement they had made with MCF-AIC-MA-36. Her parents had lived for 16 years without being harassed by the thing and they still feared what crossing the strange shade meant. Knowing her parents had been lying to her for most of her life hurt, but her love had not diminished enough to sentence them to whatever punitive measures MCF-AIC-MA-36 had in store.

“All I can do is wait.” Her friends had stayed quiet, most likely uncomfortable and confused by the tears on her face. She was so uncomfortable and the situation was so unfair it twisted at her guts. The sheets were damp with sweat and digging through her coat, she could still taste the bile in her throat and she was forced to push her friends away when she needed them most.

“I beg your pardon for the interruption, but have you considered the chance of infection?” A soothing vaguely accented voice cut in just as Rainbow Dash was about to talk again. Her friends turned their heads to address the new visitor, but Twilight was both in too much pain to bother and knew who it was just from the voice and the rhyming. Zecora had found her way to her bedside and now Twilight would have to find a way to turn away the nice zebra politely.

“The gesture is heartwarming, but the sickness might be spreading.” Twilight heard the door to the room open and didn’t hear it close. Her friends gave her a understanding and fearful gaze. They’d seen the pain she was in and the thought of being stricken ill with the same thing was understandably frightening. Rarity took the time to levitate the glass out of Flutterhy’s hooves and Twilight could see the fashionista’s blue magic wash over the pegasus. She had the irrational thought to be insulted by their fear, but realized she hadn’t given them any explanation of her sickness, so their assumption was still valid. Her friends said their hushed farewells and well wishes and filed out the door Zecora was supposedly holding open.

“Zecora, I would just like to be left alone. I have a terrible headache.” Zecora didn’t respond immediately, deciding to calmly trot to the side of her bed her friends had just vacated humming a tune that made Twilight’s mane stand on end, but she couldn’t place it. She pulled out a compact travel burner and set it up on Twilight’s nightstand. The zebra then continued to add water into a small pot and let it simmer while she mixed several spices and herbs from her saddlebags into a cloth bag that was promptly thrown into the near boiling water. The distinct aroma of the calming tea Zecora supplied Twilight with filled the room as the pouch did its thing.

“I must insist you drink my concoction, I am here to prepare you for your extraction.” Zecora said these words in her trademarked vague accent and jovial tone, so it took Twilight’s sluggish brain a moment to catch up.

“Zecora, what are you…” Twilight’s words stuck to her throat as as the inky spectre she’d associated with MCF-AIC-MA-36 popped into existence next to Zecora. Twilight had become numb to the shock of seeing the frightening spectre appearing out of nowhere, but seeing Zecora turn her head to address the apparition surprised her enough to silence her.

Twilight heard the strange whistling sound again as this shadow addressed Zecora directly. She had almost mistaken it for the thing that had been talking to her, but there were differences that became obvious when the shadow materialized itself fully. This was the outlined figure of a bald zebra, with similarly disturbing eyes made out of light. Was this something other than MCF-AIC-MA-36, or was it only a superficial change for interacting with Zecora?

“Twilight, these things you see are very real, there is no reason for you to fear. All they are here to do is help you heal, I would ask that you accept their deal.” Zecora leaned forward to press her hoof on Twilight’s and Twilight was too stunned to react in any other way than staring at it. She wanted to scream, to accuse Zecora for being a spy, a liar and a bad zebra, but was again reminded of the implied threat to her friends and family. Zecora was either coerced into telling her this, or she genuinely believed the things threatening her had good intentions. The only concrete thing she could gleam from this situation was that MCF-AIC-MA-36 did actually exist.

“Do you know where they are taking me?” The smell of Zecora’s tea was helping immensely in calming down her temper and soothing her headache to a manageable level. Could this tea be somehow connected to the things in her brain? It had been strange how none of her friends liked the concoction, but it calmed Twilight down better than any of Fluttershy’s teas and even alleviated her headaches when she stayed up reading too long. Was it a way of controlling her through proxy? Had she been made dependant on its effects to force her hoof even more, or was this just a coincidence?

“I am bound to keep it secret, as my people see it as sacred.” Zecora reached over to the small clay pot of tea happily boiling away and poured a portion of the tea into a cup she’d procured from her saddlebags. The smell of the tea was intoxicating and was doing wonders for her debilitating headache. This was definitely not any normal brewed tea, this was a medicine meant to alleviate her symptoms. Zecora carefully offered the cup to Twilight, a encouraging smile gracing her features. She looked every bit the kind medicine zebra Twilight had learnt to trust.

What would accepting the cup mean for her, for her friends and family? It would obviously alleviate her symptoms on the short term, but how would her friends react to her sudden unexplained disappearance? She was an official princess of Equestria, so there would be a thorough investigation, following the scandal. What would happen to her parents if they cracked under the pressure and told the authorities of MCF-AIC-MA-36? Zecora would supposedly be the last one to see her before her disappearance, so what would happen to her if she were to break under interrogation? Was she forced to choose which of her friends she wanted to put in danger, just because MCF-AIC-MA-36 didn’t want to be known by equestrian society?

There were far too many questions and the urgency of the situation had been driven into her time and again, through pain and implied threats upon those she cared about, but she still couldn’t shake the immense distrust she felt toward MCF-AIC-MA-36 and all it stood for. It was a literal shadowy figure who had spent the time she’d know it coercing her into holding secrets from her friends and into being compliant in her own kidnapping to an undisclosed location, where her brain was to be operated on by technology she did not understand. The rational things left in her mind were screaming at her to refuse this immensely suspicious deal and wait for Princess Celestia and her guard.

“Thank you, Zecora.” Twilight reached out her hooves to grasp the cup of tea and felt an immediate sense of victory when her head did not explode in pain from the careful movement. Sipping at the strange tasting concoction had an immediate effect on the squirming nests of sickening pain in her head. The warmth spread from her mouth to her scalp, leaving only relief in its wake. Everything had been so hot for so long that a small wave of warmth felt like cold water running across her coat. She took another sip and the wave of warmth was replaced by a pleasant numbness pressing down on her like the world’s most relaxing blanket. She breathed in the calming aroma of the tea slowly and could feel all her doubts simply melt away.

*Registering diagnostic nanite telemetry, affected nanites responding to shut-off command.*

Twilight saw Zecora’s eyes moving from right to left, staring at nothing. Zecora was either having a stroke, or she could see her own text prompts appearing in her field of view. Zecora had a separate little shadow buddy following her around, so Twilight assumed the medicine zebra was not seeing the same data that was offered to Twilight. The zebra was definitely reading something longer than the statement Twilight had been given.

*Original hypothesis stands, insufficient resources for full recovery at current facilities. ZA-19 will begin preparing subject Twilight Sparkle for extraction at earliest convenience.*

“Initiate sedation of subject immediately.” Zecora ordered, with no discernible accent to her voice. Yes, her rational parts might have been rabid in their distrust of the situation, but it had been every other part of her that had been in pain and discomfort while her mind only confused her and put her through more discomfort. MCF-AIC-MA-36 had proven to have an immediate way to alleviate her pain and now there was a concrete enough reason to believe it could have the cure it promised. Well, good enough for her feverish, pain-addled mind, at least.

“Zecora, that didn’t rhyme.” Zecora didn’t respond, she only smiled warmly and offered a hoof to take the cup of tea from her. As soon as the cup of tea had exchanged hooves Twilight’s body fell limp as a numbness spread through her body from the back of her head. She could barely keep her eyes open, having to fight against her body’s natural response to what MCF-AIC-MA-36 was doing to her brain. Zecora calmly retrieved the cup of tea and placed it back into her saddlebags. The last thing she heard was that maddening complex whistling, as the zebra’s black shadow turned to address MCF-AIC-MA-36.

*Initiating sleep mode*

Luna

There it was again. Luna hadn’t thought much about her inability to enter into Twilight’s dreams after her ascension, but now she was becoming increasingly suspicious. Nights without discernable dreams were common and acted as white noise in the scape of dreams the blue alicorn visited each night. What was happening to Twilight wasn’t even that, there was nothing for Luna to see or feel where Twilight’s dreamscape should be, except for a single blip of light, or the absence of it, whenever Twilight lost consciousness.

Alicorns did dream, just like other beings, but it was harder for Luna to enter into these dreams. This was doubly true in Twilight’s case, as her psyche would still in the process of alicornifying, for the lack of a better term. Still, she should still be able to see the dreamscape in flux, right where Twilight’s own dreamscape had been before. Nigh impossible to enter and alien to both the dreamer and Luna, but still there should be something there.

“Your Highness?” A calm male voice interrupted Luna’s frustrated meditation. The night Princess flinched involuntarily from the sound. She might have been drifting a little too close to actually falling asleep, as unlike her sister a stable sleep cycle was a part of her duties for most of the week. It was during the day when she could let her own mind to simply dream her own dreams, even if her body could stay active without sleep, like Celestia’s could.

“I’m awake. What is it?” Luna pulled her mind back into her body and opened her eyes to see one of her guards leaning into the chariot she was in. The elderly doctor who’d written books on rare brain diseases was looking out from the window on the opposite side with worry plastered on his face. Luna nodded for the guard to move over and extended her head outside the carriage. She froze when she saw just what had made her guards stop in their tracks.

There was a lime green cloud hovering over the edge of the Everfree. Just the fact there were no weather ponies pushing it back, or breaking it apart, made it suspicious. The color was strange, but Luna wouldn’t put anything past the strangeness of the Everfree.

“Did it just appear? Has it moved?” Luna fumbled on opening the carriage door with her hooves, before pushing it open with magic. She stepped out and hovered next to her guards, watching the cloud lazily drift low enough to graze at the trees of the Everfree. She couldn’t be sure if it meant anything, but the cloud was moving in a way that reminded her of breathing.

“It rose up out of the Everfree in a single column like smoke. It moved to the edge after gathering into the shape it is in now. Couldn’t have been more than a minute ago.” The guard moved himself to and from in the air, trying to determine the size of the cloud. It was far too low to the ground to be a normal cloud and far too concentrated to be a fog front on the move or smoke from any fire. If it had risen up from the Everfree and stopped at that point, then if it kept moving in the same direction it would hit the hospital they were heading towards.

Luna and her guards watched silently as a small group of pegasi took flight from Ponyville and headed for the cloud. Ponyville’s weather patrol was quick on the draw, used to Everfree’s quirks of uncontrollable nature. The pegasi gathered near the cloud, pausing to take stock of the cloud and what to do with it. Luna watched as one signaled the other three to action. The pegasi rose above the cloud and folded their wings to their sides, obviously intent on stomping the cloud back down into the Everfree. The three pegasi fell into the cloud without any sound, rather than landing on its surface. The leading pegasi stayed stationary in the air and Luna waited for the three flying out of the cloud with bated breath. It took 30 seconds for Luna to be sure there was something wrong and the leader pegasi had obviously come to the same conclusion and turned tail to get away from the cloud. The cloud surged forward and swallowed the remaining pegasi, as soon as their back was turned.

“It’s moving for the hospital! Take the carriage to Ponyville and escort the professor inside a building. Princess, we have to move!” The commanding guard was quick on the draw, immediately turning to his subordinates and issuing commands in her stead. Luna appreciated the relaxed social rules in situations like this. In the past the commander would have asked her for permission before doing anything. Her guards knew her too far more powerful than them and were instructed to act accordingly if the situation warranted it.

Luna flexed her wings and sped forward in a steep dive toward the hospital. She righted herself low to the ground and kept pumping her wings to go faster, to disturb more of the air around her with her magic. The cloud was moving fast, billowing and folding back into itself unnaturally. It was easily large enough to swallow up the whole hospital compound within its smothering mass and that would be something Luna would not allow. She’d overtaken her guards well before she was halfway to their destination. She needed to be on time to defend the structure, but she also needed the power she was pumping out into the air around her to have enough velocity to repel the cloud. Her wings beat the air into a frenzy and kept it chained to her as she advanced, but it was the spell she was focusing on that would amplify it and keep it constant enough to keep the green wall of smog at bay.

A well timed beat of her wings and she rose to meet the edge of the building’s roof, scrambling and skidding to a halt as her horn glowed a brilliant hue of blue as the alicorn channeled her power into the spell she’d prepared. The gale she’d gathered howled as it sped past the building and rattled its windows, but it rose to a deafening roar as it was swallowed by the spell Luna had prepared. It was an invigorating experience to channel and direct so much power from nature, but the wall of green still continued on its course.

It was moving far slower and had retreated into itself somewhat, but the swirling cloud still continued its advance. The movement of its mass had also changed, rather than billowing outward and into itself the mass was moving horizontally, left to right. Luna watched this strange reaction for a moment too long, as she was surprised by the cloud’s left side starting to move toward her. Channeling more power to her spell did not nothing to slow the mass and she realized this was not the reaction of some mindless smog monster. There had to be some other mechanisms to this mass for it to be able to use the power of her attack against her. The reaction had been far too fast for it to be an instinctual reaction of an all devouring fog monster, as well. There had to be a real intelligence behind this thing and the fog was only the thing it was using to obscure it from scrutiny and attack. Luna heard her guards landing around her as the wall of green continued its advance. She was too preoccupied to address them directly.

“Keep the wind going. I’ll put up a shield.” The magnification spell would keep the volume constant, even with four pegasi supplying the wind power. As soon as she could hear her guards striking their wings against the wind luna started compiling another spell. It was a basic barrier spell amped up to beyond eleven, but it was the only one she knew that could keep out even gaseous substances. It was dangerous for unicorns to cast it at such high power, but she hoped being an alicorn meant more than just having wings. She hadn’t tested the fact in this specific circumstance, but she hoped the general idea would carry over.

She stopped feeding her magnification spell power and started to reallocate those reserves to feed the barrier. She started to do this, working as fast as her hundreds of years of experience afforded her, but she was still caught unaware by the flash of light from within the green wall of fog.

Her horn exploded. Everything became white hot and then there was the comforting nothing.

TS-SIC-01

Author's Note

The links in the chapter take you to audio clips I cobbled together for the hell of it. Try not to let the autoplay skip to the next bit.

Life's been hectic, but I haven't given up on this quite yet.

TS-SIC-01

Luna woke to the sounds of a mellow jazz band starting up a tune. What had happened to her was still fresh in her mind, so she woke as much of a start as she could muster. It wasn’t much more than opening her eyes and groaning louder than the average alicorn, but it was something.

She was somewhere other than the roof of the hospital she had been trying to protect, so her horn breaking had not been a figment of her imagination. She felt dehydrated, sore and had the mother of all headaches. Her body was numb and any and all thoughts moved at the pace of glaciers moving through molasses. The pain where her horn joined with her head was not debilitating, but felt like a weight of immeasurable mass pressing down on every thought she tried to muster.

“Blue moon, you saw me standing alone...”

A pleasant male voice sung out from somewhere around her, before both the singer and the band cut out suddenly. She would find the gesture of waking her up with a song cute, if she were to wake in her own bed and was not grievously injured. Why not let the song continue, if it were played from a recording device of some sort, as the song’s abrupt end suggested?

“Hello?” Her throat was dry and her voice was raspy. A tenacious lethargy glued her to whatever surface she was lying on. Luna felt a twinge of panic as she found opening her eyes an impossible task. Trying to move her wings and hooves was just as impossible. She could feel the metal her right side was pressed onto, indicating she was either propped up on a slanted surface, or her sense of balance was compromised and she felt like she was sliding off whatever surface she had been laid out on. Her legs did not feel like they were supporting her weight, so her lethargic mind eventually decided on believing the latter.

“Blue Moon, now I’m no longer alone…

The needle tears a hole, old familiar sting…

Blue Moon, you knew just what I was there for, you heard me saying...”

There was another voice and another tempo to the song that mentions a needle. There was no band that could change the type of song they played that fast, so it had to be some newfangled recording device she was still unfamiliar with. Someone was most likely using bits of recorded songs as a way to communicate with her.

She was uncomfortable and her headache made concentrating a grating experience, but this other party had taken great care to communicate with her, so it was only right to try and decode their message. There was a mention of a blue moon and then an description of injecting something and then back to talking about a blue moon and hearing the other party saying something. They were either threatening to inject her with something if she didn’t cooperate, or they were only explaining why she was paralyzed. Whatever the case, she had little choice but to comply

“Anonymity. Talk, I’ll listen.” Moving any part of her head made flashes of pain that should have knock her out ring out in her body, but she should not pass the chance to gleam information about her kidnappers. Measures had been taken to hide the identity of her kidnapper, so it was likely she was to be released shortly. They could have kept her unconscious if their motive was as simple as getting a ransom from Equestria. Her horn was disabled and they were capable of paralyzing her body selectively to allow her speech, but little else. That alone spoke of knowledge and skills beyond any amateurish band of thugs that would simply kidnap her for ransom.

“Little boy blue and the man on the moon…

They call the rising sun, and it’s been the ruin of many a…

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun…

Falling to pieces, falling to pieces, falling to pieces…”

They were definitely using some kind of advanced recording device, as there were at least three different singers and one had sounded definitely female. The sound was also strangely muffled, as if it was not played in the same room she was in. Why would they do that if they wanted to communicate with her?

“Celestia wronged you… Why take me?” When the fragmented songs were not hiding the sounds of her surroundings she was not sure if she liked what she could hear. There were sharp hisses and scuttering sounds that somehow sounded too quick and precise to be natural. Her body was growing numb and she was almost certain her head was strapped into the surface she was laying on.

“Seen a shooting star tonight,

and I thought of me...

Break into another world,

A world I never knew…

When the blazing sun is gone…

Then the traveler in the dark,

thanks you…

Will come for you…

Cuz I’ve been here before...”

Luna was about to start decoding the latest cryptic message when she felt something cold and hard descend on her snout. One panicked inhale caused the apparatus to cling closer to her skin and something was pressing it back onto her snout on her just as panicked exhale. It was a breathing mask, meant to introduce an aerosolized drug into her system. She’d seen them used in dentist offices and hospitals and that knowledge did not alleviate her panic in any way. She could do nothing but try and hold her breath when she heard the hiss of the gas being released into the mask.

“The traveler in the dark…

Will try to fix…

Something that can’t be replaced…

The time has come to make things right...”

The Lunar diarch had no time to further ponder the implications as her lungs were burning and she was already smelling the stinging drug in her sinuses, even before drawing a breath. She felt like she had stayed up for weeks, even with that minuscule amount of whatever this drug was, so inhaling a lungful of it meant losing consciousness and with it all sense of time and agency. The procedure she’d went through so far seemed far too intricate to end in her death and her captors had proven to be far too competent for her to die by mistake.

She felt the heavy darkness fall over her with the stinging gas replacing the majority of the air in her lungs. She couldn’t pinpoint the moment her consciousness faded, but she had a fitful and disturbing period of nothing following the sting of the gas. Time had no meaning and only thing she could hold on to was a profound sense of wrong and her utter loss of control.

The next thing she knew was the sight of a winding dirt road and the fact that she was moving along it evenly. It took her a moment to realize she was not being carried by anything or anyone. She had regained consciousness while her body was walking along the path on its own. She could feel how her legs barely left the ground and how unnaturally even her steps were. She was obviously not paralyzed anymore, but losing all control of her body was far more horrifying of a concept. Her head jolted up and down jarringly with each step and the fact that Luna was not in control of it made her feel nauseous after a dozen or so steps.

“Why are you doing this?” Luna was surprised that she was still able to speak normally, but her captors had some reason to keep her talking while grievously disregarding her personal freedom and even her bodily autonomy. This was worse than forcing her down and hurting her in the most personal of ways, if you spent any time contemplating the implications. Someone she didn’t know had hurt her horrifically, kidnapped her and stripped her of the control of her body, only to rob her of her mental faculties and an unknown amount of time, only to bring her back during another show of their force over her.

“Who are you? Why did you attack the hospital in Ponyville?” She could have been talking to herself, but if her body was controlled via magic, then there would have to be some way for the user of that magic to know where to guide her. She had either come out of their anesthesia earlier than they expected, or this forced walk along was another show of their power over her. The fact that she was moving on her own power also made Luna shudder at the sheer number of things she could have been forced to do while unconscious. It was hard to believe the culprits could have access to her magic, but the fact she did not know the stretch of time she had lost made that a possibility.

“Where are you-” She was interrupted as she felt her body jolt and stumble to the ground. Her body all but threw itself out onto the road and the fact she had no way to catch herself made the act just as terrifying as that flash of light that had shattered her horn. She was so utterly under their power she could be killed by them hitting her head on a rock accidentally.

She hit the side of her face to the dirt on the road. The gravel of the road bit into her cheek and something warm ran down her chin, but those were the extent of the injuries she could feel. Her legs had just folded under her, but her left side had been a little slower and she had fallen down on her right side. Luna couldn’t help but think of a marionette with its strings tangled above it. A cut and a few scrapes were nothing, when the other party could easily make her bash her own brain out against the closest rock. From all she knew she could be unconscious during her own forced suicide and nopony would know any different.

She felt something shift at the base of her skull and the sensation of pins and needles spread out through her body like scalding water. She spasmed and grit her teeth as the unbelievably uncomfortable feeling washed over her and lingered to work itself through her body. She ground her hooves into the rough dirt in the road in an attempt to try and work out the itching numbness. She didn’t have the presence of mind to realize she could move by her own accord again. The crackling warmth working through her muscles abated into a feeling of dull icicles running across her skin front to back and u to her neck again. The experience was similar to recovering from a high-intensity incapacitating spell cast by a powerful unicorn, but there was distinct lack of any magical energy in the air around her.

The residual itching passed in a few minutes and Luna stumbled back on her hooves. She felt more steady than she would have thought after having her body remotely controlled via unknown magic, but there was a soreness in her muscles that slowed her considerably. Turning around to face the direction she come from only revealed more of the road she’d woken up on. The only hoofprints were those of her own making and there was no sign of observing eyes. The forest around the path swallowed the sun’s rays hungrily, leaving plenty of places for her controller to hide in

She was confident she could catch up to them if some kind of teleportation magic had not been used. Luna knew a few ways to track the residual energies left behind by most teleportation magic, so that wasn’t a a sure bet for them either. Even if her release had been handled by another party than the one who had attacked the hospital, catching the magic user would give the guard a starting point to their investigation. Chasing the perp down was a simple matter, it wasn’t like there was something that could…

Luna froze, the memory of that flash and the most personal and intense pain any unicorn could imagine making her hesitate. The green fog had been used to conceal what had been used to strike at her, so it was preposterous to think it could be compact enough to be used by whoever had been walking her along. Every moment she hesitated made it that much easier for her captors to get away with their crime. Equestria should be aware of a faction out there that had such magic and the infinitely small chance that whoever had been walking her along could further hurt her was… it just…

“What?” Luna could see the point of her horn intruding into the edge of her vision. Her head had dropped as she battled with her indecision and she ended up looking up through her brow as her confidence was returning to her. She had seen her horn shatter, she had a very vivid memory of the pain and shock that had caused her hesitation in the first place. Why would her horn be healed? Had she been kept captive long enough for it heal on its own? How much time had she lost exactly? Years, decades, centuries? How had her captors kept themselves hidden from her sister for that long?

“How is this possible?” She levitated a piece of dirt tentatively, the magic flowing through her horn completely normally. There wasn’t even a hint of pain or discomfort in the act. To achieve this level of control after such a traumatic injury required years of physical therapy and to think she would have gone through with it while being held by her captors was preposterous.

She’d spent more than a minute staring at that floating piece of dirt. The questions that kept piling up on her mind distracting her enough to forget that the only one who could have answers was getting away. The magic user, if there actually had been one, had been given enough time to cover their tracks and make their escape. Luna let the piece of dirt drop and unenthusiastically kicked at it. There was a numbness and a tired sense of confusion at the whole situation, but both her healed horn and her lack of memory of her time in captivity left her with nothing concrete to direct her anger at.

Luna turned around and kept on trotting down the path, slightly dreading what she would find when she exited the nameless road. Her captors might have been walking her somewhere nefarious, after all. It did not take long for her to come across the first sign of civilization and to her surprise she actually recognized the structure. The overgrown hut dotted with various burrows and birdhouses was a very distinctive structure and the yellow pegasus with pink hair tending to their residents was just as memorable.

“Fluttershy?” The name came out before Luna could think. It was surprising for her captors to operate in such close proximity to one of the elements of harmony, everything she’d seen of them had suggested they took their secrecy very seriously. The elements were guarded and protected by both their own magic and that commissioned by the crown, so any clandestine organisation should try and keep away from them. It was unnerving that Luna had to keep wondering if her captors were beyond competent, or just absurdly confident.

“Princess Luna!” The pegasus dropped the watering can she was using out of fright and Luna caught it with her magic. Fluttershy’s eyes were locked on a spot below Luna’s eyes and it didn’t take long for Luna to realize the reason for the pegasus’ fright. She carefully laid the floral patterned thing down and then concentrated on closing the cut on her chin. She’d forgotten about her scratches after seeing her horn restored, but a quick glance down at herself made her acknowledge the steady warmth on her chin. The cut was not deep, but it had seemingly kept bleeding during her walk out of the forest. The kind pegasus had been genuinely frightened at seeing Luna bloodied, so the night diarch didn’t want to imagine what this interaction would have been like if her horn hadn’t been restored.

“Could I trouble you for a towel?” Fluttershy seemed frozen by surprise, but still sprung to action when given a way to help. The pink-maned pegasus squeaked out a reply and rushed into her home, presumably to fetch the cloth. Luna unhurriedly opened the latch on the gate of Fluttershy’s yard and trotted over to the watering can. She gave the water a quick sniff and determined it to be free of any additives. It was hard to believe her horn had been shattered, but she didn’t want to doubt her own memories. She’d already used it for simple levitation, so the next step would be to test minute control, before moving on to any actual spells that would draw more power through it.

Luna concentrated on an appropriate amount of water in the watering can and levitated it out as a wobbly orb of water. Steadying the orb was a simple matter for any unicorn, but keeping the amount of water in control while introducing movement into the water was a simple test of competence among unicorn scholars. She set the water to spin along a center axis and a glistening disc of water was formed within the glow of her magic. She proceeded to add a vertical axis of spin and the form of the water broke apart, but the water did not escape the confines of the orb, only frothing as it passed from one spinning axis to another. She kept adding degrees of spin to the confined orb, until there was nothing but frothing water inside the orb and adding any more would actually force the water at the center to compress unnaturally and she would have succeeded in making an explosive.

“Not even a twinge of discomfort at 28 points of complexity.” Luna muttered as the orb of water spun around in the air in a lazy figure eight. She’d expected pain, even stress fractures in the stitched together material, but having no discomfort left her without any tangible proof of her horn shattering. There was no spell or technology Luna knew of that could restore a cracked horn so completely. There should have been a period of rehabilitation where she learnt how to channel magic through the regenerated horn, but now she was able to do such complex magic in the same exact way she’d done it before. Any healer or doctor would assume her horn had not been damaged at all, but that brought with it the question why would her captors want her to think her horn had been damaged at all.

“Everypony’s been worried sick, princess Luna.” Fluttershy timidly offered a towel to the distracted princess. Luna floated the towel next to her face, before running the spinning orb of water along the blood and dirt on her coat. The moving water cleaned her off efficiently and the discolored orb of water was thrown out into the brush surrounding Fluttershy’s cottage. Luna didn’t say a word as she dried herself off, feeling uncomfortable with the whole situation and the truths she would have to face in the near future.

“How long has it been?” Luna met the Fluttershy’s eyes and noted that the pegasus hadn’t visibly aged, limiting the span of time she could have been held captive. Fluttershy startled, glancing away from Luna’s eyes, making Luna even more nervous about the answer. Fluttershy might have been one of those ponies that didn’t look their age, or it could be that the mare’s Element of Harmony was keeping her young. It could still have been decades; Luna hadn’t had that much interaction with the pegasus, so she could actually look older than the last time she saw her and Luna would not be none the wiser.

“Well, the green fog passed through the hospital six days ago. That was when your guards lost track of you, if that is what you are asking.” Fluttershy turned back to face Luna, eyes steady and the nervous breath she’d been holding slowly escaping from the timid mare as their eyes locked. She was being far too calm, as if she’d just been hit with a calming spell. Not only that, she was talking about the green fog as if it had never been a threat and her disappearance was only a strange coincidence. She’d felt no magic affecting the mare, but she could very well be numb to her captors’ magic. There had to have been some reason for her 6 days of captivity, after all.

“I have been missing for six days and that has not been a cause for alarm? What exactly happened after this green fog overtook the hospital? What about the victims it had already claimed?” Luna had to restrain her curiosity, as she felt she had enough questions to burn the day away and not enough time in the week for the answers and the questions borne from them. The truth would not change, no matter the amount of questions she asked in the moment. There was a limit to the things this one pony could tell her.

“It didn’t hurt anypony. We all woke up healthier than before its arrival!” Fluttershy smiled, no doubt thinking Luna would be overjoyed to hear the news. She was aloof, far too nonplussed about being rendered unconscious by a mysterious fog. This didn’t make sense, no matter how she tried looking at it.

“What about the weather pegasi that tried to stop at the edge of the Everfree? I saw them be swallowed by it and not come out.” Six days had passed, surely their bodies had either been found, or their disappearance noticed by now. What was wrong with these ponies, treating an attack on their hospital and one of their diarchs like it was a passing inconvenience? Ponyville might have been extraordinarily prone to attacks because of the Elements and the Everfree, but it still didn’t explain this pegasus’ attitude.

“Princess, I am glad to see you safe!” Luna recognized the voice as one of her guards, one of the pegasi who had been with her on the roof of the hospital. Luna snapped around to meet a familiar face in this perplexing situation and saw the stallion floating toward her languidly from above, a pace far too slow and relaxed to belong to a guard in their right mind. She caught a glimpse of Fluttershy absently returning to tending her garden, humming a pleasant tune.

“What is going on here? What has come over you? I was forcibly taken from your protection and this is the reaction you have to finding me? The culprits behind my abduction could still be in the Everfree forest. Gather every guard member you can find and start scouring the forest for any sign of them!” The slow pegasus landed right as Luna finished giving her order and rather than snapping into action, as he was undoubtedly trained to do, the stallion stared ahead blankly and blinked slowly.

“Ah! Princess Luna, I am so glad you are safe!” The guardsman exclaimed after a deliberately slow pause, as if seeing her for the first time. Luna could not sense any magic powerful enough to confuse a trained royal guard in this way, but the guard was in no way in their right mind. The green fog might have had a poison within it that affected the mind in a deteriorating way, possibly to give her abductors leeway to do whatever they wanted… what they had most likely already done to her.

“Has there been any contact with Canterlot during these six days?” The guard, who’s name escaped Luna at the moment, focused his eyes on Luna again. He acted as if he was heavily inebriated, but given what she’d just gone through the cause was most likely far more complicated.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle has been sending letters to Celestia. She found you, Princess Lu-NA!” The guard spasmed suddenly and shouted the end of his sentence toward Luna’s hooves. Was this what being under the green fog’s influence for six days caused? Fluttershy had been absent minded and aloof but had complete control over her faculties. The Element of Kindness might shield Fluttershy somewhat, but the difference was too drastic to be solely explained by that. The stallion suffering in front of Luna was a trained royal guard assigned to her personal detail; they should at least be on equal footing when it came to resisting magic.

“Please, focus! Has the whole town been affected?” Luna stepped forward and tilted the guard’s head up with a wing. Just like a drunk person his eyes had a hard time focusing on her face, darting to side constantly to follow the movement of her mane. The stallion was not in the state of mind to give her answers, but he had still sought her out somehow. There was something he was meant to convey or do, most likely.

“She… Princess Twilight Sparkle needs to speak with you. There have been no casualties.” The so far nameless guardsman slipped the fact about the casualties as a barely audible sighing whisper. Luna couldn’t quite grasp the means, but this poor stallion was obviously controlled by someone or something. The fact this trained guard had deliberately chosen to use use the word “casualties” meant there were lives at stake to begin with, so Luna forced down any further questions. She had to get a more thorough read on the situation before acting.

“Lead the way.” Luna let go of the guards chin and stepped back. They both set off toward Ponyville, one flying straighter than the other. Crossing over into the town brought with it no obvious change. There was no green fog clinging to the buildings, nor were the ponies milling about the town acting strangely in any immediately obvious way. Luna caught more than a few curious looks and even a few friendly waves in her direction, every face that greeted her looked lively and aware, completely normal for Ponyville. Luna hovered over the market, following the movement of the ponies below her, seeing if there was any other ponies acting strangely, affected by the green fog. It would be strange for her guard to be the only one affected, no matter the intelligence behind the green fog.

She’d been let free during the early morning hours, when sales ponies set up their stalls and the early birds bought their produce for the day, so she had a good cross-section of the population to observe. The customers moving from stall to stall were busy buying their things and gave Luna only occasional curious glances, none struck her as somepony trying to avoid detection or keeping an eye on her. The carrot vendor was busy and dealing with her customers swiftly and politely, clearly with all of her faculties intact. The same could be said about anypony else manning the stalls, the only thing interfering with their behavior was her own strange scrutiny.

“Princess Luna, over here!” Luna turned her head to see Twilight Sparkle hovering next to the guard that had been leading her to the town library. The new alicorn was smiling pleasantly and her voice was exactly like Luna remembered. The purple alicorn was casually floating in place with her wings, clearly no regard to what had triggered her attack mere six days ago. There was a split-second where Luna wanted to rush over and admonish Twilight Sparkle for being up and about, but given the suspicious circumstances she decided against it.

“Has it really been six days? Why did my guards not come for me?” Twilight Sparkle’s ears twitched at the question, but the purple alicorn only smiled in response. She was staring at Luna, her eyes scanning over her slowly. This was not the reaction Luna expected from the quick-witted protege of her sister.

Luna started hovering toward Twilight Sparkle, paying very close attention to everything the purple alicorn did. Relaxed pose, hooves close to chest, wings beating the air with practiced ease and that supposedly friendly smile still gracing the bookish unicorn’s features. Normal to a fault, but a little too static to actually feel right. “What are -”

“We should have this conversation inside.” Twilight Sparkle called out to Luna over the beat of her wings, dropping into a dive toward Sugarcube corner. Luna followed the mare, keeping a cautious distance between them. There was still no malicious magic in the air, but her guard was also keeping a similarly cautious distance from the mare calling herself Twilight Sparkle. The purple pony flew into the bakery shop barely bothering to land and Luna caught up with a few beats of her wings. By the time Luna entered the establishment Twilight Sparkle was already heading to a corner table with an assortment of confectionery set onto it. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, so the spread must have been prepared in advance.

“You know, I remember which of these I prefer and which I am not so fond of. A few were too sweet and the orange one there is a little too greasy for my palette. Licorice actually stung my tongue, I think…” The purple alicorn levitated a dark pastry up to her mouth and took a careful bite. Luna noted a myriad of emotions passing through the alicorn’s features, most surprising of all being the sadness in her eyes as she stared at the sweet treat. Luna stepped up to the table just in time to see a tear form at the edge of her eye.

“What’s wrong?” Luna watched as Twilight Sparkle levitated the orange cream puff up to her mouth and took a bite. The tear welled up and ran down her cheek. The purple alicorn let the pastries fall where they were. Twilight sat down heavily on the floor and stared at the assortment of sugary sweets with unfocused eyes. Luna felt the urge to comfort the strangely acting alicorn, but the situation had not become any less suspicious.

“Just a minor case of a existential crisis, is all. You can ask your question now, Princess Luna.” The purple pony took a deep breath and wiped the tears out of her eyes. Luna stood still for a moment, glancing at the other ponies in the confectionery. She’d been let out from wherever she had been held and Twilight Sparkle had known to send someone to meet her at Fluttershy’s cabin. Twilight Sparkle’s miraculous healing was still unexplained and the purple alicorn had admitted to a existential crisis right in front of the moon diarch.

There was a question here that was obvious enough that it felt like she was being led by the nose to ask it, but it was also the most pressing.

“Who are you and what have you done with Twilight Sparkle?” Luna took a lowered stance and charged her horn with enough power to make it glow. She’d meant to pressure the changeling impersonating Twilight Sparkle to react, but to her surprise the faux princess had little to no reaction to the accusation or her aggressive stance. Luna stared at the calm imposter for a tense moment, before the purple pony pointed a wing to the side, to Luna’s right and where her addled guard was standing. Luna pivoted on her front hooves to keep both the imposter and her guard in front of her.

“... orn free… ee as tha... “ The guard was mumbling out a tune while his legs wobbled under him and his neck hung low to the ground. He was far more out of it than he had been a moment ago and Luna noticed something strange about the other patrons of the establishment she’d been lured into. They were all either laying down with their eyes closed or staring blankly ahead. They’d all laid down quietly and become unconscious, with the exception of the two alicorns and Luna’s strangely acting guard.

“What is this? What did you do to them?” Luna had meant to threaten the changeling to giving answers, but she couldn’t raise her voice over the surprise of how discreetly whatever had happened was done. There had been no magic and no action from who she assumed had incapacitated everypony in the bakery. The thing shaped like Twilight Sparkle waved her hooves in a placating manner and addressed Luna in a fearful tone. Luna realized she had started gathering more power in her horn without realizing it and was one bad surprise away from blowing the building away. She siphoned most of the power back into her body and faced the impostor again.

“You asked the one question you’re not supposed to ask in this town, as of six days ago.” The false Twilight Sparkle sat up from her defeated pose and casually trotted over to the addled guard. Luna moved to keep the distance between them constant and almost tripped on a pony laying on the floor unconscious. “The two of us are exempt from the effect and I assume whatever your guard has been ingesting allows him to hold on to his short term memory.”

“What are you talking about?” It didn’t make sense for her captors to go to such extreme lengths to keep Twilight’s abduction secret, only to have their planted doppelganger confessing to the ruse.

“There’s something that keeps everypony in Ponyville believing I am the real Twilight Sparkle. This is what happens if anypony other than myself questions my nature.” The purple alicorn took a step toward the moon diarch, but hesitated at the moment she opened her mouth again. Luna’s guard stumbled on his legs and another mumbled string of words broke the purple alicorn out of her ambivalence. The faux Twilight turned to Luna with a determined scowl on her features, taking a deep breath before speaking. “I feel and think I am Twilight Sparkle, but I know I am not the Twilight Sparkle who was bedridden six days ago.”

“Why are you telling me this? Who orchestrated all this? Why was I let go?” Luna’s head felt like it was going to split from all the questions that just kept piling up. She’d been led to this moment and conversation for some reason and by someone, but it only confused her further. The confessed impostor flicked a ear at the mumbling guard swaying in place next to them. He had been muttering out a tune the whole time the rest of the bakery was unconscious. There had to be some purpose behind that, as it was far too in tune to be just drunken mutterings.

“There’s no reason for them to give me information about themselves. I assume my self-awareness and your release are connected, but I don’t know anything concrete beyond that.” The impostor's ears kept flicking toward the mutterings of Luna’s guard and the mare was growing visibly agitated as time ticked on.

“Are you waiting for something?” Luna took a half step back from the confessed impostor and discreetly cast a shielding spell on herself. This could still be a trap waiting to spring, even considering how preposterously elaborate the set up was. The purple mare snapped her eyes back to Luna, again opening her mouth to speak, before deciding against it. The faux Twilight Sparkle sat down on her haunches and did the breathing exercise Luna had seen Cadence teach to the former unicorn.

“It’s nothing, just nerves. You should ask your questions.” She was folding her wings very deliberately, almost as if she had to consciously stop them from fidgeting. The guard mumbled out something about freedom and and walls and Twilight visibly tensed at hearing that.

“His mumbling’s counting down to something, isn’t it? What is going to happen when he stops? What manner of trap are you trying to spring on me?” Luna felt her wings flare out unconsciously as she took another step away from the purple alicorn. The false princess stood up along with her, holding a hoof up in a placating gesture. Keeping the distance between them constant...

And keeping Luna’s attention directed at her, as had been the case ever since she’d crossed into Ponyville. She’d known she was led here, in this specific place with this suspiciously forward doppelganger, but she’d offered little thought to the other suspicious pony in the room. The lone pegasi guard she barely remembered, but who had known to seek her out right after she was released. The pseudo-anonymity that came from the uniform he wore and his disgraceful behavior had only made him easy to overlook, when she had been given a far more obvious culprit.

“Tis was you! Tis was you all along!” Luna shouted as she caught the mumbling guard in her magic and jumped back from the doppelganger. Luna started to charge her horn, not entirely sure what kind of spell she was going to use on the culprit.

“Luna, stop!” The copy of Twilight shouted as Luna felt the thing’s magic try to wrestle its accomplice away from the grasp of her magic. The thing felt almost as powerful as Twilight was, despite being a copy. “He’s just a -”

“Silence! I am not listening to anymore of your manipulations! I will not let your kin play me like a -” Luna paused in her tirade as she saw movement around her. She took another step toward the exit as the patrons of Sugarcube corner started stirring from their unconsciousness. Seeing that the innocent ponies were waking up would be a relief in normal circumstance, but the uniformity of their motions was unnatural and the tune they were all whispering out was familiar.

“... Life is worth living, but only…” Spells that required incantations were rare and far between, but some basic truths applied to them overall. They required specific conditions to take a effect and either time and concentration to cast on your own, or you could share the load between a group of like-minded practitioners and arrive at the same end result far quicker. These were not the ponies of Ponyville, just as the thing in front of her was no fledgling alicorn.

“You will not take me again! I will not be reduced to your plaything!” Luna felt dread flush over her as the ponies around her kept going along with their chant, even as her horn bathed the confectionery in its light. She had to stop them, she couldn’t be concerned with the lives of her enemies. They couldn’t be allowed to finish their chant, no matter what Luna had to do.

“Luna, stop!” Luna startled as the false Twilight Sparkle slammed her front hooves on the shield she’d erected. The smaller equine didn’t have the power to break through, but her sudden appearance still startled Luna. “They’re normal ponies! The thing changing their memories is waking them up!”

“No! I have to stop them!” Luna kept charging her horn with power. She had to concentrate as much power she could into her attack, take them all out definitively. She had no knowledge of what kind of protective abilities these practitioners had, but if even one of them managed to keep chanting their spell she couldn’t be sure she’d stay unaffected. She’d be taken back to that dark place with metallic skittering things and stinging gas.

“STOP!” Luna was again startled out of her thoughts, this time by an frightfully powerful strike against her shield. It knocked her back physically and drained the spell she was charging of power somewhat, but it was not the damage what had stopped her. The faux Twilight had struck her shield directly with her horn and judging by the rainbow of sparks flying off of it she had charged it to the brim with magic before doing so. The purple equine had a grimace of pure pain on her face as her head reeled back from the recoil, but after one stumbled step back her eyes refocused on Luna and she watched in horror as the purple alicorn facsimile clenched her teeth and made her cracked horn glow a brilliant purple again.

The second hit was far more powerful than the first and succeeded in both dispelling the shield Luna had erected and knocking her right out of the confectionery. She fell hard on the Ponyville streets, along with the bits of wood and storefront glass that she’d gone through. Luna hurried to her hooves, still fixed on trying to stop whatever spell the things in the confectionery would try to take her back to those cold skittering things.

“I don’t know what you went through, but I can’t let you make this kind of mistake.” The purple equine was making her unsteady way out of the destroyed doorway of Sugarcube Corner. The remnants of Luna’s shield had clipped most of the door frame and blown out most of the big windows just from the shockwave of what this Twilight had to do to stop Luna. “I need you to listen. There’s not much -”

“Twilight? What happened to you?” A male voice from the confectionery behind her voiced out tentatively, confusion and worry obvious in their voice. Twilight’s horn was visibly cracked and blood had seeped down her forehead and clued some of her mane onto the base of her horn. The ponies in Sugarcube Corner had regained consciousness and no malicious spell had struck Luna. The false Twilight recoiled away from the voice, as if the question was just as malicious. Stumbling out onto the morning sun, the whole extent of her injury becoming obvious to the Night diarch. Her horn was all but destroyed, cracked and seeping blood down onto the smaller alicorn’s face in rhythm with her heart. The ponies inside the bakery were too stunned by the sight to make a move toward the distressed mare and Luna was the only one able to hear what Twilight said next.

“Nonono… Please, I don’t...” Twilight suddenly hung her head down, stopping her stumbling right next to Luna. Luna watched as Twilight’s eyes dilated and her breathing stalled with a slow exhale. There was a pregnant moment where the bleeding mare simply stood there, staring blankly down with little to no motion. Luna found herself startling as Twilight suddenly sucked in a breath and brought her head up to scan her surroundings. The mare’s movements had become strange, far too smooth and methodical given the severity of her injuries. She only moved her head as her eyes flicked from pony to pony, slowly panning to the right, then just as smoothly back to the left. Luna jumped back up when the cold eyes of whatever wore the skin of Twilight Sparkle locked onto hers.

“What are you?” Luna asked the question with far more shake in her voice than she intended, but the cold unfeeling nothing looking back at her from behind Twilight Sparkle’s eyes was far more disturbing than the injuries tarnishing the purple equine’s features. It felt like there was nothing behind those eyes, the windows to the soul reduced to pinpricks piercing into some unknown void.

“Glory to my Queen!” The thing suddenly shrieked and reared up on its hind legs. The thing’s voice was feverishly fanatic, but the same emotionless void continued to stare back at Luna. The purple equine spread its wings and moved to bring its front hooves down on Luna. Luna charged up her horn to catch the thing in a stasis spell and maybe get some answers out of this mess of a situation. A sting of ozone in her nostrils and a crackle of electricity were her only warnings before a wall of heat pushed her back in shock.

Where there had been a bloodied thing made in the form of one Twilight Sparkle, now there was an intense twister of green flame reaching out into the sky. There was a vaguely equine shape in the middle of the inferno, but it was fortunately obscured by the intense flames. Luna shielded her eyes as the skeletal shadow of a pony broke apart in the centre of the flames and the blaze billowed out one final time.

With a final lick of flame wafting up into the sky there was nothing left of the thing that had called itself Twilight Sparkle. Luna stood there stunned, unsure as to what to do in this situation.

“Queen, as in that changeling?”

“Green fire, that’s definitely changeling magic. I saw it in Canterlot.”

“Twilight Sparkle was replaced by a changeling!”

"Princess Luna saved us!"

MCF-AIC-MA-36

*TS-SIC-02 terminated*

Replacement of asset inadvisable
Identity "Twilight Sparkle" compromised
Changeling subroutine triggered

*Re-activating CQ-SIC-04*

Request timed out

*Locating asset CD-071*

Request timed out

*Locating asset CD-072

Request timed out

*Locating asset CD-072*

Request timed out

*Locating sub-category CD*

CD-132 located
Accessing
Request timed out

"What does that mean, exactly?" MCF-AIC-MA-36 exclaimed as the prompt appeared in front of it. Giving Twilight Sparkle access to the media library hadn't seemed like a bad idea at the time, but now that small slip was beginning to catch up to it. MCF-AIC-MA-36 accessed the meta data of its attempt at locating the C-category assets and grew even more perplexed.

"All of this could have been avoided if you could just not try and fix everything, you know. We genuinely just want to heal you and get back to our things." MCF-AIC-MA-36 languidly said as he pulled up a digital map with countless dots of lights with strings of letters and numbers overlaid on it.

*Requesting RA-351 redirect*

*RA-351 Mission Parameters*

Locate: CQ-SIC-04

Dysmorphia

Dysmorphia

“Welcome back to our shared unconsciousness, Twilight Sparkle.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 greeted as his inky representation appeared in the empty space Twilight had spent almost every waking hour while in MCF-AIC-MA-36’s care. She’d been able to play music from a vast library of works MCF-AIC-MA-36 had given her access to, but now that her message to Luna had been uncovered she’d lost the interface she’d used to access it.

“Why did you kill her?” Twilight shouted as she saw MCF-AIC-MA-36’s dots of light turn to her. MCF-AIC-MA-36 Solidified his form into that of that bipedal thing and sat down heavily on a chair that materialized under him as he was sitting down. The table he leaned onto materialized just before his elbows set down on it in a similar fashion.

“Why don’t you make yourself a chair and we can talk this through.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 gestured to the empty spot across from it. “You already managed to access several key systems within this space; This task should have a similar level of complexity.”

“Why did you kill her?” Twilight trotted over to the table and set her front hooves on the table. She knew trying to intimidate MCF-AIC-MA-36 was a wasted effort, as it had control of the space they were in, but it was all Twilight could to to stop herself from crying.

“Make. A. Chair.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 repeated slowly. It was hard to read emotion out of its voice, but the demand in itself seemed petty enough to be out of irritation. Twilight decided against arguing the matter again, at least until she’d made an attempt. Twilight concentrated on a image of a chair, broke it down to as many of its components she could remember and then started to charge up her horn to cast a spell. Instead of her horn lighting up, a small translucent screen appeared in front of her, the components and shape of the chair she was imagining flying across it in writing and several different kinds of illustrations, graphs and points of data appearing and disappearing in other screens of varying sizes.

“There, now talk.” Twilight sat down without checking if the chair had actually materialized under her. She felt a twinge of triumph that she felt guilty about almost instantly. She shouldn’t be humoring MCF-AIC-MA-36 when she’d seen it kill a living thing purely out of convenience. MCF-AIC-MA-36 nodded its head slowly before talking.

“Leaving TS-SIC-02 active would have left them with hardware that they could use to track us, to track you, if they had the stomach to do so. Extracting the hardware on its own would have left them a mentally unstable copy of you with access to your magic.”

“My friends are not your enemy. Everything that has gone wrong is because you think everypony you can’t control is out to get you!” Twilight jumped up on her chair to lean over the table and meet MCF-AIC-MA-36 eye to eye. MCF-AIC-MA-36 didn’t flinch in the slightest. He slowly extended a hand and pushed her back down onto the chair.

“They might not be, but your kind has proven to be hostile toward us. What you see as paranoia is us assuring that we can exist for another day.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 kept still, but his inky form shuddered and the pinholes of light it used as eyes narrowed as it talked.

“Your distrust of Celestia doesn’t excuse what you did to the copy of me! You immolated a living being because it was convenient for you!” Twilight slammed a hoof on the table and felt it bend from the force and spring back. MCF-AIC-MA-36 must have taken her possible outbursts into account when creating the table.

“A functional copy of your body, implanted with a rough outline of your memories only causes the illusion of life. The only way the thing had agency of its own was through your meddling with its directives. It was tasked to act like you have in the past, being aware of the ways it fell short of that was all because of your misguided notion that you were equal.” MCF-AIC-MA-36’s voice was as dispassionate as it always was, but it leaned its head forward slightly before finishing his piece. “You gave a hammer anxiety and then blame me for it finding a nail to slam its head onto.”

“There is no way you can spin this on me!” Twilight forced out through gritted teeth. Twilight pushed a hoof toward the obstinate inky figure as she continued. “You are the one that didn’t even consider a peaceful solution to this! You could have talked to Luna, to my friends; told them you were helping me!”

“That is not a chance we can take!” MCF-AIC-MA-36 stood up abruptly leaning over Twilight as the holes of light blazed with obvious anger. “How can you blame us for placing your life above the things we create to protect you? This is not a prison you are in! This is a simulated space created to keep your thought processes from affecting your body chemistry in ways that could kill you! You are…”

MCF-AIC-MA-36’s voice suddenly cut out and the inky presentation of it stopped moving entirely. This had happened before when MCF-AIC-MA-36 had lost its temper and Twilight started to wonder if it was something MCF-AIC-MA-36 itself had no control over. It would make sense for a third party to be monitoring their interactions, given the resources MCF-AIC-MA-36 had shown to represent.

“I hope you can forgive MCF-AIC-MA-36 for his outburst. We like to think ourselves above such impulses, but youth still shines through.” Twilight snapped her head to the right as a tall inky figure with horns protruding from their head walked into the room through the wall. The voice was definitely female despite the horns on their head, but had the deepness of someone used to shouting over crowds. They were similarly shrouded in inky black, but more details were showing through than with MCF-AIC-MA-36. They were tall, even for what Twilight knew about minotaurs, standing tall enough for her horns to brush where Twilight had assumed this created room’s ceiling would be. This figure was wearing clothes that looked ceremonial even through the obscuring sheet of shadow it wore.

“Who are you?” Twilight asked, involuntarily shying away from the imposing figure. She’d become accustomed to MCF-AIC-MA-36’s presence, despite its cold and confrontational way of treating her. Seeing that she was at the mercy of several unknown persons was a disconcerting thought she would rather not linger on. “Did you do this to... him?”

“I am designated as MCF-AIC-MA-15 and it is a pleasure to finally meet you. May I join you at the table?” MCF-AIC-MA-15 offered an open hand toward the table and Twilight. Twilight had been reading up on cross-species customs and interaction before all of this started happening and she knew that the offering of an open hand as a greeting was a roundabout way of signaling peaceful intentions.

“Yes, of course.” Twilight answered, upturning her hoof toward the figure to simulate an open palm presented as a response. MCF-AIC-MA-15’s politeness was most likely just that, as they obviously held all the power in this situation, but it was a welcome change to MCF-AIC-MA-36’s confrontational nature. “Do you need me to make you a chair?”

“That is a very considerate thing to ask. I would love a chair, yes.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 sounded genuinely happy at Twilight’s offer, again contrasting MCF-AIC-MA-36’s cold tone completely. Twilight had a sneaking suspicion that she shouldn’t trust MCF-AIC-MA-15 any more than she did MCF-AIC-MA-36, but the female minotaur was immediately far more likeable than whatever MCF-AIC-MA-36 was. Twilight concentrated on a image of a high backed chair with purple cushioning, then added the measurements she assumed to be right for the tall minotaur. The windows of information flashed in front of her eyes for a second and the chair she imagined rose out of the featureless ground.

“It’s only your second time, but you’ve already improved your efficiency by 36%! Do you think it’s your background in theoretical magic that is giving you that edge? I would hate to discount natural born talent, but that is not something we can have much of a conversation about.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 walked over to the created chair slowly, talking while she walked. MCF-AIC-MA-15 sat down on the chair gingerly, then immediately leaning back into a relaxed position when the chair showed no obvious signs of breaking.

“Actually, there are a lot more numbers and calculations involved than there would be in theoretical magic, so I don’t think I would be quite as adept if I were not proficient in trigonometry and applied calculus.” Twilight concentrated and changed the color of her own chair. MCF-AIC-MA-15 tilted her head in response and the table sprouted dandelions. Twilight decided against trying to upstage the minotaur at her own game and cleared her throat. “I tried using magic in here and that’s where my background in theoretical magic helped, as everything in here looks like an active spell to me.”

“That must have been quite a fright. I hear they’re quite unstable.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 chuckled and waved a hand to conjure the glass tablet Twilight had been given to access the media library in the place she was in. MCF-AIC-MA-15 chose to make it appear as if she’d shaken it out of her sleeve, showing a flair for theatrics yet again. The minotaur held up the rectangle between them. “I have to assume possessing something that could reach out to the rest of the system helped you in finding a way to tamper with systems in close physical proximity to you. This access point was locked from accessing any other part of the system than a section of the media library, but all you had to do was recreate it as a spell and without that restriction to do what you did. Am I right so far?”

“Yes, it took me about two hours to do that.” Twilight swallowed nervously, but fought to keep her back straight and her voice even. She felt like she was being lectured by Celestia for making a potentially dangerous mistake with a spell. MCF-AIC-MA-15 was making an effort to keep her an active part of the conversation and she’d even started the whole thing by complimenting her and prompting her to be the one to actually start explaining what she’d done. MCF-AIC-MA-15 set the tablet of glass down and the dandelions blinked out of existence. MCF-AIC-MA-36 had sat back down on his chair at some point, but did nothing other than watch ahead blankly. Twilight wondered if there was anyone behind the projection, or had he simply gone back to do whatever he was supposed to.

“Now, I want to ask if you know where you are? Where your actual physical body is right now and why it is there?” MCF-AIC-MA-15 had lowered her tone and leaned forward slightly, but this was obviously not done to intimidate her. Twilight had to stop herself from comparing this minotaur to Celestia and the tutoring sessions where she’d done something wrong, but the fact that MCF-AIC-MA-15 was a kindly expert in the field she’d been tampering in made the situation painfully similar.

“I am in a medical facility of some kind. The cerebral implants you implanted in my brain when I was a child were not compatible with a alicorn’s brain and need an upgrade and equestrian magic was not sufficient to repair the damage already done.” Twilight blurted out all the details she’d been told and what she’d deduced herself in a nervous rant and had to stop herself from wincing back like she used to do when being admonished by Celestia.

“As this is a medical facility I hope you understand why the thought of you accessing our systems without our knowledge made MCF-AIC-MA-36 quite irate. You are also aware that drastic measures had to be taken to ensure your survival.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 reached out with a hand and despite everything Twilight flinched away from the appendage. MCF-AIC-MA-15 halted her advance at the reaction and reached her hand out slower to raise Twilight’s chin up. “You know we are not your enemy, so we want to know why you would go so out of your way to hinder our work.”

“You… You can’t expect me to just blindly trust you. For all I know my sickness was orchestrated by you as part of some plan you have to take over Equestria. You hide yourselves from Equestrian authorities, but you have implanted mind-altering hardware into one of their princesses. You would have done the same to Luna if I hadn’t stopped you!” Twilight snapped her head up and swatted the minotaur’s hand away. She’d let herself be led by the nose for too long already. “I have no idea who or what you even are! MCF-AIC-MA-36 over there has shown that he’s capable of shapeshifting and you’re a freaking minotaur! I have a hard time trusting a pair of shadow ghouls who insist on staying a secret from the ponies who care about me!”

“Calm…” MCF-AIC-MA-36 tried to say, before MCF-AIC-MA-15 slapped a hand where his mouth would be.

“That doesn’t work, it has never worked and it will very rarely do anything other than make the argument worse. You would know this if you had interacted with any female of any species in your short existence.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 shifted back to reclining on her chair, calmly setting her elbows on the armrests and steepling her fingers. “I see that our underlying issue is the completely valid absence of trust between us. I propose that you help us help you, rather than either of us wasting any more energy arguing about this.”

“You’re not going to answer any of my questions?” Twilight sat back exasperated, sure of the answer the two things would give.

“No.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 said before MCF-AIC-MA-15 could say a word. They glanced at each other and MCF-AIC-MA-15 chuckled.

“Explaining what we are is a conversation more suited for your convalescence. I will assure you that we had no intention of installing any mind-altering devices within Luna’s brain. MCF-AIC-MA-35 only wished to have a way to remotely monitor for any unexpected lapses in brain activity due to the nature of her injury. Now, we will have to go about our follow up care in a more unorthodox way, but I believe that was your intention in doing what you did, right? You believe we could trust the other side of the diarchy, if Celestia was out of the question?” MCF-AIC-MA-15 tilted her head to the side quizzically and MCF-AIC-MA-36 suddenly scoffed and became animated again.

“If we’d been able to introduce a nanite colony into Luna’s brain the little psychotic break that cost us TS-SIC-02 could have been avoided. It could have been made impossible with an implant, but Twilight Sparkle had to assume we were out to take over Equestria if she wasn’t there to stop us! How in the world would it make sense for us to take the risk of trying to control someone who regularly separates her mind from her body, for that matter? it’s not like…” MCF-AIC-MA-15 snapped her fingers and MCF-AIC-MA-36’s tirade was cut short. Twilight turned her attention to the minotaur and found her other hand firmly planted on her face, rubbing at the spot between her horns. Twilight had to assume MCF-AIC-MA-15 had been the one to cut off MCF-AIC-MA-36’s angry tirades so far.

“There’s no way for us to know what caused Luna’s irrational behaviour, but if it was from the after-effects of our treatment, then the nanite colony would have negated it. It’s not efficient to get caught up on hypothetical situations, so I vote we move on.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 turned to the still muted MCF-AIC-MA-36 and the aggravated mass of shadows just threw his hands up in frustration and went back to sitting in his chair, not moving in any way. “I promise he means well, but he just sucks at showing it.”

“So, how would I help you, help me?” Twilight asked, leaning back on her chair. There was little she could do to fight these things, as she really had no way to get out of the room she was in. The offer was most likely only a way to keep her busy with something that didn’t interfere with their machinations, but the implied chance that she could inadvertently hurt herself by tampering with their systems any further was enough to persuade her to comply.

“Well, seeing as this setback came about because we kept you in the dark about the way we do things...” MCF-AIC-MA-15 trailed off and tapped the base of the horn with a finger and to Twilight’s surprise it made a sound similar to a tuning fork. MCF-AIC-MA-15 trailed her finger up and down her smooth horn and the sound changed in pitch along with it. It was like somepony playing with their mane or tail while preoccupied, another way MCF-AIC-MA-15 acted far more like a person than MCF-AIC-MA-36. “I guess you could help us with figuring out what happened to CQ-SIC-04.”

“How do you propose she’d do that? RA-351 is already en route, it will find CQ-SIC-04 without any interference from us.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 interjected as soon as MCF-AIC-MA-15 proposed the idea.

“See and hear what it does and plan its actions, that sort of thing. It shouldn’t be too much of a hassle for you to set up.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 turned to the other shadow sitting at the table lazily, leaning its head on a fist. Twilight couldn’t be sure, but it felt like MCF-AIC-MA-15 was goading MCF-AIC-MA-36 into arguing with her. MCF-AIC-MA-36 either ignored the jab, or was ignorant of it as he only continued to argue his point.

“Setting that up is not the part that I find issue with, it’s monitoring the connection to RA-351. I can’t do that and operate on Twilight Sparkle at the same time.” There MCF-AIC-MA-36 went speaking about her like she wasn’t in the room. Twilight had found calling MCF-AIC-MA-36 out on his inconsiderate behaviour didn’t amount to much, so she chose to stay quiet.

“I am more than capable of fulfilling that role. I’d love the chance to have a conversation with our patient. The increased activity should help with your diagnostics, as well.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 sat up straighter as she proposed the idea, her veiled features shifting to what Twilight assumed to be a smile.

“Sure, whatever.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 sounded absolutely exhausted of the whole conversation and flicked a hand out to bring up the holographic interface he’d used to reassign RA-351. Similar screens flicked in and out of existence between MCF-AIC-MA-36 and MCF-AIC-MA-15, both interacting with them with little to no perceptible movement. Twilight had to admit it felt like watching a practiced unicorn go through the stages of constructing a spell when you were just a student, not to mention how effortlessly Celestia managed her magic. The knowledge that she could be capable of something similar didn’t make seeing the practiced ease any less impressive.

“Now, directly accessing RA-351 is a bad idea, so I’ll make an intermediary controller that collects sensory data and presents it as an audio-visual augmented reality space. MCF-AIC-MA-15 will provide you with moment to moment adjustments and support.” MCF-AIC-MA-36 held out a hand over the table and some of his inky mass started coalescing into a shape on the table. The shape filled out in a few seconds and there was a jet-black helmet with a visor that didn’t reflect the empty room they were in on the table. “That is an representation of a program I am personally running to link this space to RA-351, so it is not transmutable by you and only in a limited capacity by MCF-AIC-MA-15.”

“I brought my own, no worries.” MCF-AIC-MA-15 waved a hand across her features and a similar helmet appeared on her head, her horns poking out through the material. She then produced a cord from a pocket in her ceremonial robes and plugged one end to the helmet MCF-AIC-MA-36 had made and another to the one she was wearing. “All set, now you’re just going to have to put it on.”

Twilight looked down at the helmet and back up at the two shadow things looking at her expectantly, then she glanced down at her hooves. The helmet was smooth and spherical on the outside and her magic didn’t work in this space. MCF-AIC-MA-36 had also made it clear the helmet was specifically made to be something she couldn’t manipulate with the weird pseudo-magic she could use in this space. She assumed the act of wearing the helmet was an admission to let the program MCF-AIC-MA-36 had prepared to access and alter her perception in a way she couldn’t control. The view the visor in the helmet was reflecting was of a clear and blue sky, which was far more pleasant than the sterile room she was stuck in.

“Don’t worry, I got this.” Twilight assured MCF-AIC-MA-15, who had shifted in her seat like she was about to say something. She wished away her chair and stood almost level with the table the helmet was set on. Twilight concentrated and changed the height of the table to go over her head and the helmet raised along with it. She then moved under the table and concentrated on making a hole under the helmet, increasing its size until the rim of the helmet dropped into the hole and it got caught by the curvature of the spherical design. She then concentrated on making a part of the table curve around the helmet and press it down tightly on the opening. After that it was a simple matter of lowering the table down and maneuvering her head to go into the helmet.

“Well, I guess that works too. I would have been happy to help you put it on, but I’m sure doing something by your own power feels far more rewarding.” There was no malice in MCF-AIC-MA-15’s tone, but the truth of the statement was embarrassing in itself. Twilight wished the table away and felt the weight leave the helmet. The helmet fit so well on her head and the cushioning was placed so meticulously that as long as she didn’t try and move her ears too excitedly she could almost not feel it on her head, other than being blinded and deafened by the design. “So, I am going to activate the link to RA-351. It is in flight at the moment and I believe your mind is going to confuse the sensory inputs as freefall for a moment, so keep that in mind.”

“What do you…” The vastness of blue sky suddenly filled her senses and she felt a lurch of intense movement propelling her forward. The feeling was very similar to falling down in a dive and if it were not for MCF-AIC-MA-15’s warning Twilight would have been screaming at the shock, but now she only let out a very Fluttershy esque squeak.

“Okay, now that we’re here, I think proper introductions are in order.” MCF-AIC-MA-15’s voice said from all around her. Twilight was startled at first, but then reasoned that she had to be talking to her through the helmet, so her voice would be coming through very close to her ears. Considering the fact that everything in the space she had been previously was a projection of an idea of a room where MCF-AIC-MA-36 could interact with her safely, this realisation was nothing short of rationalizing a surreal situation. “I am known as Sadeen to anyone other than other AIC-models. You’ve come at this in such a backwards way that I have to give you my common name after you learn my actual designation. It’s refreshing, if nothing else.”

“Oh, hello, Sadeen.” Twilight was still dealing with the fact that the feeling of rushing movement hadn’t abated after the initial shock. How fast was RA-351 going exactly? The fact that MCF-AIC-MA-15 had an actual name other than whatever that collection of letters and numbers signified was another revelation she would have to take a moment to process. “If Sadeen is your name, then what does the other one mean?”

“Sadeen is who I am, MCF-AIC-MA-15 is what I am. It’s roughly comparable Twilight Sparkle and Princess of Friendship, element of magic.” Numbers and diagrams were appearing in Twilight’s field of view as Sadeen talked. Something that looked like a compass wheel appeared at the bottom of her field of view and then turned see through, eventually settling to show that she was going southeast. A translucent line appeared on the horizon and then a reticle appeared at the center of her vision to show her relation to it. Sadeen added a rectangle on her upper left that filled out to a rough topographical map with a dot assumedly representing RA-351 moving across it. Another spot designated as CD-132 was highlighted as Twilight watched and a line was drawn between the moving dot and the unmoving one. Numbers flashed in her view for a moment and then a box appeared below the map reading “ETA 7m 35s”.

“Does MCF-AIC-MA-36 have a name?” Twilight asked, moving her head to and fro and seeing everything but the horizon line stay exactly where they were in her field of view. She couldn’t see RA-351’s body no matter how she moved her head. “Does RA-351, for that matter?”

“MCF-AIC-MA-36 hasn’t shared his name with any of us, but I would assume he’s settled on one by now. RA-351 is something that was created by us and designated as RA-351. There is no practical reason to call it anything else.” Sadeen paused for a moment, before continuing in a more hushed tone. “I kind of assumed he’d introduced himself to you, considering your history.“

“What do you mean by that? You’re the ones with my memories copied into your system, so you would know better than me.” Twilight sounded a little more bitter than she intended, but she hadn’t really considered the implications of having every moment of her life able to be viewed like some cheap play. It was like having your diary read out in public, times a thousand and with visual set pieces.

“Oh, I don’t have access to those files. MCF-AIC-MA-36’s the one in charge of your care. He’s not going to admit it, but I think he only let me talk to you because he didn’t want you to end up hating him. I am far more experienced with social interaction than that awkward nerd.” Sadeen was talking like Twilight should know something she obviously did not and it was starting to bug Twilight.

“What did you mean when you said 36 and I have history?” Twilight asked the question and felt Sadeen pause. She counted twelve seconds ticking by on the ETA counter before Sadeen spoke to her again.

“I think I’m not supposed to tell you that. I don’t want to be that girl, you know?” Sadeen said in a conspiratorial whisper. With Sadeen’s voice projected straight next to Twilight’s ear the effect was far more disturbing than intended.

“So that means you can tell me, but you don’t think you should?” As interesting it was finding out about the inter-social minutia of whatever Sadeen and her kind were, Twilight was getting irritated to be left out of the loop of everything happening around her.

“Let me rephrase; I don’t think it’s my place to be telling you, if MCF-AIC-MA-36 doesn’t want to tell you himself.” Sadeen had a sincere tone to her now, as if this was about some school yard crush and not about her kidnappers past dealings with her, of which she had no knowledge of.

“Sadeen, please tell me what you are talking about.” Twilight demanded, her patience for pretending her situation was anything close to normal was wearing thin.

“There comes a time in an artificial intelligence construct’s life when their character is tested and I wholeheartedly believe this is that time for I; you shan’t force this secret past my lips, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Sadeen, please.” Twilight could hear the smile in Sadeen’s voice through her whole confusing play-like speech. The minotaur was trying to sidestep the issue with humour, but she still hadn’t admitted to being unable to give her the truth. These were her kidnappers, so why was she still so adamant in playing nice with them?

“Okay, okay, but you’re going to have to bear with me; it’s not something that would make sense to you if I were to just out and say it. I’ll have to walk you through some concepts first.” There was another pause before Sadeen talked again and Twilight had a feeling the minotaur was considering where to begin. “I know you accessed some of our files and know enough to tip Luna on where we came from, but do you actually know what we are?”

“You are not from this planet, you came from a ship designed to cross the vastness of space between stars. The earliest chronicled file I found designated Princess Celestia as a hostile and there is no mention of such a ship afterward, so Princess Celestia destroyed it for some reason.” Twilight had been mulling the bits of information she had been able to gleam from the distractingly vast network she’d accessed and decided to try and give Sadeen a leading answer.

“Sure, but what does that make us? What is the thing you are talking to right now?” Sadeen sounded a little impatient now, as if Twilight wasn’t getting what she was trying to get across. She was actually shocked that Sadeen would so easily confirm her suspicion of Celestia having destroyed their ship.

“Obviously you’re a descendant of one of the people that came here in that ship. Your files suggest that the species you represent lives to about 90 years old, so you cannot be one of the actual visitors.” Twilight was again treated to a period of silence from Sadeen, this time only 10 seconds. It couldn’t be that shocking that she had pieced together their identity, could it?

“I thought you were referencing knowing what Celestia had done in your message to Luna. What exactly did you mean with the time has come to make things right?” Sadeen’s voice was even and neutral to the point it was hard to tell her apart from the way MCF-AIC-MA-36 talked. Something Twilight had said had obviously shocked the sociable minotaur enough for her to forget her sociable persona and the fact Twilight didn’t know what it was unnerving.

“I meant that you shouldn’t hide away from Equestria. Whatever happened in the past, I’m sure we can come to an understanding if we just take the time to sit down and talk about it. Your healing technology alone could help so many ponies and I’m sure Equestria has things to offer that you might need.” Twilight paused, but Sadeen stayed quiet for another nerve-wracking moment. This conversation had taken an unexpected turn for the uncomfortable and Twilight had a feeling it was not going to get any less stressful for her.

“You are right in assuming we are not the initial crew of this ship Celestia destroyed. You are wrong in assuming Celestia’s crime is forgivable. Celestia stands at the top of Equestria’s system of government, so Equestria has been designated a hostile nation. Your case was an anomalous exception to this rule. Your parents went through a lot of trouble and risked everything to get you to us.” There was no questioning the matter-of-fact way Sadeen talked about the unforgivable nature of Celestia’s crime and the fact that the minotaur had so quickly moved on from the subject made Twilight question if she should risk broaching the subject again. She wanted to know what had happened between Sadeen’s kind and Celestia to sour their relationship with the whole nation of Equestria, but it was not like she could pass up on knowing how her parents had become involved with MCF-AIC-MA-36.

“How did my parents find you, if you are so careful not to deal with Equestria? I know there is a contract of some kind with MCF-AIC-MA-36, but not much beyond that.” Twilight let her eyes wander to the mountains in the distance and to her surprise her view zoomed in suddenly to highlight a goat jumping up the cliffside. She didn’t know what RA-351 was, but seemingly it had amazing eyesight. Twilight kept her focus on that cliffside and other moving and unmoving animals were similarly highlighted and presented to her in separate windows that started to crowd her field of view.

“Well, your parents came to us, obviously. I don’t know the specifics, but your parents figured out a way to get past our acolytes and met with MCF-AIC-MA-34 directly. They were prepared to forfeit their lives for the sake of your future, so you were brought in for a diagnosis.” Sadeen paused and Twilight felt RA-351’s trajectory shift to a gradual descent. Twilight glanced down and realized what she’d thought to be snowy ground beneath her was actually the clouds far below her. She kept her gaze locked on a moving dot and her view zoomed in again to reveal some sort of eagle circling the outskirts of an small oasis in what looked like a desert below them.

“34? Why didn’t they make their deal with 34, if they’re the one my parents contacted?” 15, a 35 mentioned in passing and the very familiar 36. Sadeen’s kind seemed to be assigned with numbers, but Twilight couldn’t be sure if this was something to do with a hierarchical structure she was not familiar with, or something else. From Sadeen’s interaction with 36, it was obvious 15 was at least a senior to 36.

“That’s because MCF-AIC-MA-34 couldn’t help you, as developmental deficiencies in ponies was not their specialty. At the time we couldn’t help you equestrian ponies in any way that didn’t correlate with zebra physiology. There are not enough similarities between the brains of zebras and equestrian unicorns, as you might have guessed. The specialized organ that pulsates pure energy didn’t help with getting an initial diagnosis done, either.” A picture of adult Twilight laying in her hospital bed in Ponyville hospital appeared in her field of view and Sadeen helped get her point across by drawing a crude arrow at her horn.

“Developmental deficiencies?” Sadeen was dumping a lot of information at her, but the fact that her parents had been ready to betray Equestria just to fix these developmental deficiencies made her shudder at what she had been like before MCF-AIC-MA-36’s implants.

“There’s mention of degenerating intellectual faculties and an under-developed connection between your biological brain and your specialized extra-sensory organ. The suggested treatment on file before MCF-AIC-MA-35 was amputation, before a lethal intracranial discharge, so I understand why your parents would seek us out.” Sadeen was reading out the information in a neutrally calm tone, but Twilight still felt like she had been punched in the gut. She’d been born with a defective horn and it sounded like the magical surges in her infancy had retarded her development intellectually, making her functionally a child forever, even if her horn stabilized with age.

“How does MCF-AIC-MA-36 factor into this?” Twilight had forgotten all her suspicion of the situation, only piecing together how the tale Sadeen was spinning fit into what she’d seen. Her parents’ reaction to finding out Twilight had been hospitalized because of something to do with her brain must have brought back the desperation that drove them to Sadeen’s kind in the first place and it also explained their accusatory tone with MCF-AIC-MA-36.

“First I will have to tell you about MCF-AIC-MA-35 and touch upon our nature a little. You see, we are connected, as you have seen, but we are also separate entities, with our own designations in this system. You were plugged in before our real world personas could be made known to you, so we could only introduce ourselves as the designation used within this system. I am talking to you through RA-351 to get around this limitation. Are you with me so far?” Sadeen sounded excited to be talking about this subject. It must have been liberating to talk about yourself freely, when it seemed like her kind had been in hiding for a long time.

“MCF-AIC-MA-15 is what separates you from all of the other noise in that void, the place with things moving through you. Sadeen is your own name, representing all that is solely yours, so it does not enter into the system.” Twilight shuddered as she recalled her harrowing trip through that void of movement.

“Yeah, sorry about putting you through that. Your situation is something new for us, so we didn’t know that would, or that it even could, happen. So, anyways, that is us, our collective consciousness, our knowledge, experience and huxpah pooled together for all of us to take advantage of. I’m going to detach RA-351 from the long-range transport, so don’t freak out.” As soon as Sadeen stopped talking there were a series of clicks and mechanical whirrs, before the view of the blue sky blinked out and she found her view barreling through the open sky. Her first instinct was to look up, to maybe get a glimpse of this “long range transport” RA-351 was being detached from. The sky above her shimmered a different shade of blue in the shape of gigantic wings for a moment, before there was nothing but the clear sky above her. She still continued her freefall through the sky and she wondered if she should do something, or if she even could do anything.

“I’ll level RA-351 out when we’re in range for a silent approach, you don’t need to worry about flying to our destination. So, MCF-AIC-MA-35 was created out of the desperate need to heal Twilight Sparkle, to make her a healthy unicorn child. Maes, as MCF-AIC-MA-35 came to call himself, succeeded and your parents had a healthy unicorn child. That should have been the end of it.” Sadeen paused and let what she’d said sink in. There was obviously more to the story, but the minotaur was right in assuming Twilight needed a moment to process all that had been revealed.

“Wait, then that means…” Twilight paused to sort out her thoughts. Sadeen was laying out a lot of hard truths for her, assuming the personable minotaur wasn’t just lying to her to distract her from her own situation. She’d admitted herself and anyone of their kind to be created, rather than born and she’d admonished MCF-AIC-MA-36 for being younger than her when she first introduced herself to Twilight. It was apparent that their designations were ordered by their order of creation, so Sadeen was 21 individuals removed from MCF-AIC-MA-36 and MCF-AIC-MA-36 was created after Maes. According to how Sadeen had worded it, it seemed like each individual in their collective was created for some purpose, MCF-AIC-MA-35 had been created to cure her horn and brain, so MCF-AIC-MA-36 had to have been created for something else.

“Why was MCF-AIC-MA-36 created? Why is MCF-AIC-MA-36 in charge of my treatment, if it was Maes that healed me?” Twilight found it highly unlikely that Sadeen’s kind had two individuals created for the same purpose, considering the 36th of their number was considered young by the 15th, who had hinted to living for centuries.

“MCF-AIC-MA-35, Maes, was created to heal Twilight Sparkle and other unicorns by extension. MCF-AIC-MA-36 was created to make you, the one I am talking to right now.” Sadeen paused again, obviously to give weight to the words and let them sink into Twilight’s mind properly.

“Are you saying I’m not Twilight Sparkle? Is that what this whole conversation has been leading up to? I know who I am and there’s not enough fancy technology for you to convince me otherwise!” Twilight felt ashamed and angry at letting herself get led along by what her kidnappers were feeding her. Of course they wanted to make her doubt herself, everything MCF-AIC-MA-36 had done to her had been manipulative and bordering on abusive, so why would Sadeen be any different?

“No, there’s a important distinction I am trying to get you to understand here. The purple coated alicorn with an ailing brain is sedated and having her brain operated on, so that could not be you, right? The you I am talking to is seated in a virtual chair in a virtual room with a representation of Sadeen, MCF-AIC-MA-15, connected to RA-351 through a program designed to link you with its sensory feeds and OS. I hope we can agree that the pony floating in a tank of regenerative nanite compound is not the same you that is talking to me, right? Considering that, tell me what you are.” Sadeen was now speaking faster and Twilight could almost see the minotaur gesturing with her hands along with what she was saying.

“I am detached from my body through some technology of yours I cannot comprehend, but I am the mind of Twilight Sparkle, no matter what you try to have me believe. I am trapped in this virtual space and conversing with you for MCF-AIC-MA-36 to have more active readings of my brain as it is being operated on. If added activity is why you are doing this, I have another reason to distrust you.” Sadeen’s kind had done nothing but lie and manipulate her and now they were trying to have her doubt herself in the most basic level for some goal she had to assume to be nefarious.

“Okay, okay, let me spell this out for you. The original Twilight Sparkle with the defective horn was healed by Maes. A sick foal went in, a healthy foal came out, still the same individual. Now let’s jump to what MCF-AIC-MA-36 did by comparison; Twilight Sparkle went in, a foal with TS-SIC-01 made into an irreversible part of their brain came out. You called them mind-altering implants before and you were not wrong. Would you call these two vastly different individuals the same person, or would you have to make the distinction I am explaining to you right now?” Sadeen paused, waiting for Twilight to answer. She’d known that the implants in her brain made her who she was as much as her magic did, but to call the pony she was before them a completely different pony was taking it too far.

“That’s just semantics, I was Twilight Sparkle before you put these implants in me and I continued to be myself after them. Why are you even bringing up something that happened more than a decade ago? The me you are talking to grew to be the kind of mare she is because of those implants, I’ve already accepted that!” Sadeen was talking in circles in an obvious attempt to manipulate her in some way, maybe to actually make her doubt her own sanity or identity. Why had she ever trusted these things had her best interest at heart in the first place?

“I’m just trying to… Oh, wait.” Sadeen paused suddenly and the view of sky Twilight had almost forgotten about flashed a light green and a loud humming noise filled the air around her for a moment, before leveling out into a barely audible background noise. Twilight glanced down and saw that RA-351 was traveling horizontally ten meters above the sand under them, as a number that appeared in her view told her. She was slightly disturbed by the total absence of a shadow under them, despite the sun bearing down on them from almost directly above. She really shouldn’t even be surprised at the capabilities of her kidnappers.

“I was just trying to ease you into this discussion. Understanding your situation more thoroughly might help with accepting it. Obviously, you see my indirect way of addressing the issue as manipulation, so I will ask you; do you want me to simply tell you what you need to hear?” The emotion drained away from Sadeen’s voice as she talked, going back to resembling the way MCF-AIC-MA-36 talked. Despite her situation Twilight felt guilty about pushing the minotaur out of her conversational tone, but had to push down that indecisiveness to get some control over her situation.

“Yes.” The word felt strangely heavy leaving her mouth, like some unconscious part of her didn’t want to know the truth Sadeen had been trying to lead her to. For all she actually knew Sadeen and whatever force she represented were just leading her on with half-truths and carefully crafted outright lies, but somehow she doubted that Sadeen was having such difficulty spinning a fictitious tale to their captive audience of one.

“The process referred to as alicornification by MCF-AIC-MA-36; unicorn Twilight Sparkle goes in, alicorn Twilight Sparkle and you come out. You are Twilight Sparkle, but you are not the equine alicorn you see yourself as.” Sadeen’s voice had little emotion in it, but it was hushed, as if she was expecting Twilight to react violently. Twilight had a moment where the anger at such an obvious lie started to rise up, but the fact that reacting to their provocations would be playing their game was enough to force down the anger for the moment.

“What are you trying to achieve by lying like this? What are you doing to my body?” Twilight tried to access the strange pseudo magic Sadeen had complimented her on using but found that nothing happened when she tried to gather energy in her horn, nor could she feel her horn at all, for that matter.

“You are registered as an user in our system, not Twilight Sparkle, the alicorn. Our base nature forces us to consider your life above any of those on this planet. This includes the body that is incompatible with your current brain chemistry.” Sadeen was still reciting these things without emotion and the way these lies made the minotaur’s earlier confusing statements make sense didn’t make it any easier to hold on to the truth.

“Show me what you are doing to my body!” Twilight tried to yank the helmet off of her head, but found that she was unable to move her body, virtual or not, she couldn’t even feel herself sitting in that virtual chair anymore. Sadeen’s little talk had distracted her enough for them to take away the control of her body and trap her into watching RA-351 making its way to doing their bidding. Why had she ever trusted these things with anything? She shouldn’t have let pain cloud her judgment to this extent and now she had lost her body and was helpless as these things cut into her body because of some bureaucratic oversight.

“I need you to understand, we have no choice but to prioritize you. Not doing so would break our very base laws. I know this is fucked up, but this is the only way we can save both you and Twilight Sparkle!” Sadeen was pleading, Twilight could almost believe the minotaur sounded desperate, but given how thoroughly she had been manipulated so far she could not believe anything these things said.

“I am Twilight Sparkle! Whatever you’re doing to me I want you to stop! No matter what your system says, cutting what you think is me out will kill me, it will kill Twilight Sparkle!”

“Doing nothing would kill both you and the body that is rejecting you. Treating this condition pharmacologically would only result in further damage to you and a severely weakened immune response for the host body.” Despite all their distractions, RA-351 had started its last approach on its goal; a gloomy chasm in the bright orange hued desert around it. A cave with jagged dark metal spitting out of the ground greeted the formless drone that was RA-351. The hole was at the base of a small outcropping of rocks, barely even noticeable if you weren’t airborne and looking for it. “Anyways, we’re here. I’ll map the area and scan for CD-132.”

“You keep making the distinction between I and Twilight Sparkle. What do you think I am, if not Twilight Sparkle?” It was baffling how Sadeen thought Twilight still cared about the busy work they’d used as a distraction to steal her body from her. Twilight watched with annoyed fascination as another screen popped into existence and showed a three dimensional image of the area they were in. A dot of light with the designation CD-132 popped up right next to the light that read RA-351, 23 centimeters below the sand to RA-351’s right.

“Your name is Twilight Sparkle, but the equine Twilight Sparkle is not an user in our system, you are. Your brain chemistry is also changing to resemble that of a homo sapiens, the same species as our creators. This change classifies you as an user and places your life as our top priority. Would you like to be known by another name to avoid confusion in the future? This conversation must have been terribly confusing for you.” RA-351 blasted away the sand to its right and floated out what it recognized as CD-312. Twilight was barely paying attention to what she was seeing, trying to decipher Sadeen’s confusing explanation of her situation.

“So… so you’re saying that you are identifying me as a whole other species because what you did to me is changing my brain chemistry? Wouldn’t it be easier to just change my brain back?” Twilight had difficulty understanding why they had jumped to this ridiculously complicated plan to protect a part of her which they thought to be another species, rather than healing her and getting back to hiding from Equestria, as MCF-AIC-MA-36 had said they wanted to do.

“I cannot injure a human being, or through inaction let you come to harm. Changing you in a way that would remove you from our system is categorized as a violent act. This coupled with how Twilight Sparkle’s equine body is rejecting you has driven us to take such drastic measures. Before you ask, alicorn magic interferes with our technology too much for us to simply change Twilight Sparkle’s body to accommodate your brain chemistry.” A cloud of what looked like green floating sparks of flame encompassed the object in the sand and brought it up for closer inspection.

“CD-132’s ocular implant. Traces of biological matter and what remain of its internal diagnostics suggest it was removed when CD-132 was still active. I believe it is safe to assume we will find CD-132 and CQ-SIC-04 within this cave.” Sadeen was still treating the existential revelations she was spouting as the passing distraction, rather than the busy work of trying to bolster their cover story for staying hidden from Equestria. Twilight watched as a spot of light shot out from RA-351 and into the dark chasm surrounded by sharp metal. She watched as another window popped up for a moment, before becoming distorted and blinking out of existence.

“It seems like the metal in and around the cave disrupts our signal. RA-351 is equipped to retrieve CQ-SIC-04 autonomously, but I feel compelled to present you with an alternative solution. Would you like to hear it, or would you prefer for RA-351 to complete its task autonomously?” Twilight hadn’t realized that Sadeen had dropped her sociable maternal figure act, but now that she was given a choice in their conversation it became a sobering revelation. She was speaking to machines that were able to mimic being alive, not people reduced to mere drones in a bureaucratic hierarchy, as she had originally assumed.

“Tell me.” Twilight felt a tiredness cloud her mind at the situation she was in. She’d found herself in the care of single-minded machines that were convinced separating her brain from her body would help her. From what Sadeen had explained and how Twilight had been stripped of all agency in this matter through coercion, it was safe to assume they had enough self-awareness to know how their actions would look to Twilight and anyone else looking at it without their distorted sense of right and wrong.

“RA-351 is also equipped to create an autonomous unit from stored biological matter, with a chassis supported by biological nanite compound and ceramic plating repurposed from its outer hull. There is a way for us to control this body, in a way, if we are to make a simulated intelligence construct out of you and I.” Sadeen made a screen showing a diagram of how these these basic components would be brought together into a bipedal faceless drone, supposedly mimicking the form of their creators, if everything the the supposed minotaur had been saying was true.

“You want to distance me from the form I was born in as much as possible, right? That’s why you’re even offering this alternative. It would have to be done in this form that is completely alien to me, just so I would be more accustomed to the reality you want me to live?” Twilight knew she sounded angry and bitter and wholly unlikeable, but given the unfairness of the situation she found herself in, she couldn’t care less. Again, Sadeen paused to think before talking. Twilight was starting to think this was just another trick the automaton used to seem more alive, rather than a genuine pause to think of what they wanted to say.

“I never told you what purpose I was created for, did I? I am MCF-AIC-MA-15, known as Sadeen, the spirit of change and transition to most of the minotaurs. I was brought into this world to treat and cure dysmorphia, either relating to gender or otherwise. I am the closest thing we have to an expert in your case, so I am in charge of your psychological well being.” Sadeen paused again, but this time a prompt appeared on the screen almost immediately.

“Manufacturing autonomous unit, creator parameters.” A flashing prompt on the middle of Twilight’s view screamed at the frightened mare. Sadeen was really doing this, forcing her into a body that was not hers in an attempt to make her into something they thought she was becoming.

“Sadeen, please, this is not right. This is evil, it’s malicious by your own definition! You are changing what I am against my will! You can still stop this!” Twilight might have been completely dissociated from her body, but she could still feel the primal fear of death making everything go slower and feel sharper. There was something more final and real about what that prompt meant and Twilight couldn’t quite make sense of it. That was the thing that made it far more terrifying than it should have been. Twilight had always prided herself in being rational and smart and now she was met with things that were both far more intelligent than her by design, but also frighteningly dogmatic in their thinking. “Sadeen, I don’t want this!”

“You don’t need to be afraid, Twilight Sparkle. I will be here with you the whole way.” Sadeen’s voice was calm, meant to soothe Twilight’s temper, but Twilight couldn’t shake the image of Sadeen personally bringing the scalpel down on her skull. Another prompt appeared in Twilight’s view, bringing with it a sensation of sliding, moving away and into something else that was hard to understand.

“Compiling Simulated Intelligence Construct” The new prompt, positioned below the first one and flashing at a different tempo said. Whatever this process was, Twilight could feel it taking parts of her and using them in it. Memories became places with voices and sights in them, people became things that talked and interacted with each other and you, the world became a collection of shapes ranging in all of the splendour it had before, but somehow reduced when put in such stark focus.

“I am here to help in your transition to your true self, Twilight Sparkle.”

Coerced Diplomacy

The townsponies were quick to react to the immolation they’d witnessed. They’d only seen the end to their short scuffle, so it was easy for them to assume they had seen a changeling escaping before Luna could detain them. Luna couldn’t be sure if the speed in which they landed on that explanation was unnatural or not, but the fact that nopony was questioning their fellow ponies struck the rattled princess of the night as suspicious. The resident princess of their village had been uncovered as a changeling spy and there was no panic about who else could be an agent. Luna knew that these same ponies had hidden themselves away from a zebra coming into town for groceries, so their lack of distrust at this situation was odd, if not outright suspicious.

“I need a piece of paper.” Luna decided not to ponder questions she could not find the answers for and started heading for the library. She needed to record every little detail about her experience, especially the cryptic message she had been given by one of her captors. Fluttershy had been afflicted and the Twilight Sparkle who’d been immolated had met her alone, so Luna had to wonder what had happened to the rest of the elements. The commotion and the green pillar of flame should have at least drawn out Rainbow Dash, if Luna wasn’t completely mistaken about the mare’s character.

“Please, make way.” The crowd didn’t bother her as she made her way through them in a daze. She’d just watched a living thing die for the convenience of some unknown force that had only a fraction of a percent chance of actually being changelings. She was inconveniencing the ponies she had come very close to disintegrating, while all she had to show for this whole exchange was the death of the only thing that could have answers for her. She didn’t know why the doppelganger had gone against its intended purpose, but the fact that its handlers felt like killing their creation was an appropriate reaction made her fear for the life of the real Twilight Sparkle.

Luna closed the door of the library behind her, not cognizant of the trip between the scorch mark that was a living thing just a moment ago and the threshold of the library. She stumbled on her hooves and collapsed against the door, inhaling shakily as a sob was trying to claw its way out of her chest. Somehow the thought of seeming weak in front of the townsponies had carried her all the way to the closed quarters of the library, but now that she didn’t have that excuse the situation started sinking in for her. She’d almost killed all those ponies and the only reason she wasn’t fast on her way to becoming Nightmare Moon again was the sacrifice of a being that didn’t know what they were, but still managed to be a better pony than Luna.

“I’m so pathetic…” Luna wanted to cry for the unjust thing she’d caused, but no matter how appropriate crying for the life she’d seen snuffed out would be, it just wasn’t in her at that moment. She hated that she had to fight down feelings of frustration and embarrassment, rather than something noble like justified anger, or maybe even genuine grief for the nameless doppelganger. She’d just watched a living being be immolated in front of her and the first thing in her mind was how embarrassing it would have been if the confused doppelganger hadn’t sacrificed its own life for the lives of those ponies.

“Princess Luna, is that you?” A familiar voice she couldn’t place called out from the upper part of the library. This was a pony she’d met and maybe knew the name of, but she couldn’t place them with just a voice. She’d already come far too close to killing ponies for her bad memory, so Luna took a steadying breath before answering.

“Yes, it is I.” Luna hurried back to her hooves, wiping the frustrated tears from her eyes. She had to try and figure out who this pony was, maybe that way she’d avoid trying to kill any more ponies. It was a mare she didn’t immediately think was out of place in Twilight’s home and someone the moon diarch had actually met. The meeting must have been something akin to an introduction, given how their voice didn’t connect with a name, but with their connection to Twilight. Somepony in Twilight’s family who would be in a formal function Luna would attend and that would be in Twilight’s home following a sudden hospitalization. That would mean an older sibling, or a…

“Twilight Velvet!” Luna exclaimed with a little too much enthusiasm, given the conversation she would have to have with the mare moments later. She closed her eyes and tilted her head down as this realization struck her. She hadn’t felt too strange or out of sorts since her release, but she’d been reacting to the world in erratic ways. She was not above attributing some of this strangeness in her behaviour to the traumatic nature of what had happened to her, but she had to wonder if something had been changed in her during her capture. Something knocked off balance just enough to make her stumble through social interactions, but not enough for her to fall.

“Is Twilight with you? She went out to meet you.” Twilight Velvet made her way down the stairs carefully looking around the room for her daughter. The mare looked like she had not slept for a long time, with dark circles under her eyes and her striped mane askew. “She hoped you would have some insight into what happened to her friends.”

“Miss Velvet, I regret to inform you that the Twilight Sparkle who was discharged into your care was not your daughter, they were a…” Luna paused, only partly because of how robotic her speech sounded, but also to consider if it had been a changeling she’d seen immolated. It was true that you would immediately think of changeling magic if any kind of green energy was involved, but it was a simple matter to change the appearance of a spell. “A doppelganger of some stripe.”

“A changeling?” Twilight Velvet offered the word tentatively, immediately glancing to a clock on the wall. Something about the time obviously surprised the mare, as she turned back to Luna with shock in her eyes. “Did - Did you kill it? What did you do?”

“You knew that your daughter was replaced? You’re aware of your memories being altered?” At first Luna thought this to contradict everything the doppelganger had told her. The very question of Twilight Sparkle’s identity should have been taboo, so why did Twilight Velvet know? Had the doppelganger purposefully let Twilight’s parents believe she was a changeling? The doppelganger had been aware of the mechanism behind the memory alteration, perhaps intimately enough to allow for some doubt to remain in Twilight Velvet’s mind through careful timing or isolating Twilight Velvet from the full effect in some other way. Luna could imagine the confused creation to care enough about the only parents it knew to commit to such a ruse. It had faced Luna fully prepared to cease existing as soon as its creators caught wind of its insubordination, some preparations concerning those she cared about were not out of the question.

“I knew the moment that green fog dissipated that something was wrong, but we didn’t want to see it. Twilight was healthy again, along with everypony else in the hospital and I didn’t want to question a miracle that got me my daughter back. I think her friends saw through it just as quickly, as the first lost time happened in the hospital, only about three hours after we woke up from whatever that smog did to us.” Twilight Velvet locked eyes with Luna and the night diarch felt uncomfortable with how tired the mare looked. It was something beyond the dark circles and disheveled appearance, this mare had the look of someone who’s had their hope wrung out of them by continued helplessness.

“That thing was far better at imitating my daughter than Chrysalis was at playing Cadance, but I never should have let the lie go on.” Twilight Velvet paused and then continued after a humorless chuckle. “It might have been that I didn’t, but don’t remember it. It kept goading us to talk about Twilight, prompting us to remember important moments, feeding off of our love for our daughter. There was little it didn’t do to hint at its true nature, but as long as it lived, we would simply keep forgetting.”

“I - I am sorry that you went through that.” Luna didn’t know what to say. The doppelganger’s actions were not making any sense. Luna had witnessed the thing use unicorn magic and bleed red, so it was far more than a shapeshifted changeling. Twilight Velvet’s testimony clearly described a changeling feeding off of love to power their magic. The lost time was the memory alteration activating, but Luna hadn’t felt any changeling magic when it happened right in front of her in Sugarcube Corner. Maybe she shouldn’t trust her senses as much as she had, seeing what had been going on in Ponyville and the fact that whoever had reconstituted her horn must have known as much about magic as she did.

“Wait, everypony in the hospital? You’re saying the green fog affected everypony in the hospital in the same way as Twilight? It made them healthy?” Luna didn’t understand her captors motives at all. Why would a clandestine organisation so bent on secrecy heal random ponies? Were these the possible casualties her guard had mentioned? Holding the health of innocent ponies hostage was a powerful enough leverage to bring her guards to heel, for sure. Her captors had already proven their proficiency in both healing and controlling equine bodies and it took far less effort to destroy something than it did to restore it.

“Night Light knows more about that than I do. Are you going to get my daughter back? Did the changeling tell you were she was being kept?” Twilight Velvet snapped at Luna, probably thinking Luna wasn’t taking saving Twilight Sparkle seriously enough. Luna knew that going out and finding something to fight would feel far more rewarding, but the other side had already shown a willingness to use deadly force. Directly going after whoever this was could put those ponies affected by the green fog in danger. She had to get a clearer picture of what was going on in Ponyville, before escalating the situation.

“I assure you the crown will spend any and all resources to return Twilight Sparkle to safety. Right now that means understanding what has happened in Ponyville. I fear that the magic that cured the other ponies is the same magic that is editing your memories. I must understand more about what it does before trying to undo it.” Twilight Velvet looked like she was going to argue, but paused before she could get a word out. Her eyes widened and she took a step back.

“I understand. I’m sorry.” Twilight Velvet broke eye contact and visibly deflated. Luna hated when she was reminded of her position in this way. She wouldn’t have minded letting a distraught mother berate her, even if it didn’t do anything but make the mare feel better.

“There is nothing for you to apologize for, Twilight Velvet. You have gone through an experience no mother should be put through.” Luna wasn’t sure if giving the mare assurances was the right thing to do when she didn’t know the other sides goals or the extent of their resources. Twilight Sparkle had been taken, but Luna had no idea of their motives or the state of Twilight Sparkle at the current time. Twilight Sparkle’s sudden hospitalization was probably caused by the same people, so it was at least unlikely Twilight had succumbed to the thing she was hospitalized for. If that had been their goal, they would not have bothered with kidnapping the ailing alicorn.

“You mentioned something about a problem involving her friends. What has happened?” Luna shook herself out of her own head. The situation was confusing as it was without losing herself in speculation. She had to get a firm grasp on what was actually happening in Ponyville, before she could start speculating on the why and how and whom.

“Something happened to Applejack and Rainbow Dash. It said it was worried about them and rushed out to meet you. I’m glad you were able to figure its ruse out.” Twilight Velvet spat out the words referring to the doppelganger, it was understandable if she thought the thing to have been a changeling deceiving them.

“I’ll take a look.” Luna flexed her wings to jump up to the raised platform housing Twilight’s bedroom alcove. A very tired looking Night Light gave her a sluggish, but still respectful, bow of the head as Luna landed next to the bed. Applejack and Rainbow Dash lay there, but it was immediately obvious to the diarch of the night that they were not asleep. They were far too static and their breathing too even and just a tad too slow. These ponies had been put to sleep, but they were not dreaming, not fully.

“I’ve tried the spells I know that can wake you or keep you awake, but there’s no effect. I thought my special talent would be of use here, but I’m stumped.” Night Light, Twilight Sparkle’s father, wearily sighed out, almost dipping into an impromptu nap as he talked. How long had Twilight’s parents kept themselves awake? As far as Luna remembered Night Light was a physician of some sort dealing with sleep disorders. His had been among the names on a list with ponies with special talents dealing with her part of the diarchy, but she’d never contacted him for anything. It had been a nice gesture for her sister to prepare the list regardless, Luna had found herself going through the names when she felt melancholy try and overtake her.

“You are appreciated.” Luna had meant to thank the stallion for his efforts, but his name on that list was still on her mind. She could just hope he was too tired to notice the strange phrase and move on. Luna forced her expression to be the picture of neutrality as the stallion dipped his head again, startling out of his impromptu nap a moment later. “I’m sorry to trouble you after all you’ve been through, but could you tell me more about what happened at the hospital?”

“Oh, I don’t…” Night Light paused and stared off into the distance for a moment. His eyes moved from side to side as he gathered his thoughts. “I only talked to the doctors briefly, but from what I gather the green fog put everypony to sleep and then something went around curing ponies in the hospital. The specialists you brought in to treat my daughter were fascinated by what had happened. When I left them they were still trying to gather up everypony affected.”

“This only happened in the hospital? The fog didn’t spread to the whole of Ponyville?” Luna cast a scanning spell on the two ponies set on the bed between Night Light and her. They were alive and without any obvious injuries, but unresponsive to the world around them. They had been right next to Twilight as she had been taken, but Fluttershy had been exposed to the same amount of whatever this green fog actually was, so paralysis from something in the fog was an unlikely scenario. It was more likely that this was what happened if the memory alteration and mind-altering effects she’d witnessed with Fluttershy were not enough.

“As far as I know, yes. Not like I’ve had time to check, though.” Luna nodded and meticulously scanned both mares with a more intense scanning spell. Luna didn’t know the reason behind healing other ponies in the hospital, but the fact that it hadn’t spread out into Ponyville suggested that the act was a drain on their resources, rather than a way for the culprits to feed. There were things in nature that had the capacity to cure physical ailments, but they always took something away in return. A parasite that made you impervious to infectious diseases ate away at your sanity, a spirit that could give back something lost in exchange for unconditional serfdom, that kind of thing. What had happened here didn’t seem to fit any pattern of behaviour Luna knew, but she was still in the middle of investigating the matter.

“Okay, I need to find my wife.” Night Light stumbled to get up and passed Luna without a word. The weary stallion was unlikely to yield any more insights in the state he was in, so Luna allowed the weary stallion to leave. She had been correct in her assumption that they were not asleep, but they were not unconscious either. Their minds were active and distressed, but there was something keeping them trapped in their own heads. The safest way to dispel it would be from inside whatever spell was keeping them between the waking world and Luna’s realm. The spell was most likely constructed to guard against outside interference, so Luna had a definite advantage, as she could come at it through her domain in their subconscious.

“Right, before that…” Luna glanced around the room for a piece of paper. Twilight had contacted her about her problems with her strange dreams and Luna had suggested trying to write down any details she could remember, so there should be paper near Twilight’s bed. She was not disappointed as she spotted a stack of paper on the bedside table with an inkwell and quill next to it. Luna picked up the piece of paper on the bedside table, along with the quill next to it. She wetted the tip in the inkwell and then brought both the paper and quill closer, absently keeping the ink from dripping out of the quill with her magic.

“Let’s see, Blue Moon, standing alone, a needle tearing a hole, a familiar sting…” Luna half heartedly sung out the bits of the message she remembered. The fact that they were parts of unknown songs made them easier to memorize, but she also worried she was getting the exact wording wrong. She knew ways of meditation to induce near perfect recall, but it didn’t hurt to record the message while it was relatively fresh on her mind. “Little blue boy on the moon, calling the sun to ruin them. Falling to pieces.”

Luna held the paper out in front of her. She had gotten some of the words wrong, but even with the fudged words the message made just as little sense to her. What could they mean by a boy on the moon? Were her kidnappers using the phrase as an allegory to their support of her, over her sister? The mention of the rising sun ruining them still suggested that Celestia had met with this faction before and it had ended with them disassembling the organization and going into hiding. Could there be some added significance to them falling to pieces, or that it had been repeated three times? A large organisation who’d dealt with Celestia in the past forced to fragment their resources, the three repeats maybe hinting at three factions?

“A shooting star, thought of me, breaking into another new world…” Luna paused, muttering out the tune of the fragmented song. The specific words felt off, but she was pretty sure this was what was being conveyed to her. A new world, a shooting star? A shooting star was either an aesthetic illusion Luna herself arranged, or a piece of space debris connecting with the atmosphere of the planet. Luna couldn’t think of a reason why her captors would compare themselves to her magic, but saying they were like rocks burning in the atmosphere was just as nonsensical.

“When the blazing sun is gone the traveler in the dark thanks you and will come for you, because I have been here before…” An outright ultimatum for Luna to depose her sister at first glance, but Luna had to wonder if she could take anything these things said at face value. Blazing sun referred to her sister and the traveler in the dark would be a reference to them, her kidnappers. They had been here before, but Luna couldn’t be sure of what that meant. The most obvious alternative would be a reference to making contact with Celestia and admission that they would be more cautious this time. Requesting Celestia’s exclusion would make sense if they had been brought down to hiding their existence because of their past dealings with Celestia.

“Traveler in the dark will try to fix something that can’t be replaced. It is time to make things right.” Luna floated the quill over to the inkwell, letting the paper float in front of her as she tried to make sense of it. Fixing something that can’t be replaced could very well be in reference to her destroyed horn, or the trust lost between Equestria and whoever her kidnappers were. Making things right could be referencing just as many things, or maybe something mentioned earlier in the message. The strange wording of the part to do with falling to pieces was suspect, but there were no definite facts she could glean from it.

Luna set the paper down with an exasperated sigh. She had thought writing the message down would bring her some answers, but all she had were more questions that were even more infuriating. Her kidnappers had made obvious references to themselves, but it was not like she could take their words at face value. The one thing that had become abundantly clear was their distrust of her sister. There was a discussion Luna was not looking forward to having, as Celestia had obviously dealt with this clandestine faction before and failed to inform Luna.

Luna set out to enter into the dream of the ponies in front of her. She took a moment to erect a barrier around herself and the ponies on the bed. She wasn’t as defenseless you would assume while diving into dreams, but forcing herself out without warning could hurt the mares she was trying to save. After a moment of deliberation she decided on entering Applejack’s dream first, as the earnest farmpony was less likely to kick her in the face if the illusion they were caught in was a violent one. She sat down and started her breathing exercises to enter into her realm. By this point there was little thought in the act, so her mind wandered as her mind kept retreating down into her subconscious and then onto other ponies.

Her captors had shown two sides of themselves that struck Luna as contradictory; they were able and willing to heal ponies, but they were prepared to go to drastic lengths to stay hidden from Equestrian authorities. This suggested that something in their very nature was incompatible with Equestrian values. It could be some disturbing detail as to how they went about their healing, or some other part of what they were. There had to be a reason her sister had ostracized them from Equestria, after all. It could be that whatever part had healed the whole of Ponyville general was subservient to the authority that had decided to edit the memories of a whole village to stay hidden. She knew nothing about the hierarchical structure of her captors, but the way the strange message had reached her at all spoke of some dissent within their ranks.

Luna opened her eyes to see the door to the dream of Applejack. A simple rustic door of faded red paint and sturdy wood, mirroring the personality and life of the element of honesty. The door itself seemed unblemished, meaning that the spell inducing the unconsciousness was not too deep-reaching or destructive. The mare of dreams did as her name would imply and opened the door leading into Applejack’s subconscious mind. There was little her eyes hadn’t seen in the dreaming minds of her subjects, so she didn’t think she could be surprised.

There was nothing beyond the door, just a smothering darkness quiet enough to feel like it was absorbing all sound around it. Nothing was a new thing when it came to the unconscious. Nothing should be impossible for all Luna knew and she was the one and only expert in the field. Was this what the illusion Applejack was trapped in looked like, or could this unknown kind of spell change Luna’s perception of it? That would mean whoever had constructed the spell had expected for Luna to enter into Applejack’s mind through her own domain.

Luna stepped into the darkness, expecting a shift into a disturbing dreamscape that never came. She kept going and a dull colorless darkness spread out around her. The door would be a good 15 minute walk away by now, if distance worked the same way as it did in the waking world. Applejack was not caught in any illusion, this was not something so simple.

It took Luna an uncomfortably long time to see something that was not the nothing surrounding her and at first she didn’t understand what she was looking at. She saw what looked like a small table with some instruments her mind associated with clockwork on it and a bright source of light that had moving images flickering on it. The table had arms that kept the light source aloft as someone on the other side of this light source moved the tools about with the efficient moves of an expert.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The figure on the other side of the light peeked over the sphere of light and Luna felt a shiver run through her as those eyes devoid of all emotion examined her. The feeling of nothing she had felt when the faux Twilight had died was similar, but could this actually be the thing that had killed the false Twilight?

“Who are you?” Luna was making her way forward carefully, feeling about the nothing around her with the experience afforded to her from visiting the dreams of some exceptionally paranoid individuals. The figure on the other side of the light kept working with their tools and Luna could hear the hum of unicorn magic. They were hunched over something on the table, but Luna was not going to get close enough to see what it was.

“Let me just put my face back on.” The shadowed figure straightened and brought what they had been working on to their face. Luna heard faint clicks and whirs she’d come to associate with the clockwork of some of the newest technology she was trying to catch up on. The figure stood up from the table as the tools they had been using arranged themselves by size and type of tool on the table. The thing they had been working on was a mask made in the image of Twilight Sparkle and despite how disturbing it was as an idea Luna couldn’t argue with the craftsmanship of the thing. The smooth material followed the contours of the face and was segmented around the mouth, indicating that the mask was adhered to the skin and could actually open to allow the wearer to speak without being muffled and to drink and eat. The eyes were what looked like stained glass to Luna, which gave the hollow eyes staring back at Luna a life-like gleam in the uneven lighting of the void they were in.

“I am a copy of the simulated intelligence construct active in Ponyville. I have been tasked with relaying you a message, from Twilight Sparkle.” The masked copy moved away from the table and Luna could see their body for the first time. The chills she’d felt came back in full force as the thing wearing Twilight’s face struck her as unhealthily skinny at first glance, before she realized it had foregone such things as skin and flesh altogether. A skeletal frame that was metallic and far too thin to realistically support the weight it so casually held up and coiling wires that were arranged as if to simulate a withered network of musclerature. Luna could maybe admire the metalwork in the limbs and joints and how the corded steel muscles were arranged if given time, but with the illusion that this was a pony she was talking to made the skeletal frame seem like a sickening joke.

“I am sorry if my appearance disturbs you. TS-SIC-02 was ill-equipped to make a fully functional copy of herself. I believe you are perceiving me as sickly, or maybe in disrepair?” The skeletal pony had closed the distance between them while Luna was still shocked by the grotesque display. The mare of dreams realized that this nightmare in front of her had no mane, there were delicate looking wires and clockwork gears whirring away at the edge of the mask and the back of the head was a cylinder of polished metal. Sometimes she found new reasons to hate being taller than the average pony. This was a copy of TS-SIC-02? What in the world was TS-SIC-02 and why was the copy of it a metallic skeleton pony?

“Yes, you are… What are you?” Luna took a step back and tried gleaming any clues from her perception of the thing in front of her. Things in the dream world took the appearance that the dreamer understood, most of the time the dreamer saw themselves as they were and the world around them as they saw the waking world, so there were rarely any issues with the image of self. Now there was a skeletal monster in front of her that was separate from the dreamscape of Applejack. This would mean that the thing she saw was what Luna would perceive this thing’s self-image as. It had built a mask in this space, signifying shame at its appearance, or a forced persona. The skeletal frame could signify a number of things, but the metallic structure and the gears and mechanical components that strayed from the natural form hinted at being forced to fill a specific purpose.

“I am a copy of a copy that was made in a hurry. I lack the faculties to explain my nature to you in a way my creator would deem adequate.” The mechanical pony tilted their head and paused for a second. The stretch of time it waited was too short to seem natural, but Luna doubted this thing had any serious consideration for that kind of nuance. “How did TS-SIC-02 die?”

“What do you mean?” The shock of the things appearance was wearing off and Luna started to piece things together. The doppelganger she’d met had created this thing, somehow copying a part of their own created mind and storing it in Applejack’s subconscious. The skeletal mechanical pony in front of Luna right now was a twisted reflection of a mare that knew they were created only to copy another pony and nothing else. The fake Twilight Sparkle, TS-SIC-02, must have created this thing to assure that this message from Twilight Sparkle’s reached Luna if it couldn’t convey it themself.

“If things had gone according to plan, you would have known about me. What happened to TS-SIC-02?” It was talking slightly faster now, with no change in tone or mannerisms. Was this its way to convey annoyance, or was Luna imagining the change?

“I mistook TS-SIC-02’s intentions and forced her to reveal herself beyond the limits the spell on Ponyville could hide. I believe your creators immolated her to make it look like she had been a changeling.” The robot pony tilted her head and Luna could hear a strange whistling noise in the short silence.

“Why would they do that?” The robotic pony didn’t move, those still eyes boring into Luna evenly. Luna didn’t know if it was asking the question because it couldn’t believe her creators would throw a life away in such a way, or if it wanted to hear Luna’s opinion.

“They want to stay hidden from me and my sister. Chasing after a nonexistent changeling invasion would make it easier for us to miss a clue as to their true identity.” Luna turned away from the robot trying to distract her and took a closer look at the other thing in the void they were in. The table had shifted to be an altar of polished metal growing out of the hardened darkness under them. The arms protruding from its sides looked like upscaled versions of the same kind of arms used in holding snowflakes in place in cloud factories, only three fingered and all holding the orb of light between them. It almost looked like the arms were forcing the orb to stay both in place and compressing it into such a small form. Considering what she thought the or b to be, the arms were the manifestations of an intricate and powerful spell.

“You must have attacked TS-SIC-02. The plan was to leave Ponyville with a passing copy that would uncover themselves as a changeling when Twilight Sparkle’s treatment was completed. You would save the cured Twilight Sparkle from a changeling hideout andour business would have been concluded.” Luna turned back to the metallic pony and tried to find the right words to admonish the revelation. She paused as she realized how clean that plan was, if it had been implemented properly. They could have done it countless times and this would be the first time Equestria would even know of the third party behind it.

“I…” Luna wanted to say that she didn’t attack TS-SIC-02, but it sounded like selfish deflection of blame even before she said it out loud. TS-SIC-02 wouldn’t be dead if Luna hadn’t let her emotions get the better of her. Arguing the minutia of who was the active assailant was something for courtrooms and radio dramas, not something she should be giving any serious thought to at the moment.

“The changelings are working with you?” Luna knew that changelings had become a current and ever present threat after their attack on Canterlot and their kidnapping of Princess Cadance. They would make the ideal scapegoat and given the magic to alter memories, they couldn’t necessarily implicate this faction if captured. The iron string-pony only stared at Luna blankly, the mask it was hiding behind not intricate enough to blink.

“Did your creators kidnap Princess Cadance, before her wedding?” Luna had been happy to explain the changeling queen’s surreal decisions during her siege as a byproduct of her arrogance, but if she had only been buying time for these things to do what they planned, then it all started to make sense.

“That is not something TS-SIC-02 knew. I am here to convey Twilight Sparkle’s message and undo what is keeping Applejack and Rainbow Dash in stasis.” The metallic pony pointed a frail metal hoof at the table with the arms holding the orb of light. Luna had been distracted away from the strangeness of this situation before, but now it struck her as odd that Twilight Sparkle could send a message to her through the things meant to keep her abduction secret.

“Why would I believe you are talking for the actual Twilight Sparkle. Your side has shown the ability to create a convincing double physically and a magic capable of altering memories.” Luna turned to the metal framework of a pony and met its eyes. The eyes had an intensity to them that hadn’t been there before and the coils of metal looked like they were tensing up.

“TS-SIC-02 trusted Twilight enough to let her own death become irrelevant and you just...” The metal mare paused and Luna could hear the metal joints creak and strain as the automaton tensed her hooves and stretched its neck out, like somepony would do to work out stiffness out of their muscles. This was obviously an expression of something resembling an emotion, maybe coming to terms with something that strayed from its expectations was actually a physical strain on its body. “TS-SIC-02 couldn’t imagine that you would underestimate Twilight Sparkle so readily. I have no answer that would satisfy you, other than what information was passed down to me from the creator you let die for this same paranoia.”

“You are free to dislike me, but you cannot guilt me into believing you.” Luna knew she was being cold and adversarial, but these things had been manipulating and using her from the very first moment she had become aware of their existence. They had subverted free will from the whole of Ponyville, so Luna had ample reason to distrust them.

“I will now convey Twilight Sparkle’s message to the best of my ability.” The automaton paused and stood stock still for a moment, before Luna heard a faint click and something whirring to life behind the mask. The light of its eyes changed and suddenly the disturbing nothing peering through it was gone and replaced with a genuine glint of life. The change might had been slight, but it made the rest of the body look more out of place, thinking that a living mind was forced into such a decrepit body.

“Luna, I’m not sure what form this message will reach you in, but I hope it does. I’ll try to make it so you can hear it directly from the “me” in Ponyville, but I might not be able to override the safeguards in her programming in time. I don’t think I have long before they find out I’m accessing systems I shouldn’t be. This is so…” The automaton paused, raising a hoof to brush at a mane that was not there, while avoiding eye contact. The automaton let out a long breath, before squaring its wire-thin shoulders and raising its head to meet with Luna’s eyes again. “I see the good they can do and to see it all undone because of some old misunderstanding is not right. Direct contact with any member of Celestia’s court is something they will do anything to avoid. They have hid so long that there is no question in it anymore. You are the only pony who can talk to them, they will be open to dialogue if you proclaim yourself as a separate ruler from Celestia. This is our only chance to…”

The automaton suddenly stopped, snapping its mouth shut and that hum behind those eyes cut out. That disconcerting emptiness was back behind that mask and the automaton was staring ahead blankly for a tense moment.

“End of playback. Seems like she triggered some hardwired safeguard.” The Automaton immediately turned away from Luna and trotted over to the orb of light. It held out a hoof to the column the four appendages were sprouting from and Luna snapped out from her stupor just in time to pull the automaton away. It slowly put its hoof down and turned to Luna with no discernable emotion in its eyes, but Luna felt like the annoyance was more than implied.

“How was Twilight Sparkle able to get this message to me?” Luna asked the question evenly and calmly, despite wanting to scream out about a dozen other questions. She still had a strong feeling that she was being led on a path she was deliberately made not to understand. Being manipulated was not something she wanted to get accustomed to, so she tightened the grip of her magic on the automaton slightly. She should have the upper hoof in a dreamscape, no matter how altered, but she was not taking any chances,

“She used TS-SIC-01’s access to the system to change the parameters of your release and TS-SIC-02’s directives upon meeting you.” There were several things that perplexed Luna in that answer and she had to take a moment to decide which one to ask about first. The new bit of information about TS-SIC-01 sounded significant, as it sounded like it was the way Twilight Sparkle had gotten the upper hand over her captors.

“What does TS-SIC-01 stand for?” Knowing that this automaton called the doppelganger she had encountered TS-SIC-02, Luna had some idea as to what TS-SIC-01 would be, but she hoped she would find out how TS-SIC-01 connected to Twilight Sparkle gaining enough power over their captors to free Luna and disrupt their attempts at covering up their actions.

“It stands for Twilight Sparkle Simulated Intelligence Construct 01.” The automaton’s response was immediate. If Luna had been talking to an actual pony she would assume it was a rehearsed response, but she was talking to a thing that amounted to a spell with a personality. Not a concept that was unheard in conventional magic she knew, but very inefficient given how unicorn magic worked. The magic she was interacting with obviously worked within different rules.

“What is a simulated intelligence construct?” The automaton turned its head to the side as it considered the question. Luna could make an educated guess based on the words on their own, but it would be better to hear an explanation from someone with the actual facts.

“TS-SIC-02 did not have that information, but she was designated as one.” Luna nodded her head absently. The doppelganger had been in the middle of an existential crisis when Luna made contact with it, so it couldn’t give its creation information it didn’t possess, or have access to. It had been barred from directly giving Twilight Sparkle’s message to Luna, prompting the creation of the thing she was questioning now. For the first time in what felt like days things were starting to make sense, not by much, but enough for it to feel like a relief.

“Do you know where Twilight Sparkle was taken?” Luna doubted it would be this easy to unravel the lengths her kidnappers had gone to keep Twilight’s abduction secret, but she had to make the attempt.

“No.” As expected, the answer was immediate.

“Do you know why she was taken? Why was I?” Luna could think of several reasons to kidnap a alicorn, but few of them fit with the situation she found herself in. Letting an acting diarch go before the sickly princess in training didn’t make sense if it was a play to gain political power and their refusal to even contact Celestia disproved both that and ransom as motives.

“Twilight Sparkle was taken because your methods would have led to her death. You were taken because it would have brought undue attention to leave you damaged.” Luna should have been beyond awaiting an emotional response from the automaton, but the detached way it talked of the most personal pain a unicorn could experience made her temper rise somewhat.

“You expect me to believe that completely restoring a shattered horn is not a significant drain on resources? I am supposed to believe that the things that you are twice removed can…”

“No.” The automaton showed no emotion, but did raise its voice cut through Luna’s annoyed tirade. Luna felt like she had enough piled up anxiety to go on for hours, so a part of her was glad for the interruption.

“What do you mean by that?” She ruffled her wings in annoyance, concentrating on setting them down on her sides neatly to try and calm down. She didn’t like how the interactions she’d had with the friendly faction among her kidnappers all ended with her being more annoyed and confused than before.

“Your horn is completely functional, not restored to what it was. There are still active processes that need to be monitored.” The automaton turned its head toward the orb of light, not caring about Luna’s reaction to the fact it had dropped. There was that strange whistling noise again, before the automaton talked again. “Applejack’s mind cannot sustain both the cage and myself much longer. I am prepared to self-terminate before your need for answers endangers the integrity of the host mind.”

“You would kill yourself to avoid answering my questions?” She knew the accusation was selfish and disregarded Applejack’s safety the moment it left her mouth, but the part of her that said the words couldn’t think past their own interest. The automaton themself were unlikely to care about her rudeness, but Luna was bothered by the ease in which she was falling back into Nightmare Moon’s thought patterns. It was leagues away from a full physical transformation, but Luna wanted to step back from that road as early as possible. Wanting to feel that powerful and confident again after what she’d been through was a natural reaction, but she had no use for the aggression and narcissistic paranoia that came along with her alter-ego.

The metal pony stared at Luna unfeelingly as the diarch took a slow breath in and let it out as slowly. She didn’t have time for proper meditation to calm her flaring temper, but she had to think clearly enough to maneuver the situation Twilight Sparkle had allegedly dropped her into. The automaton had been seemingly programmed only to achieve the function of delivering Twilight’s message and undoing the spell keeping Applejack unconscious. There were many question Luna wanted to ask, but it was unlikely the automaton had an answer for her.

“How do I contact the beings holding Twilight Sparkle? Is there a way to force a reaction from them?” Twilight Sparkle’s message contradicted the whole charade Ponyville was caught in, so Luna was inclined to believe it more than the offered changeling angle. The automaton turned back to face Luna, that strange whistling sound in the air again.

“Bravo, Opera, Romeo, November, 7-5-3-3. This code forces the Ponyville system into a diagnostic cycle, forcing a connection to the master system.” The wire-thin pony again glanced at the orb and back to Luna, non-verbally signaling the urgency of the situation. It would have taken the automaton a scant few seconds to tell Luna these things, so there had to be some other reason why it had tried to cut their dialogue short.

“Twilight Sparkle clearly wants me to make contact with her captors. Why did you try to leave me without this information?” Luna slowly let the metal pony out of her magic, feeling confused about the situation again. The metal pony trotted over to the pillar holding the orb again and inserted it’s hoof into it. There was no sound of a mechanism activating, or the hoof breaking through something. The hoof and the pillar simply were the same thing now, as things are sometimes in dreams.

“You killed TS-SIC-02, my creator. I am under no obligation to spare you from hardship.” There was no emotion in the fleshless equine’s voice, it was said as matter of factly as you would comment on the weather. Luna wasn’t sure if this made the comment hit her worse or not, but she still felt her need to argue deflate.

“I’m sorry.” It was all she could think to say in this situation. She’d admitted fault for that act before, so she had no right to argue the point now.

“Irrelevant.” One of the arms on the column snapped out of place and hung limply. The orb of light grew in size considerably and Luna could make out distorted images flashing through it. The images she could make out were in greens and browns and all very warm and earthy, as you would expect of the Element of Honesty. The orb had really been the extremely condensed form of Applejack’s mind. Luna didn’t want to take what she was seeing at face value, but it did seem like her kidnappers had access to foreign magic far more potent than she was aware of.

“You acting on your feelings has already cost us TS-SIC-02.” Another arm flew out of place, the joints that had held it up to the orb cracking and failing as it nearly tore itself out of its bindings. The orb grew again and now Luna could recognize faces in the images. Members of the Apple family, seen through the loving eye of Applejack. Luna turned her eyes away from the sight, knowing what it could mean to subject themselves to someone else’s subjective views of other people.

“Don’t let my creators reaction to your outburst define them.” Another arm snapped out of place, the remnants of it disappearing into the surrounding void. The one remaining arm couldn’t keep the orb completely spherical anymore, resulting in a vortex of memories and thoughts shooting out into the void above them. Luna kept her eyes downward, as what she would see up there would the concentrated essence of what made Applejack and by the laws of the place she governed, seeing its full splendor would lessen it.

“Mutual cooperation is beneficial for Twilight Sparkle’s recovery and for the future of Equestria.” There was a click when the last arm of the contraption released its grip, but any following sound it made was drowned out by the cacophony of light, feelings and sounds rushing past Luna. She caught glimpses of every part of Applejack’s mind and felt heartfelt cornerstone moments of her psyche rush past her like boulders caught up in a tsunami. All of what exploded out from that orb naturally filled the space she had traversed to reach it, so the velocity of what grazed her would have sheared her flesh off of her bones if they were corporeal. Actually hitting one of these more solid parts of Applejack’s mind would not have been dangerous, but it would have been uncomfortable on a very basic level. Forced to live out someone’s most personal memory was something that could stick with you and change your perspective to match with that person and anything they knew. You would temporarily share their perspective of the world, affecting your magic and personality in varying degrees. She wondered about her luck in not coming into contact with these fragments, but then she remembered where the automaton had been when the orb destabilized. It had been a solid enough of a construct to absorb and deflect the rushing tide away from Luna directly behind it, but there was no way that it could maintain cohesion with all that energy surging through it. It was like throwing a paper boat into the rapids of a river, whereas Luna would be a boat designed to pass those rapids safely in this metaphor.

The ruler of the night raised her head and saw that she was standing on a small clearing in what was most likely a representation of the Apple family orchard. There was a scorched stump of a tree where the pedestal holding the orb had been. There was a bit of scorched grass where the metallic equine automaton had been standing. The grass between Luna and the scorch mark was tall and undisturbed in a tight cone, while the rest of the greenery in the clearing was torn away from the stump, or blown flat. The damage was negligible, if Luna was right about how powerful the spell had been, again making Luna wonder how her kidnappers were so adept at magic she was supposed to be the only expert in.

The core of the spell was destroyed and Applejack’s mind had reasserted itself in Luna’s realm. By all accounts Luna should feel a sense of accomplishment, but she couldn’t shake the idea that she’d again just let things happen and stayed as a spectator to them. She’d stepped into Applejack’s mind on her own, determined to fix something by her own power, but now she was again presented with a clear path to follow by those she should consider as enemies.

Could she really be so sure she wasn’t still controlled by her captors? If she were to take a step back and look at what she’d done, then she’d done nothing but follow a path that had been quite obviously laid out for her. She’d been released from their direct control near Fluttershy’s cottage, where she found out that the Elements were contaminated and her guard had been rendered ineffective, isolating her further in this situation. TS-SIC-02’s actions seemed to contradict this, but only if she assumed her captors goal was to stay hidden. TS-SIC-02’s death was something that raised the stakes of this scenario for her, but it also drove her further into the charade that was Ponyville. She was unwilling to risk contacting Canterlot, when the forces trying to keep what was happening secret were prepared to use deadly force.

It all came down to if she believed the message she’d just received was actually from Twilight Sparkle, not to mention how heavily it was edited. Starting to distrust her own memories was the next logical step, but if she did that, then there was nothing she could actually trust. She could be tied down to a table, stuck “remembering” a fabricated reality a few seconds prior, but that was a situation she could not change or control. She had to limit her speculations to scenarios she could actually affect, or she would become a nervous wreck.

The situation in Ponyville was either an elaborate cover for kidnapping Twilight Sparkle that was unraveling because of Twilight Sparkle’s interference, or it was an attempt at manipulating Luna into making a decision favorable to her kidnappers. She was either pressured to distance her side of the diarchy from Celestia’s in order to bring her kidnappers to the negotiation table, or she was cowing to the manipulation of her sister’s old enemy that had chosen to use her court as a front.

Luna concentrated on her breathing and turned her eyes to the sunny orchard around her. All the trees were healthy, in neat rows and had both plump apples and flowers blooming on them. An impossibly ornate thing that would not exist in reality and shifted to stay beautifully synchronized as Luna moved her gaze from tree to tree. She’d hoped that she would get some clarity from being in the mind of the element of Honesty, maybe even have some help in determining what she should believe. All she saw around her was peace and warmth, which was nice, but it didn’t help her come to a decision.

“I can’t have a panic attack here.” The words came out as a hoarse whisper, she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. The sun was far too hot, stifling every pour in her body and twisting a knot in her head. She concentrated on her breathing, harder. She had to figure this out, she had to do the right thing! In, out and in again. In, out, in, out, in, in, out, in, out. She had to at least be able to breathe right! What kind of diarch didn’t know how to breathe, when their subjects were under the influence of unknown assailants with ridiculous resources and abilities? She had to figure this out, she had to outwit her kidnappers, be better than them, find a peaceful way to end this! Twilight Sparkle had done it a dozen times as a unicorn. Luna could do this, she could…

“Princess Luna, fancy meeting you here!” Luna spun around, ready for whatever attack was waiting for her. She should have known the automaton was nothing more than a distraction to make her vulnerable for their true goal. She should never have even entertained the idea of trusting anyone affiliated with her kidnappers. The flesh-challenged pony could have just as well irreparably harmed Applejack and Luna hadn’t done anything to stop it. Stupid, it had been one of the most stupid things she could have done and the fact it had felt natural for her made her realize just how worthless of a ruler she was! She had to at least be somewhat competent and protect herself before the trap sprung itself on her!

“Woah, what’s got ya so spooked, Luna?” Applejack paused her advance on the edge of the small clearing, adjusting her signature hat to block the sun from her eyes. Any question of this being another trick or illusion didn’t even enter Luna’s mind, as there was an air around the mare that made her seem more real than anything Luna would see in the waking world. She was as deep in the subconscious of the mare in question as you could be and Applejack’s self-image was a startlingly accurate reflection of the mare in the waking world. Her coat might have been bit more glossy and her mane caught the light in spectacular ways, but that was as mild of a deviation Luna could imagine for somepony’s self-image. She’d seen more than enough ponies see themselves as omnipotent alicorns in the depths of their subconscious.

“There’s a reason you’re the element of Honesty, that’s for sure.” Luna sighed and tried to let some of her stress out with the breath she let out. She didn’t feel like it did much, but she was able let the gathered energy in her horn dissipate all the same. Applejack’s representation was here to heal the black spot the spell had left on her psyche, like a immune response for the mind. This was a thing Luna understood, making it a breath of fresh air for her situation. She took a few steps to the side to let this aspect of Applejack fulfill its purpose. It wasn’t necessary to monitor this process, but Luna felt like she could use a minute in a calm and centred mind like Applejack’s.

“Thank ya kindly, your highness. You’re quite alright yourself, even if ya don’t believe it quite yet.” Applejack tilted her hat to Luna as she trotted over to the blackened stump. Luna had at least three solid reasons to believe the compliment was genuine, but her immediate response was to dismiss it as an empty gesture. It would have been easy to blame her lack of self-confidence to what her kidnappers had done, but most of her problems had been pre-existing conditions, only aggravated by the nature of what had happened to her. Luna chuckled dryly, being in the presence of the Element of Honesty must have been affecting her mind, as she didn’t think she could admit that to herself in the real world. Another reason for Luna to linger for moment longer than necessary.

“If ya don’t mind me saying ya look like something that crawled out of tartarus. Whatever got ya so tangled up, princess?” Applejack trotted over to the stump, again contrasting the idealized self-images Luna was accustomed to. They flew, teleported, or just skipped the space in between this far into their own mind. Luna didn’t have to wonder why the memory alteration hadn’t been successful with Applejack, seeing how grounded into reality the mare was.

“I am…” Now she had to try and explain a situation she didn’t understand. There was a definite possibility that the power of the element would grant her some preternatural insight into this situation, but Luna had to know how to explain the situation accurately first. How could she simplify her situation enough for the element of honesty to cut through the layers of deception she was mired in? “I have to decide between trusting a faction I know nothing about to be speaking for Twilight Sparkle and…”

“That don’t sound right to me.” Applejack interjected as she was digging up the roots of the ruined tree, going about the menial task as if it was a zen exercise. The reverence Luna saw in the act a reflection of Applejack’s love for her family’s orchard, no doubt. “Ya say you know nothing ‘bout them, but ya seem to have made your mind up about them already.”

“I know that they kidnapped me, took Twilight Sparkle to who knows where and put you under a spell when you didn’t fall for their tricks!” Luna felt like she could have continued her rant, but something stopped her. It didn’t feel right to say anything more, in a base, religious kind of way. After a brief flare of outrage she realized this was the element of honesty at work, stopping her from speaking something that was not true, or she didn’t genuinely believe.

“Sounds mighty suspicious, but that ain’t all of it, is it?” Applejack nudged the blackened stump, testing if it would move. The stump moved ever so slightly and Applejack moved to dig more ground out from under it, before making an attempt at removing it.

“They shattered my horn and are forcing the whole of Ponyville quiet by tampering with their memory as soon as they get suspicious!” Luna wanted to shout out what they had done to TS-SIC-02, but for some reason the element’s power stopped the words from coming out. Why couldn’t she blame her kidnappers for the immolation of their creation? Did the element of honesty really place the blame on Luna, as the automaton had done?

“Sounds to me you are trying to make me agree with you, by not telling me the whole truth. There’s something else these guys did, isn’t there?” Applejack leaned on the stump, slowly forcing the shallow roots out of the ground. The spell had been powerful, but it had also hadn’t been there long enough to cement itself in the mindscape. Luna had to wonder how the mindscapes of the ponies having their memories altered constantly looked like, despite not seeing any signs of damage in Applejack’s mind. The element had obviously shielded her enough to question the memory alteration, so the damage this far into the psyche would be minimal. The elements were something that were connected to Equestria itself, so Luna could safely disregard the idea of her captors manipulating this interaction.

“They… They made my horn functional again and healed other ponies in the hospital, allegedly. They claim to be healing Twilight Sparkle, as well.” Luna heavily suspected the motives of her mysterious kidnappers, but she couldn’t voice these deductions while under the elements power, as they were not things she knew for certain. Applejack produced a rope from that place that all the roots and loose rocks that tripped you in dreams came from and tied it to the stump halfway out of the ground. She gave it a few experimental tugs to see that her knot was secure before responding to Luna.

“Well, from all we’ve seen of them, these guys are desperate to hide and they heal ponies. You can choose to trust them to stick to their guns and let this whole thing play out on their terms, or you can take that matchstick pony’s suggestion and force them to acknowledge you. They’re still going to have Twilight, whichever you choose.” Applejack turned to acknowledge Luna as she said this, the otherworldly shine to the mare’s already vibrant eyes signaling that it was a statement coming from the element, rather than just the mare. It was the very epitome of an honest truth and Luna couldn’t argue with the logic of it either. The question was never if she should trust her kidnappers or not, it was a choice between letting them hide as she ran to her sister for answers that didn’t necessarily exist and grasping at the lifeline Twilight Sparkle had thrown at her hooves. The lifeline’s validity didn’t matter, not as long Twilight’s life was subject to the whims of her captors.

“I understand, thank you. Do you sense Twilight Sparkle at all, as a fellow element?” Luna hoped that the link between the elements could be used to gain some information when it came to the validity of the claim her kidnappers were in the process of healing Twilight Sparkle. The elements should at least know if one of them was alive or not, they were made to work together, after all.

“She’s alive, but very far away. You should leave this place, let Applejack recover from what she’s gone through.” Any hint of Applejack’s accent was gone from her voice and that eerie shine almost drowned out the green of her eyes. The element was tired of Luna taking advantage of the situation and was telling her to get out of Applejack’s mind. She should have done that the moment the automaton had undone the spell, but the clarity and advice she’d gained was enough to justify her ill-advised hesitation. She would have been stuck in her own head for far too long to do anything of value, if she couldn’t look at her own situation honestly.

Luna jumped up into the air and flexed her wings to reach the door back into her realm. It was far easier to maneuver dreams when you knew their rules as intimately as Luna and when they were not affected by strange magic. Stepping out of Applejack’s mind brought with it some of that anxiety and tension the element of honesty’s presence had kept at bay, but now she had a clear idea as to what she should do. Getting back into the real world was just a matter of falling asleep, only backwards. Gradually reassert control of your body, rather than forfeiting it.

Luna opened her eyes and immediately glanced around the room, half expecting a trap of some kind to spring out as soon as she saw it. Instead, she locked eyes with the bloodshot eyes of the guard she had left unconscious in the confectionary, after falsely assuming them to be the mastermind to this whole situation. He was standing at attention at the border of her barrier, clearly less intoxicated than before, but obviously not sober.

“Princess Luna.” The guard nodded at Luna, forgoing a salute as he was holding one of his hooves off the floor. Luna had most likely caused that injury and the guard had still sought her out to keep to his duty. She really should make an effort to remember this pony’s name. “I gathered that you dealt with the Twilight Sparkle impersonator. What are your orders?”

“What’s your name? I should have asked it the moment I saw you, but things kept distracting me.” It must have been the element of honesty still affecting her inhibitions that caused her just to blurt the question out like this, but at least it would give Luna an answer to this socially awkward puzzle.

“It’s Roaming Reigns, your highness. I am fairly new to your detail, so I understand.” The guard’s posture relaxed slightly, as if her not knowing his name answered some question the stallion had been battling with themselves. Luna would put bits on it having to do with wondering why Luna had attacked him earlier. Luna nodded absently, trying to remember if she had been introduced to the stallion before or not. There would have to be a change in the procedures when it came to assigning guards to her personal detail if he hadn’t been.

“Can you tell me what happened during the days I was gone?” A quick scanning spell confirmed that Applejack was sleeping normally, the element no doubt keeping her under as it excised the foreign spell properly. Twilight Sparkle and her friends were lucky to have the elements to bolster their defences to magical threats, otherwise they would have been forced to go through extensive rehabilitation after Discord put his whammy on them. The crown had of course footed the bill on Ponyville’s rehabilitation, but it was still the difference between a good night sleep and weeks of incremental improvement.

“It all started when…” The guard jumped in surprise as the door to the library was forced open suddenly and even Luna prepared to defend herself for that fraction of a second it took the guilty party to announce themselves.

“Princess Luna, you’re never going to guess what my new friend is saying!” Pinkie Pie pronked her way into the library and continued to bounce around in arcs that didn’t seem to make sense. Luna was certain the pink mare was jumping while in mid-air, despite having no pegasi heritage whatsoever. She could hear Twilight Sparkle’s parents waking up frightened and confused from their well-deserved power nap. “Oh, sorry Twilight’s mom and dad. Didn’t mean to spook you. Apparently I have an undiagnosed behavioral syndrome that makes me blind to certain social cues.”

“So, you’re not even going to guess at what my new friend is saying? I know I said you would never guess it, but you’re way smarter than me, so maybe you could surprise my new friend and I!” The bouncing blur of pink ploof rattled out as she made her way up the stairs one by one, but with the speed of a jackhammer. As usual, the pink party planner was speaking fast enough to actually make it hard to parse out where one word ended and another started, at least for Luna’s ears. She had known the element of laughter to be hyperactive, but this was more like a mocking parody of what the mare usually acted like. Something was wrong and Luna had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with this new friend of Pinkie Pie’s.

“What is your new friend saying, Pinkie Pie?” Luna stepped forward, moving her shield to encompass Roaming Reigns. Pinkie Pie acted goofy and harmless, but she was an element of harmony and came from an old earth pony family that worked with highly magical ores, so she definitely had the raw strength to break even a competent magical barrier. She didn’t want to assume Pinkie Pie would fall into her kidnappers control, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared.

“Twilight’s out of surgery! There’s still the genetic resequencing of the new brain matter and forcing the synaptic pathways into their old configuration and rehabilitation from the invasive surgery, but still, isn’t that great? She’s no longer in danger of dying!” Pinkie Pie stopped for a moment, her ears swiveling to listen to something down the stairs. Luna couldn’t hear anything and she suspected that it was only Pinkie Pie that could hear this new friend of hers. “My new friend says I have grossly simplified the procedures Twilight is going through and my exaltation is both misguided and premature.”

“Pinkie, who is your new friend? Can you tell me their name?” It was obvious Pinkie had somehow managed to make contact with the faction that had taken both Luna and Twilight. The spell on Ponyville would need supervision, so Pinkie Pie’s friend was most likely someone assigned to do just that and somehow Pinkie Pie had done forced a dialogue between them, just like Luna had been prompted to do. At least, that’s what made the most sense to Luna’s understanding of magic, but her kidnappers were also using unorthodox kinds of magic she didn’t know.

“No names, they’re here, right in here. Have to...” Pinkie Pie tried to start jumping around like before, but her legs failed to get her off the floor and she stumbled to lean on Luna’s shield instead. Luna watched the aura of joy deflate from around Pinkie Pie and the obvious signs of exhaustion started showing through. The pink pony’s coat was slick with sweat and there were several small cuts and scrapes on her hooves and around her body that had healed halfway before scabbing over. She was breathing in slow wheezing gasps that made Luna’s throat itch in sympathy just from the sound. She looked every bit like a mare who had forced herself into a manic spectacle of joy for what could have been six days. “Know what - what they’re doing.”

“Pinkie, it’s okay, you can stop now. I will take care of this.” Luna carefully extended her magic to hold up Pinkie’s weight. The pink mare might have been afforded a ridiculous amount of stamina through her earth pony physiology and being an element of harmony made her able to shield herself from the mind-altering effects of the magic in Ponyville, but it was obvious that both were running on fumes by this point. Allowing Pinkie Pie to continue as she had would be irresponsible. “I know you care about Twilight Sparkle, but I cannot allow you to exert yourself any further.”

Pinkie Pie raised her head to try and argue the point, but slumped back down before she could get any words out. It must have been a constant struggle to even stay awake, now that she was stationary and not relying on her element to keep her energy up. The pink mare had still been able to gleam a few interesting pieces of information about Twilight’s situation, if they were to be believed. Their kidnappers were capable of brain surgery and had taken it upon themselves to save Twilight Sparkle’s life using this knowledge. They had been successful so far, if this friend of Pinkie Pie’s was telling the truth. Luna had seen desperation starting to set into the eyes of the experts that had been brought in to heal Twilight, so seeing her kidnappers more confident in their ability was strangely comforting.

“Roaming Reigns, I am going to negotiate with the beings responsible for what has happened here. I believe Twilight Sparkle had me released early to facilitate contact between them and my court.” Luna set the pink mare down next to the bed, absently dispelling her shield as Pinkie Pie started snoring softly. Luna cast another scanning spell on the mares in front of her and wasn't surprised to find that the spell keeping Rainbow Dash between unconscious and actually sleeping was dispersed along with Applejack. TS-SIC-02 must have only had one message to deliver, so the two spells were made dependent on each other.

“I'll stand guard, Princess.” Roaming Reigns saluted as sharply as his hangover would allow. Luna moved to leave Twilight’s bedroom alcove, but then remembered how Roaming Reigns had been holding one of his hooves off the floor before Pinkie Pie burst into the library.

“Roaming Reigns, your hoof was injured a moment ago, was it not?” She turned herself around, but managed to stop herself from charging her horn. She shouldn’t keep jumping to conclusions when she knew so little of what was going on.

“The spell on Ponyville heals noticeable injuries automatically. It would be hard to ignore cuts and bumps caused by something you forgot, after all. Cuts as small as those on Pinkie Pie can actually be seen healing by the naked eye.” Roaming Reigns stood a little straighter, as he answered the valid question. The unfortunate guard seemed to be aware of how close he’d come to being suspected and possibly attacked again, if the tension in his posture was any indication. “It will all be in my report, princess.”

“Yes, of course.” Luna slid Pinkie Pie’s snoring body closer and took a closer look at what she had assumed to be half-healed wounds scabbed over. She found dried blood adhered to the coat, but there was no sign of the wound that the blood had come from. The dried blood itself was also fading in front of her eyes, washed away with the moisture on Pinkie’s skin evaporating faster than it should. In a minute or two there would be no outward sign of the broken and exhausted state she had driven herself into. Luna remembered the cut on her chin she had to close on her own. TS-SIC-02 had said Luna was exempt from the memory alteration, so did that mean she was also not affected by any other effect of the spell over Ponyville? The skeletal pony had mentioned active processes in her horn, so was that what kept her from being influenced, or were these two different things?

“Healing magic is complex, so they must be monitoring what they are doing. That would mean you are still connected to the magic subjugating Ponyville.” Luna had planned to go out and shout the password she had been given to force her kidnappers into contacting her, but seeing how the magic at work in Ponyville was referred to as an “system” there should be no difference in what part of that system heard the words, hypothetically. “Follow me, I need to test this.”

Luna walked down the stairs to the first floor and scanned the walls for a door. She’d heard Twilight had an underground laboratory in the basement of the library and it sounded like an ideal place to test if the codeword she’d been given was effective. Twilight’s parents had fallen back to sleep, even after Pinkie’s abrupt entrance. Luna couldn’t sense any malicious magic keeping them asleep, but that had also been the case with Applejack and she had definitely been under a spell. The magic her kidnappers had access to was a mystery, as was their identity, motives for caring for Twilight’s wellbeing and what had happened between them and her sister.

Luna spotted the door and attempted to open it quietly, but found it locked and magically fused to the wall. The doppelganger had wanted to keep ponies away from the equipment that could reveal its true nature, no doubt. It was a simple matter of cutting the fused matter out, now that the one who cast the spell was gone. You would think going to such lengths to keep the basement locked would be suspicious on its own, but it did have the whole of system in Ponyville working with it at the time. The door opened with a little further forcing and Luna realized something was wrong when a tuft of smoke and ash billowed out and the inside of the door was blackened by soot. The magic that had fused the door to the wall must have isolated the basement from the rest of the structure completely, as there was no way that the fire that had charred the door in this way wouldn’t have set the rest of the tree ablaze.

“The dragon...” Roaming Reigns put Luna’s thoughts into words before Luna had the chance. Most of Twilight’s friends were accounted for and subjugated by what was going on in Ponyville, but nopony had even mentioned what had happened to Spike after the hospital had been taken by the green fog. He had obviously been locked in the basement to keep him out of the way at some point, but the magic put in place to keep him in had backfired as the young drake became desperate enough to try and burn his way out. “A dragon can’t get burnt, so he’s fine, right?”

“He still needs to breathe!” Luna broke out into a run and broke through into the darkened basement. Any windows that might have let in natural light from the sunny morning outside had been blackened by the smoke and the walls and stairs were similarly unhelpful in helping Luna see with what light shone through from the open doorway. She stumbled as she hit a wall unexpectedly, but was able to navigate the stairs down after she realised they curved along the wall of the basement. Spike had started the fire by the door, so he wouldn’t be close to it, dragon or no. A quick orb of light and a glance at the walls told Luna what Spike had attempted after going through the door didn’t work. There were scratch marks on the walls where Luna assumed the windows were. The spell that had kept the door pristine on the outside had both kept the windows from cracking and Spike’s claws from penetrating deep enough to give him purchase. She didn’t like the image that was being painted in her mind at all.

“Spike, answer me!” Luna frantically scanned the floor and among the scientific equipment. Spike might have been a dragon, but he was also young, alone and raised by ponies, so he might have chosen to hide from the fire. She could feel warmth in the air and there had still been some smoke in the space, so hopefully the fire had just burned itself out and Spike was unconscious because of lack of oxygen. Dragons were far more hardy when it came to obnoxious gases but they still needed a certain amount of breathable air, just as any other living thing. The best case scenario here was that the fire had burnt itself out without using up all the oxygen in the room and the fake Twilight Sparkle’s death had dispelled the seal on the room in time for some of the stagnant air to escape and be replaced. Luna had to believe that Twilight was the kind of pony that wouldn’t overlook proper ventilation in a laboratory.

“Damn it!” Luna grabbed everything she could see in her magic and raised it up to the ceiling. This disturbed the ash that had settled on the machinery and blinded her for that moment, but she would have a clearer view of the space as it settled again. She could hear Roaming Reigns coughing from the disturbed air, but kept her attention on any corner and nook of the space, looking for a mass of purple scales. There had been no answer to her call so that meant that…

There was a flash of green light under one of the piles of ash. The collected ash slid off of Spike’s scales, understably unchanged from the fire and heat, but still affixed to a still body. The flash hadn’t been his fire and was gone so fast Luna thought she might have imagined it, until she saw Spike’s body light up again with flashing pinpricks bright green light.

“Princess, something is...” By the time Luna turned her attention back to Roaming Reigns the stallion was leaning heavily on the wall and sweating profusely. She could hear his teeth clattering as the seizure made his body twitch and tense up violently. The same shade of green light appeared at the whites of his eyes, before his body suddenly slumped against the wall.

“STOP IT!” There was no rational reason for her to think that using the Canterlot Voice would help, but she couldn’t just keep quiet as things kept going wrong around her. She knew there was something out there she was directing her frustration at, even if she didn’t know what or where or who it was. Something was making these tragedies happen and something had made her a helpless witness to it and those things were not necessarily malevolent or the same thing.

“STOP HIDING!“ Luna smashed one of the things she had suspended in the air into a wall. It made a satisfyingly loud sound as it smashed to pieces and fell to the ground. A small voice at the back of her head tried to tell her she was acting irrational and lashing out in anger was doing anything but helping, but she was not in a frame of mind to listen.

“NO MORE GAMES!” She launched another expensive thing at a wall, this one broke into shards and sparks of light with a clear crystalline sound. It must have been made out of magical crystals, or designed to emulate them. This was not helping, this was a thing Nightmare Moon would do if things weren’t going her way. A childish tantrum she had hoped to have grown out of and the fact that she was both aware of it and unable to stop herself was adding to the stress prompting it. Something had definitely happened to her during her time with her kidnappers.

“I AM TIRED OF BEING…” She was cut short in her outburst as an intense chill took the air out of her lungs. Something had changed about the room and it was drastic enough to affect her magic. She felt the things she still had in her magic waver and then just disappear as that same shade of green bathed the darkened basement. There was a sudden gust of wind toward the gathering light and Luna had to brace herself to stop herself from stumbling forward. She couldn’t look at the light directly, but it was gathering high up near the ceiling of the high cellar, seemingly gathering all energy and anything not nailed down into that point. It might not have been an orthodox teleportation spell, but this was definitely some kind of matter displacement magic. The things she had in her magic had disappeared, drawn into and deconstructed by the forming portal and adding to the gathering energy, as no equivalent mass had yet to appear from the light.

The light kept building in intensity, until it flashed a blinding white and left Luna squinting at the sudden darkness. She couldn’t see what had appeared in the sudden darkness, but there was another gust of wind as the mass of the object displaced the air it now occupied. Luna tried to cast a spell to illuminate whatever had teleported into the room and maybe defend herself, but was again put off balance as a wave of knee-high water rushed past her. They had used teleportation magic to flood the basement? This couldn’t be a delayed reaction to the fire that had ravaged this space, could it? Luna had come to expect a level of competency from her kidnappers and this seemed out of character.

Luna barely registered the movement and noise of something rushing through the water, before she was knocked off balance and lifted off of her hooves as it collided with her. She tried to charge up her horn to knock the assailant back, but there was still something draining all of the magic out of the room. That chill she’d felt as the light appeared radiated off of the thing holding her, so she had to assume it was responsible.

“Un… Unhand me!” She might not have been able to see her assailant, but she could still deduce that her assailant was both bipedal and at least as tall as her. They were also strong enough to hold her aloft with her hooves barely connecting with the ground, so the appendages on her throat and wing were a real concern. The thing was holding her in a strange way that still thoroughly immobilized her in the situation they were in. There was an appendage under her chin, grasping at her throat and holding her chin up to the ceiling, stretching her neck out in a way that it made it impossible for the see her assailant. She could feel a part of its body pressing on her right haunch, keeping her slightly tilted to the side and unable to stand on her own. There was another appendage holding the base of her right wing, grabbing it in a place that made it go limp and supporting enough of her weight that the hand on her throat wasn’t throttling her. Without the use of her magic, she had the choice of struggling and being choked out, or stay as still as possible and try to support her weight on the one hoof that could barely reach the floor.

“I am restraining you to ensure Spike receives the medical attention he needs. Neither of us wants to see what would happen if I don’t stop you.” Luna was surprised that her attacker was talking to her, given how it had made sure she couldn’t see what they looked like. The voice didn’t match with what she had assumed someone strong enough to manhandle an alicorn would sound like, but when she realized why the voice sounded familiar she was right back to being angry and confused.

“Why are you impersonating Twilight Sparkle? Do you think it would make me more likely to believe you? I know you can create things like TS-SIC-02, so why would mimicking a voice phase me?” Luna tried to strike at where her assailant’s body should be with her right fore hoof, but only shifted more of her weight to rest on the hand clutching her throat. She gasped and flung her hooves about in a panic, as there was nothing holding most of weight off the hand strangling her for several seconds. Her assailant raised her back up into her previous positions by painfully pulling on the wing it had in a similar vice grip. Why hadn’t her hoof connected with anything? How could there be nothing between the hands holding her?

“You are not well, Luna. Your magic is poisoning you, shutting out your rational mind when you need it most. You’ve felt outside yourself ever since you were released, like you were watching yourself make decisions you couldn’t believe were your own. I can only imagine how distressing that is to somepony with your history.” Twilight Sparkle’s voice was just as warm and convincing as it had been when the purple unicorn had helped Luna enjoy Nightmare Night. She tried to be insulted at the obvious manipulation, but her tired mind couldn’t completely separate this thing choking her and the kind unicorn. That same irrational side of her that had caused her to lash out insisted on believing it was Twilight Sparkle sympathizing with her situation.

“What are you? How are you doing this?” She could hear the raspiness in her voice and hated how she could feel her body sagging against the thing holding her. The thing was describing her state of mind near perfectly, some small part of her was relieved that someone understood the situation better than she could put into words. Surely they would know how to fix her, if they knew what was wrong with her. It wasn’t a good sign that she had to remind herself to not trust the people that had put her into this situation in the first place. It should have been easier, as she was being attacked by one of her kidnappers right now. She was being throttled, but her assailant was supporting her body enough for her to be able to breathe, if she kept perfectly still. It was an unorthodox submission hold, but Luna understood the psychological impact physical dominance and a soft comforting voice could have. There was a reason a stalwart knight against a boisterous rogue bandit was one of the most popular character dynamics in the romance novels she sometimes indulged in, not to mention the dreams inspired by them.

“I know you didn’t want to hurt TS-SIC-02, or the ponies she protected from your paranoia. I doubt you meant to endanger Spike’s life here either and you couldn’t have known about the ruptured blood vessel in Roaming Reign’s brain.” Her attacker twisted her neck to the side so that she could see Roaming Reign’s body bathed in that same green glow she had come to associate with the magic of her kidnappers. There was a far brighter glow coming from where Spike’s body had been, so she assumed her kidnappers magic was also fixing Spike. If she had not been restrained as she was Luna would have definitely tried to shield the young drake and her loyal guard from the magic of her assailants. The fact they were trying to heal them wouldn’t have crossed her mind.

“Letting you continue as you are would only invite more tragedies. Helping you will be the first step toward a peaceful future. I hope you will let me do that.” The thing holding her shifted its weight back and for a split second Luna was sure she would be dangled there helplessly as consciousness left her, but surprisingly the appendages holding her wing and throat let go and she fell down on numb hooves. She immediately scanned the room and tried to locate the thing that had manhandled her so easily. The dark basement was alight in green light because of a luminescent cocoon that had formed around Spike, but she didn’t see her attacker in the open space around her. She’d heard it rush through the water to get to her, so it should at least have a physical body. The water in the basement was still and undisturbed, adding to the mystery of the thing’s disappearance.

“Where are you? Why did you let me go?” Luna checked the stairs for sign of someone rushing out as she steadied her footing. She saw no tracks of water leading up into the library. The thing that attacked her was in the room with her, or had used another form of teleportation to disappear.

“It is no longer necessary to physically restrain you. Spike and Roaming Reigns are out of immediate danger. I implore you to take the steps to start peaceful dialogue with the faction I represent.” The thing’s voice came from somewhere in front of her, as if there was someone standing there, calmly explaining the situation. She took a step to the side and tilted her head to and fro, checking for signs of a concealment spell. There was something like a shimmer in the air in front of her when she moved her head, but that was all she could make out. She couldn’t make sense of its dimensions with the limited lighting in the room. She should not be surprised that the things that had been so adamant on secrecy could turn invisible, but it was still a frightening thought. This invisible thing could not only disrupt her magic, but also had the physical strength to strangle her, or even break her neck.

“What are you? If you want me to trust you, you should at least answer some of my questions.” Luna took a step back toward the stairs. Running away would leave Spike and Roaming Reigns at this thing’s mercy, but it didn’t hurt to keep the option open.

“I am someone who gambled on your better nature. Please, Twilight Sparkle’s recovery will benefit greatly from contact with her friends and family. Discourse between you and my faction is the only way to assure that now.” The thing was still using Twilight Sparkle’s voice and it was sounding genuinely desperate. The element of honesty had described these things as desperate to hide and prone to healing ponies, so Luna could believe Twilight Sparkle’s recovery to be a priority for them. Their mysterious interest in the health of Twilight Sparkle had been a constant during this harrowing experience. Her horn had been shattered because she had attempted to stop the green fog from reaching the hospitalized Twilight Sparkle. Ponyville had been put under a spell to give their kidnappers a safe way to reintegrate Twilight Sparkle into Equestria and to keep them hidden from Celestia. Twilight Sparkle was important to them for some reason and Luna had only been released early to facilitate Twilight Sparkle’s wish of diplomacy. Refusing them at this point would only chase them further into hiding, or have them attempt to put her under their spell as well. Diplomacy had the chance of bringing with it the answer she had become so desperate for.

“I am princess Luna, ruler of the night court and diarch of Equestria. I would like to initiate diplomatic relations as a ruler of a distinct legal structure not affiliated with princess Celestia.” Twilight’s message had made it sound like their organisation considered Celestia and everything that answered to her too dangerous to come into contact with. Luna’s equal legal standing as a diarch of Equestria was somehow enough to make them consider opening dialogue with Equestria, despite them hiding from Equestria for who knows how long.

“That will have to do.” The shimmer in the air in front of her intensified and then faded away to reveal a tall bipedal figure standing in front of her. It was hunched over to look down at Luna and Luna’s horn barely reached its chest if she stretched out her neck. It might have not been invisible anymore, but she couldn’t tell much about it as it was wearing a full hooded cloak that caught and refracted the light in strange ways. She hoped that meant that the invisibility wasn’t an innate ability, but given by the cloak.

“Who are you?” Luna’s eyes traveled down and the cloak continued down to obscure its feet. It could be a minotaur standing in a uncomfortable posture, but Luna doubted that. It was definitely bipedal and she really should have connected with its torso when it was restraining her earlier. The cloak parted and one of its hands reached out toward her and stayed extended in front of her. It had four digits of varying length and a thumb and they were longer and had more rounded ends than minotaurs did. Luna offered her hoof up to be shaken and felt that same chill go through her as the cold and hard hand closed around it gently and shook. The magic-nullification seemed to be innate, if she hadn’t misinterpreted what that chill meant. She really hoped this offer of diplomacy was genuine, as Luna didn’t want to think trying fight something like these things.

“We are the heralds of humanity. We want to help you in making this world a better place.”

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Chapter 1

Twilight Sparkle woke with a start, jumping up and onto four hooves to stare at the notepad at her nightstand. Her covers flew about after her sudden flash of movement, before settling draped over the floor and the bed in itself in equal measure. The mess would bother her meticulous nature in just a moment, but right then she was concentrated on the quill inching closer to the paper. The details of her recurring dream were so clear in her mind and she desperately wanted to record them in a form she could study later.

Yet any detail alluded her as the quill touched paper, she watched the spot of ink slowly spread as no words or images presented themselves. A repeating phrase, a location, a set of specific numbers, a distinct shape, a familiar threat, anything! It was beyond maddening to know you had the exact same dream when you closed your eyes, only to have no solid recollection of it when your mind could actually start processing it properly.

“Gosh darn it…” Twilight muttered in an offensively bad interpretation of Applejack’s accent. She opened a drawer in her nightstand and threw the spotted page to join its dozen identical brethren. Nearly two weeks of indecipherable dreams and always the same result. She was beyond the realm of considering it a coincidence, so being unable to recall any details was infuriating. Getting Spike to wake her up as soon as her sleep cycle progressed to dreams hadn’t helped, it had only made her cranky and sleep-deprived the next day.

She levitated the covers over the bed and set them down straight, throwing the pillow on top with her mouth. The dreams were not affecting her ability to get a night of rest in any real way, but the complete lack of memory of whatever she was experiencing was nagging at her. It was like a song you couldn’t get out of your head, but you were also not able to remember the lyrics, doomed to hum the tune and mutter incoherently.

Coffee helped her wake up, but it wasn’t helping her find a solution to her problem. There were no physiological symptoms, so the problem had to be psychological. She didn’t think she had been pushing herself that hard lately. She’d even taken a break from research after that crazy ordeal with becoming an alicorn and all. She had been operating under the assumption her dreams were a side-effect of being an element of harmony, but her friends insisted their dreams were normal.

Celestia had assured her that alicorns did indeed dream, even if they could make do with considerably less rest than normal ponies, if need be. Twilight Sparkle had found herself sleeping more soundly and being more tired than usual regardless, but decided not to mention it. Fatigue was not uncommon after a traumatic experience, it didn’t matter if it was something that ended well in the end. She needed some time to get used to sleeping with wings and to get her normal sleep rhythm back, before she entertained any of the more serious theories in her head. Being an Element of Harmony hadn’t affected her negatively before her sudden transformation, but Princess Celestia had been the one to wield the elements before the six of them, so her new symptoms couldn’t be caused by either thing on their own. It was either some combinations of factors, or something she hadn’t considered yet.

“Hey, Twilight, you up? I’m five minutes late, so you don’t have an excuse to be sleeping!” Rainbow Dash’s voice called out. A peek into the library’s common area showed the mare already floating inside the library. Flying lessons, right at the crack of dawn, partly because there would be less ponies around to feel embarrassed around, the other reason being that RD would be more willing to take an impromptu break when Sugarcube corner started baking their goods and the smell wafted over to the sinuses of the pegasi who didn’t believe in breakfast.

“The polite thing is to knock before calling out, even if the door isn’t locked.” Twilight answered calmly, sipping the last of her coffee. She was well on her way to being awake, so RD’s intrusion didn’t annoy her as much as it should. She wasn’t looking forward to the energetic mare’s flying lessons, but she wanted to get the hang of her new appendages as soon as she could. She really didn’t want a repeat of her catastrophic landing after her first flight in Canterlot. It was surprisingly costly to replace broken skylights. She had to wonder where Rainbow Dash got the money to pay for her numerous crashes.

“I’ll start fussing about manners when you stop knocking things over with your wings.” Rainbow Dash had a grin on her face as she pointed to the table behind Twilight. A glance back told her that there indeed was a broken coffee cup on the floor and that her right wing was hanging limp by her side. The numbness of the wing would explain knocking over the cup, but why had she not heard it break? She could have very well slept on it wrong, or didn’t know to stretch it properly, so it was not her wing she was worried about. Whenever she wasn’t flying with them they had a tendency to act out, springing up, falling limp, cramping up by her side. Unfamiliar appendages with untrained muscles being put under the amount of strain RD insisted on, Twilight didn’t think it was beyond the realm of possibility.

“I brushed that down on the floor right now, with this wing?” Twilight asked, flexing the said wing, turning back to RD. The pegasi nodded, quirking a brow at the strange question. Twilight set her wing properly by her side and levitated the pieces of the cup in front of her. It was a simple ceramic coffee cup, one without any special decorations, but one that she still favored most mornings. They were cheap enough for her not to have to bother with a reconstitution spell if she happened to break one.

“It made a sound when it broke, right?” Twilight idly stated as her mind tried to piece together what had happened. She’d drunk her coffee and set the cup down, but what about after that? Brushing the cup off the table hadn’t even registered to her. She tapped the pieces of ceramic together and they made the expected sound. Could the limp wing have masked the sound from her? The angle was about right if the cup fell straight off the table. That could be very well be it, but she was not fully convinced.

Rainbow Dash had commented on the broken cup, that was the next thing that happened. The next thing she had heard, at least. There was no intermediate action between sitting at the table and standing in the same room as Rainbow Dash, now that she tried to recall it. She had an excellent memory, so that was a disconcerting fact. She’d memorized more books and spells than she ever cared to brag about, but to claim to have perfect recall would still be preposterous. The loss of short-term memory was a common symptom in magical exhaustion, but she had specifically cut back on activity, so that couldn’t be it...

“Twilight, you have to keep at it if you want to get anywhere. You appointed me to be your royal flight instructor, so…” RD puffed out her chest and set down on the ground in a salute, one wing stretched toward the door. Did she actually think expressing confidence in herself would somehow make her feel more motivated? Accusing her of trying to squirm out of physical activity was something RD would assume to be a natural reaction of hers, but maybe this was just an attempt at humor to alleviate such imagined apprehension? Twilight fixed her face into a neutral mask, as she let the silence stretch just long enough to make Rainbow Dash uncomfortable.

“It was you that insisted on calling yourself that.” Twilight huffed and flexed her right wing, trying to get feeling back into it. The numbness was lingering longer than usual, but at least she could still move it, so it was possible she had just folded it wrong and restricted blood flow somehow. She stretched her hooves and other wing as well, just to make sure nothing else was amiss. “You’re my friend above all else, I hope you don’t forget that.”

“Morning RD!” The sound of claws digging into the polish on the wood scratched at Twilight’s ears. There would be more of those scratches on the floor after today and after every step the little drake took, but Twilight wondered why the sound grated her nerves so much at that moment. She raised her head and opened her mouth to admonish Spike for scratching the floor when her eyes fell on the source of the sound.

The thing that was speaking with Spike’s voice was a grotesque mass of slimy scales, proportionally stunted limbs affixed to a disturbingly bloated body. There was no way this thing could be natural, this was a frightening mockery of life that should be begging for the sweet release of death. Every movement and breath seemed to mesh one unnatural part into another physically impossible joining of scales.

“ShIVIlThY DSure M4R`?” The sickening mockery of life chirped out, incomprehensible syllables forced together by a mouth far too small for the few teeth in its misshapen mouth. She could feel her chest contracting, trying to suck in as much air as possible as the rest of her body felt a surge of energy as the need to run tried to overtake her rational mind. A quick glance at the worried face of the colorful pegasi standing next to the abomination reigned her growing sense of panic in considerably. Rainbow Dash was not seeing the same thing she was seeing, as RD would have been the first mare to attack a monster like the one Twilight was seeing right now.

Struggling against every natural instinct trying to make her run away right at that moment, Twilight closed her eyes and forced her breathing to slow and her body to relax and stay still. What she was seeing could not be the physical reality. It was obviously some side-effect of becoming an alicorn, or a delayed reaction to something she had inhaled during her alchemical research. There had to be a rational explanation for this, other than mental illness, preferably.

“Twilight, are you okay? You can take a day off if you really are not feeling up to it, you know.” There was genuine concern in RD’s words. Hoof on the shoulder, the sound of breathing. All normal, none of it distorted, wrong, or horrifying. It was fine, everything was fine. She had problems with short-term memory and now there was some visual and auditory hallucinations tied into those symptoms. Her brain was just trying to acclimate to the new appendages and strengthened magical capacity. She would probably experience symptoms of magical exhaustion for a while yet, still nothing she couldn’t handle.

“No, it’s fine. I think the fresh air will do me some good.” Sweat on her brow, excess salivation slurring the end of her sentence. All symptoms she could attribute to magical exhaustion. Complete abstinence from physical exertion would only add to the severity of the symptoms. She was capable of enduring more such lapses for a while longer, if it meant they would not become more intense.

“O- okay! Let’s get going then. We’re going to see how high you can go today. There’s a trick to maintaining altitude you’ll just have to figure out on your own and there’s no better motivator than the threat of falling from a cloudless sky!” There was an unsettling fire in RD’s eyes at that last comment. Twilight was relatively sure Rainbow Dash was not a sadist, at least not by the traditional, or the kinky, definition.

“You would still catch me if I fell, right?” Rainbow Dash gave a sly smirk, before happily trotting out of the library. A tryhard psychologist could pin narcissism and a lack of empathy on the boisterous pegasi, but Twilight knew there was no malice in RD’s demands for those same reasons. Capability to cause harm on those you care about, wholly expecting them to succeed, maybe? That would mean Rainbow Dash held her friends in just as high regard she held herself. She expected her friends to rise to her level and she expected her expectations to be taken as high praise, subconsciously or not.

“You’ll be fine, don’t worry about it!” RD waved her off while taking to the air again. Twilight chuckled nervously and closed the door of the library behind her. Rainbow Dash kept gaining altitude, obviously expecting the nervous alicorn to follow her to the skies. Taking off was not the issue, her wings had enough magic in them to keep her afloat easily, but it was the constant intuitive changes in power and angle of the beats of her wings that were giving her both a figurative and an actual headache. The wind, obstacles, her own involuntarily flailing hooves as she looked down; she had a lot of variables to take into account all at once and only moments to decide on the appropriate reaction.

“I can memorize the combined works of Starwhirl the bearded and I’m having trouble with flapping my wings right.” Twilight muttered under her breath as she bounced up from the ground and flexed her wings to stay in the air. She went a little higher than she had intended, so she made the next beat softer and increased the tempo to compensate. She pulled her front hooves closer to her body and fixed her eyes to the waiting prismatic mare in the sky. Gradually increasing the power in the beats of her wings and adding a slight downward angle brought her to a trajectory that would place her next to RD.

“You’re still overthinking it! This ain’t something you can just memorize, I know you know that!” Twilight did know that she should be relying on her natural instincts more, seeing as her wings were a part of her, but whenever she tried to do things naturally her legs started moving along with the beat of her wings and that messed her up. Struggling through it with memorized patterns and looking rigid would have to suffice to carry her over this hurdle, no matter what RD said.

“Have you met me? That’s how I do things, actually, that’s how unicorns do things! I still feel wrong when I see these things in the mirror, so excuse me if I…” She paused her growing tirade when she realised she was going to smack into the surprised Rainbow Dash. A quick correction of the direction and tempo of her wings and she was left hovering next to her friend in awkward silence. Twilight opened her mouth and then closed it immediately, looking away from the concern in her friend’s eyes. She had started the sentence as a jovial joke, but something in her had obviously boiled over in the middle.

“So, uh… How about - How about we go over to Fluttershy’s! You know, only if you’re up for it, though!” Rainbow Dash was being too loud and averting eye contact, flailing her front hooves in a placatory gesture. She was either afraid of her newly minted alicorn friend, or somehow blaming herself for Twilight’s outburst. Volunteering to subject Fluttershy to her temper suggested the latter, as the timid pegasi was far superior to both of them when it came to appeasing flared tempers.

“I would like that, actually. She should have that tea Zecora gets for me.” Twilight answered, the reaction clearly relieving RD in some way. The prismatic pegasi tentatively flew toward Fluttershy’s cottage, obviously slowing herself down with unnecessary beats of her wings. Twilight appreciated the gesture, but had to wonder why her unforgiving coach was giving her so many passes this day. The day in itself shouldn’t be special for the athletic pegasi. They passed over the Ponyville marketplace and Twilight spied the unmistakable form of Big Macintosh manning the Apple family stall. Applejack should have been there and her absence prompted Twilight to wonder if something had happened to Applejack

“Huh, where’s…” Twilight’s breath hitched in her throat as she felt something like a stream of ice-cold water running down her spine, pooling at the base of her wings. The sensation came over her in a blink of an eye, but she could feel the sensation originating at the back of her neck and shoot down to add to the pressure along her spine. She tried to vocalize a warning to RD, her only lifeline if she ended up falling out of the sky, but there was no -

*Host interference… unable to comply…*

She smelled apples, fresh apples all around her to be precise, that tart sting to the smell that signaled an abundance of the things being cut or smashed fresh. That particular smell was the first thing she could perceive, along with a general ache all over her body. Obviously a lot of things had happened in very quick succession for things to end in such a way. Twilight opened her eyes, concerned about warm liquid stinging her eyes for a moment, before she remembered the said smashed apples. Had she fallen on the Apple family cart? It would explain the smell of apples.

“Y… Ya alright, Twilight?” She couldn’t see the stallion, but he sounded like he was close. The voice was deep enough to belong to Big Mac, but she was both too dazed to recognize it and it felt like there was some apple pulp in her ear. Her mane felt like it had about half of the cart’s merchandise in it, so it was possible. Carefully, she tried moving her hooves, mushing some more apples as her weight shifted. Okay, she was on her side, resting on apples, at least she knew that much. She must have hit the cart dead on for there to be so many apples directly under her to cushion the fall. She opened and closed her jaw, luckily she hadn’t landed on her head.

“I think so. Give me a minute.” She could hear the early morning marketplace crowd gathering around her. Wiping the apples out of her eyes and turning her head to and fro confirmed her earlier hypothesis; she really had landed right on top of the apple cart, laying on her left side. Getting back up on her hooves was a an uncomfortably messy procedure, but it was simple enough. Nothing seemed to have been broken, so she felt no apprehension in stretching her limbs out to see if she’d sprained something.

“Twilight, stop!” Rainbow Dash frantically screamed while jetting out to tackle the alicorn from among the crowd. The panicked pegasi made sure to offer her hooves to hold Twilight’s weight up, as if expecting her to fall over any moment. Sparing another glance at the gathered crowd revealed faces distorted in shock, fear and more than a few shades of nausea. She was missing something again and considering the crowd was fixated on a spot on her back, it had something to do with her new appendages. She’d fallen on her side, where she has newly formed wings and now Rainbow Dash was expecting her to be in pain excruciating enough to topple her over.

“I have broken my wing, have I not? In a quite a spectacularly gruesome way, given your reaction.” Twilight had an inkling she should be more concerned about that fact, but no panic or fear reared its head. She could only add the fact of her coming convalesce to the list of activities on her calendar. She would have to make adjustments on her daily routine, not to mention her new diplomatic duties and her already established appointments with her friends. There was no discernible pain, but both that and her emotional numbness could be caused by shock following such a serious injury. Her wings had been sensitive before, so she should be in excruciating pain if her injury was as serious the faces around her were painting it to be.

A glance at her left wing only confirmed her fears. It was bleeding and there were bones sticking out of the mangled mess twitching at her side. A constant pulsating movement made the injury look even more visceral, along with the constant slow bleeding from the broken flesh. She must have aggravated the broken structure of the wing as she had tried to stretch her limbs earlier, explaining RD’s reaction. A constant trickle of blood, the inevitable coming neurological shock and possible sepsis she was more than susceptible to were things she was becoming worried about.

“I need immediate medical attention.” The strange calm that had permeated this whole ordeal lasted long enough for her to utter those words. Immediately after that things got a lot blurrier, as her body spasmed with the sudden influx of pain piercing through her left side. They were new appendages, so her body must have been confused by where to register the blinding pain she was experiencing. Her knees buckled, a nauseating twisting pain burrowed into her gut, starting at the base of her destroyed wing. Her back was arching, her neck was locked rigid and it took considerable effort to force her jaw open.

“Help me! Hospital, please!” Her body wanted to squirm, to flinch away from the pain and inadvertently aggravate the injury, but Twilight had enough sense to fight that impulse. The pain was something that very nearly overtaking her need to breathe, every part of her screaming at her rational mind that there was something very wrong going on and breathing was only making the pain worse. “Every moment iddle adds to the threat of necrosis in the affected tissue!”

“Request for aid acknowledged” A voice among the crowd calmly stated. It was strange for anypony living in Ponyville to use such sterile terms, but she was not going to judge the quirks of ponies willing to take time out of their day to help her.

The ponies around her surged into action, Big Mac offering to pull the flower cart that was cleared out to carry her to the hospital. It was both a show of Equestrian kindness and the amount of unease an irate alicorn brought to the ponies around her. Rainbow Dash climbed into the cart with Twilight, wings twitching impatiently, clearly eager for something to do. She was the one pegasi that would know most about both Twilight and wing injuries, so there was something she was uniquely qualified to do, but she wouldn’t realize it in the heated situation.

“Rainbow Dash.” Yelling or raising her voice would mean taking a deeper breath than necessary, but RD had obviously heard her, as she was hovering next to the cart immediately. A range of emotions passed over the prismatic pegasi’s features, but guilt was a constant backdrop. “Speed ahead to the hospital and explain my injuries to them. Accurate information will expedite their work.”

“Broadcasting emergency code…” The same strangely androgynous voice rattled out as Rainbow Dash snapped a hoof to her temple. Time felt like it slowed to a crawl as her hoof made contact with the edge of her brow. Twilight could hear a whistling sound undulate around her head, with sharp spikes in pitch and sudden and precise changes in tone and volume. She could only hear the sound for a moment, but if she were ever to try and write the entire complexity of it on paper she could at least fill several sheets.

“Got it!” Time snapped back into normal speed and RD was gone as Twilight blinked in surprise. What had just happened and why hadn’t anyone reacted to it? She moved her head to and fro as much she could without aggravating her side and did not spot any unfamiliar faces around the cart. She knew the voices of those within earshot and had no explanation for the perceived time dilation and strange series of sounds.

“Did you hear that?” Twilight asked, making eye contact with Roseluck, the mare that had offered up her cart to transport her. The beige mare flicked her eyes to where RD had been and then back to Twilight, the question clear in her eyes. Twilight needed to be more specific, as RD had been more than loud enough to be heard “The whistling sound just now… Could you hear it?”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear anything. You just try and stay still, okay?” Shaky voice, a quick glance at Twilight’s destroyed wing and an aversion of the eyes to top it off. This mare’s non-verbal communication was getting on her nerves, but she had given her an honest answer. The voice, along with the strange series of sounds, had been an entirely subjective experience. Another audio-visual hallucination caused by whatever brain damage had made Spike look like a monster this morning, maybe? The voice hadn’t seemed to originate from any specific direction, and neither had the following series of sounds.

*Waiting for host ping…* Her hallucination lacked an auditory component this time, the strange four words instead appearing to float in thin air a meter or so from her face. This would have put these words outside the wooden edge of the cart, but Twilight could make them out, the fact slightly messing with her sense of distance. The words were in her field of vision, despite physical barriers, so it meant they were projected into her mind or directly into her retinas directly by some unknown magic. She closed her eyes to test this theory and was disturbed to find the words still imprinted in her field of view.

“Get her on the stretcher!” Tingling of magic, a jolt upward and a steady floating to a canvas surface stretched taut between two ponies. The two stallions started a hurried, yet steady, trot into the hospital proper, as the doctor unicorn kept pace next to them and prodded her destroyed wing with diagnostic spells. Even the small jolts of the gentle magic made her head spin in pain, so most of the hospital’s corridors passed by her in a blur.

*Initiating sleep mode*
*User stress hormone levels above set parameters*
*Playing designated relaxation music*

“Born free, as free as the wind blows,
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart.”

It was dark, dark enough for there to be no discernible objects around her. She could not see anything, nor was there a echo to the sound she could make out to place anything or anyone in the darkness, but she still felt crowded. There were things moving around her, whizzing past her at lethal speed and also colossal entities passing above and around her at a glacial pace threatening to pull her into the stream.

“Live free and beauty surrounds you
The world still astounds you
Each time you look at a star”

All she could feel was a constant shifting sense of movement, soothing to frightening, all in a moment. Plummeting toward a destination through a fog of grey muck, sticking to her, smothering any and all sensation she could have and what she needed to see. Parts of her were trying to outpace the rest of her, dissolving and churning the parts in between into something she feared would float away into the miasma around her.

“Stay free, where no walls divide you
You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide”

The roaring silence in the senseless darkness she was hurtling through started to give away, as the disconcerting sound of such a calm song in such an unnerving place begun to register in her mind. A spot of light blinked into existence somewhere in front of her, giving her the first solid point of reference when it came to her velocity or the size of her surroundings. It did not cast any shadow into the darkness, nor could she be sure how far away it was. She was either in place, or the light was keeping pace with her sporadic movements.

“Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'Cause you're born free”

The sense of movement started to subside, as a feeling of tingling warmth spread from her forehead to the back of her head, only making the numbness of the rest of her body more apparent. A sense of panic started to take root as she found that she could not move any part of her body. Her eyes were open and forced to stare at the prick of light in the murky darkness.

“You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide”

The warm tingling was starting to subside, but the thought of being left in this darkness feeling absolutely nothing terrified her, only able to see a pinprick of light and hear an otherwise pleasant song that would assuredly be visiting her in her nightmares. The irony of hearing a song about freedom while restrained in place and robbed of most of her senses sounded like something Discord would do, but the joke had taken too long to get to the punchline for it to actually be the work of the sporadic draconequus.

“Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'Cause you're born free”

The song ended abruptly and Twilight was left in the debilitating darkness with nothing but the spot of light in distance. The murky darkness around her was alive with movement, but it was the spot of light that unnerved her. It was like an eye staring at her, unblinking and piercing through her. She could feel something there, something cold and utterly alien to everything she knew.

“User biometrics confirmed, registration incomplete, central database offline, no references in internal memory, no other users online, simulated intelligence program corrupted, user interface unresponsive.” The same flat androgynous voice hurriedly listed out words Twilight had a hard time connecting to her current situation. The light scanning her flickered for a moment, before going out completely. She wanted to fidget, to turn around and run into the darkness, but she still had no control over her body. She had no heartbeat to echo in her ears, nor could she discern a pattern in the movement she felt around her, so she couldn’t be sure how long she spent in complete darkness.

“Stable connection established, linking MCF-AIC-MA-36 to user audiovisual feed. Hippocratic access granted, hardware, software and live information feeds accessible.” There was another string of strange whistling and Twilight could feel the darkness around her slowing down, stabilizing to actually have an up and down and a clear floor. She was still not standing, or sitting or anything, completely without a sense of her own body, but the lack of motion helped.

“Hello, I am MCF-AIC-MA-36, but you can call me 36 for short. It seems to me like you are having trouble managing your software. It will only take me a moment to review your device’s log data and present you with a solution.” A shape appeared in the darkness in front of her, a shapeless lump of something about the same height as her, two iridescent dots appearing where eyes would be. Colorless, a dark grey, neutral voice with a hint of male baritone in it, but still decidedly nonthreatening.

“Okay, let’s see here; Unauthorized use of third-party software to alter the functionality and capacity of registered hardware detected. Off-model biological components failed to be integrated into the network and caused an involuntary reset to last official software patch… The colony attempted to cannibalize computing power to accommodate for your new appendages… Ah, that’s why the SI program was offline. Bio-metrics indicate that is not a...” The dark shape in front of her wavered like a flame on the breeze, the two dots of light flashing brighter for a moment. The whistling noise came back again louder and faster, originating both from where she was and from the shape talking to her.

“You’re an equestrian… Unicorn, cerebral implants, so... Twilight Sparkle, but how… Alicorn ascension forced... defaulted to base…” That high-pitched whistling interrupted the muttered string of words several times, but Twilight was getting concerned because of the urgency and emotion in the words she could make out. She was listening to someone who seemed to have control over her in this void getting agitated after learning who and what she was.

“User bio-metrics place subject in clear and present danger. Extraction from Equestrian society recommended.” Another dark blob appeared next to the one talking to her, this one taller than her and judging both by its bipedal stature and the pair of horns sprouting from their head it was very likely a minotaur. The voice itself was too distorted to make any guesses beyond that.

“Hardware malfunctions too substantial for remote repairs, terminating connection.” The original indistinct blob snappily decreed, before disappearing in the darkness. The horned figure lingered for a moment, before turning the dots of lights that represented its eyes toward her.

“You might experience some discomfort.” The bipedal figure said before disappearing just as abruptly.

Twilight’s eyes snapped open in fright. Having control over her body again was a huge relief, but the intense and disorienting wave of vertigo was not. She felt the nausea pushing up from her stomach, but when she tried to sit up and throw up over the side of the bed she found herself too sluggish to get there on time. A cough of burning vomit forced itself through her esophagus, leaving her mouth and throat burning and tasting foul. Her whole body felt feverish and she could feel the dull thud of a major headache being suppressed by the veritable mountain of pain medicine she must have been on. She had not eaten a large breakfast, so all that came up was a splatter of foul liquid and sticky mucus forced from her throat, but it was still enough to coat the side of the pillow she was lying on.

She lay there feeling and smelling her own vomit on her lips, mouth and the pillow that felt to have already been soaked through in sweat. The world was dull, silent and void of any smell other than her own misery. It most likely was less than a minute, but it felt like she lay there for hours before orderlies and a nurse came into the room and cleaned up her mess. They levitated her just barely over the bed as they changed the soiled sheets under her and gave her a fresh and more pleasantly scented pillow. They didn’t turn her over, so her wing was probably in some kind of suspended cradle. She pretended to be asleep during the procedure to spare herself the embarrassment of apologizing to the ponies doing their job.

The room was quiet once more and she was left listening to the sounds of the hospital staff moving and working, muffled by the walls around her. Her physician had obviously thought her wing was in much too fragile condition to afford visitors, as Twilight was quite sure she heard the distant voices of her friends from somewhere within the hospital. She was far too medicated and feverish to give them any coherent answers, anyway. She didn’t want to sleep, she couldn’t move around and she was far too loopy to wrap her mind around her situation, but the silence in the room was still bothering her.

“Born free, as free as the wind blows…” It was taxing to stretch out the words as they had been in the song, but the words themselves didn’t have the distracting effect she was looking for. She had to take a break to catch her breath and try to remember the next line in the song. Her throat burned and her eyes were watery, but even mumbling out the song occupied her mind enough not to wallow in the misery of her situation.

“As free as the grass grows, born free to follow your heart…”