Chapter A2 - The Princess, the Cat, and the High-Security Prison.

Her newfound freedom was overwhelming at first, her soul lying stagnant in rock for a long, long time, she had always wondered what that buzzing was, but it had been to feint to grab on to, now she had… I didn’t know I could bind on to energy like this! Her consciousness thought excitedly. She had yet to gain a sense of direction or any of the senses that came with a physical body, but the radio waves offered, at the very least, the feeling of movement, of rapid movement, where to she didn’t know, but forward.

A long few moments passed, she had started to get a little bored, but the moment she hit her destination she would need to find a way to get an understanding of what the world had become in her absence, and fast. Then she smacked into an antenna of some kind, the transformation back into electric energy was violent and had she any biological organs, she would have vomit on such a transfer… It was like suddenly being hit with an electrified brick wall, but she was soon moving again.

Electric devices were rare indeed in Equestria, and while some short-range radios and early electric lighting did exist, she had never seen it on such a scale. This place was a tremendous circuit, nothing but electricity as far as her senses could reach, it was a labyrinth, with smaller labyrinths inside it… She scouted along the larger wires, taking in the strange feeling of being electricity floating in gas as she passed through some kind of high-tech lighting device. She avoided the smaller labyrinths, strange passages of hundreds of thousands of millions of microscopic wires and switches, she didn’t want to get lost in there… There were radios, but she rather not face another transformation into radio waves and back again, so she continued along the largest wires until she came to one of the other devices in this strange electricity-filled place.

This was incredible… She recognized patterns within the electricity that flowed through this device, they were difficult to decipher at first, but thousands of years of life will make you good at most things, and only a few hours of tinkering with the electricity, she understood what this was, it was some kind of code in the electricity, areas of high-voltage and low-voltage, like dashes and dots, or ones and zeros, she had always been a little better at math than her sister, and this looked a lot like boolean algebra. If only…

She twisted something in her consciousness, trying to make sense of the code that now streamed through her mind, she seemed to think a million times faster than before, trying to decode this, starting with simple ones and zeros, the application of code-breaking spell later and… It all made sense to her, the numbers represented data, information about the shade and hue of colours, all fed through her mind, it was absolutely overwhelming, blues, greens, reds, whites and blacks and all combinations of these three!

She quickly separated her link with the data before it could overwhelm her, but those images, hundreds and hundreds of photographs moved in her mind but quickly vanished… Ok, let’s try that again… This time she started with a single miniscule line of electronic data… It was grey, a single grey block occupied her entire vision, despite how hard she tried she couldn’t move her ‘eye’ any… This wasn’t like having a physical body. She tried again, reaching for the second bit of code, this seemed to expand her vision, as right next to the first appeared another grey block, again and again, she took in the code, allowing it to slowly come together.

It was a hallway, made from a grey material she easily recognized, this was the stuff Changelings built their hives out of, but it wasn’t all rounded and natural-looking, this looked more like a corridor in the old castle in the Everfree, it was a square passage at a sharp ninety-degree turn, with metallic floors that looked like the grates to the Canterlot sewers. At least she could now get somewhat of an idea as to what had happened to Equestria, the changelings had something to do with it, but anything else was unclear.

There was something moving down the corridor, she had detected another line of code coming down a different wire, the same boolean algebra, but there was something different about this code, she would rather wait then experiment now. She was able to get a clear look as these creatures passed, ponies in slick black suits and helmets… And their horns, spiked, jagged, raddled with holes… Changelings, and not the kind that King Thorax had ruled over, these were love-starved changelings, the kind under Chrysalis. At that, panic started to surge through her, were all the ponies she cared about, Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, were they all in changeling cocoons, having their life and magic slowly drained away, was this Chrysalis’s doing, or someone else!

She rushed to decode the second lines of code that surged through the camera, it was simpler, much simpler than that of the optical data, just a little twist, a little magic, a little bit more… There was the sound of hooves on metal, a loud clunking through her non-existent ears, loud in her consciousness that hadn’t known sound for nopony knows how long. But she soon adjusted, and both watched and listened as they passed.

She pulled herself away from her connection to the machine, she felt weird in the absence of light and sound, just the rapid pulsating of alternating current. But she hurried to another camera, trying to find out more about this world.

The next few cameras showed more of the same, and she was hesitant to touch those death-traps that were the microscopic labyrinths, though she started to push herself, and discovered that she wasn’t bound by her old concepts of speed or time, she felt a rush as she started to match the speed the electricity was travelling. She had checked a few cameras, and those showed more interesting results… There was a long hallway, the side she had vision of showed a line of doors, marked with numbers, she had recognized this kind of corridor before.

It was either a military barracks, a scientific laboratory… Or a prison. There were guards, she couldn’t tell if they were armed or not, but they didn’t carry themselves in the same kind of way as her military guards, these were law enforcement. A few were out of their helmets, but were disguised, poorly, as they didn’t bother to hide the green in their eyes or their serpentine tongues. The more an more she looked, the more she realized that her final guess was correct, it was a prison. Perhaps if she could get sight into one of the cells?

She flowed along the wires, following a map she was starting to form in her head, she flowed through the wall, then reached a bend through which she flowed into the floor, then up another wall, and found a camera, she reached out for its code… It was a cell, small and confined, there was some kind of audio device built into the wall, and sitting in the middle of the cell, was a bipedal creature, cat-like in build, tall and skinny, wearing nothing but a set of prisoner underwear.

Katrine sat inside her cell, lying hunched over on the wall… She had gotten herself into some real serious shit now… Some part of her wanted to panic, but that wouldn’t help the situation. She needed to be calm, she needed to lie her way out, at least she could, but they would know, they always knew what she was doing, but now they would take it no more!

She stared at the camera, knowing they could see her through that… How long until one of them spoke up again… “Katrine, citizen of Sector-Canter’s Housing District AB-06, on your lifetime record, you have over two-hundred cases of minor theft and nearly seventy cases of major theft, at least twenty assaults, and one murder, although that was accidental, and the situation was mostly beyond your control, so only a month of hard labour seemed like an appropriate, if rather light, punishment… Most of those crimes are out of Sector Command’s jurisdiction anyway,” she stared up into the machine, speaking with its masculine voice, with bearly hidden disgust.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing, I know I’ve stolen stuff before, but I really didn’t know what that t-thing was… I swear, I didn’t know it was- I had never even seen!” She easily forced tears from her eyes.

“We know this Katrine, but it doesn’t matter, the law clearly states that a civilian is to never, under any circumstances, touch a firearm… Normally the punishment for such a thing is either execution if it was done with malefic intent, or a full five-years of hard labour if it was done with the intent to protect another from a threat… Seeing as this was accidental, I’m sure we can lower that punishment to two or one-and-a-half years… I will update you on the situation tomorrow. Your lunch will arrive in half an hour,” Katrine had really gotten into trouble this time… Above, the camera had cut-out with its standard click.

This Katrine… She seems like a bad creature, theft and assault were rare in Equestria, but this! The ghost in the machine had thought to herself, watching the entire thing unfold through the same camera whatever was on the other side had been speaking through. Though, it sounded like she was stealing from the changelings, which I guess is a good thing… The ghost focused some of her magic, applying it to the machine she was inside, this thing required electricity to run, and that had just been cut away… But, there were spells to generate power, if she applied it in just the right way. There was a surge of energy, and her vision and hearing returned, but there was still the problem of communicating.

She had enough of the audio code flow through her to get a basic understanding of what arrangement of ones and zeros made what noises… She reached part of herself out to the other wall, she passed through wires at the speed of light, and then tried the same magical spark on the speaker… A little magical adjustment, just enough to filter out any errors, and to modify the voice, to give it tone, and inflexion, and all the qualities of a living creature’s voice.

The camera up above had come to life with another click. “What is it now,” Katrine bitterly whispered to herself, not loud enough for the camera to hear… Or at least she hoped.

There was an odd noise, low and sharp, coming from the speaker, then a voice came through… Feminine, a little deep, and regal, undoubtedly pony in tone, and… Friendly. “You… Katrine… That is your name, correct?”

“Yes,” Katrine spat back, forgetting for a moment her guise.

“It is… Strange, speaking again,” At this Katrine raised an eyebrow.

“What does that mean?”

“Well…” The voice chuckled the word a bit, “Would you believe that I am the spirit of an ancient pony, bound within the moon, who had managed to escape and take control of the flow of electricity within this machine.”

Katrine laughed, a cold and sour laugh, then turned to the camera, “No…”

“No? Well, how about if I helped get you out of here.”

Katrine stared shocked for a second… T-That wasn’t just breaking the law, that was worse than anything Katrine had even considered doing in the past, to help a prisoner of the Sector Command escape? It wasn’t unheard of, but usually, it resulted in gruesome ends for those who escaped… A part of her desperately wanted to refuse… But she was born to break the law, it felt right, it was exciting, and death was arguably better than living out a short and painful life in whatever kind of ‘hard labour’ Command had planned for her. “Y-You would do that, risk your life in such a way.”

“As I said, I have no life anymore, and you can’t kill energy.”

“So… I’m the only one at risk here…” Katrine wanted to baulk at the absurdity of it all.

“Perhaps, a demonstration of my power is required?”

Now that made Katrine’s eyes open.

Electromancy had never been a skill she needed much use of in the past, but now would be a good time to learn. She felt magic surge within her, centred around one of the cables within the camera… She really hoped this would work… The Changelings would definitely notice too, but any escape from this place wouldn’t go unnoticed. She’d need a horn, or hooves, or something physical to channel more powerful magic, but this wasn’t supposed to be directed.

There was a bright spark, a flash of energy, arcs of electricity flew outward, then with a clunk, the security camera, once connected to the wall with a metal armature, fell to the ground, but somehow the light within was still glowing… It was still working, despite having all its cables severed… “Do you believe me now?”

Slightly stunned, Katrine raised up a paw and extended two of her four fingers, “H-How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two.”

She turned around and lay on the ground.

“What position am I in?”

“You are laying on the ground with your back to me.”

Katrine got up and lifted the camera, that really wasn't supposed to stay working, to her face, “Good… Now get me out of here!”

“Once you plug me back in… Part of my mind is still trapped within the speaker.”

“Then I’m taking the speaker with me.”

At that, a combined effort of Katrine pulling, and the ghost using that weird magic to break parts within the wall, and the speaker, a relatively small device that fit in Katrine’s palm, was pulled from the wall. It didn’t take long for her to get some scrap metal and bend it together into a rudimentary headphone, she put the speaker to her ear, and haphazardly mounted the camera to her head. She could hear guards marching outside the door, the destruction of the camera had not gone unnoticed.

“Just remember, if you need any help navigating, plug me into the wall and I’ll see what I can get from moving around in the wires…”

“Got it… What’s your name, you said you were the ghost of a pony?”

“Although it might not mean anything to you nowadays… Back during my time, I was named Princess Luna.”

The door opened, and a guard entered, not expecting a fight… His helmet was shattered with a hard punch to the head that exposed his clearly insectoid features, a gruesome cat’s claw slashed down to his throat, and he was dead. He was in the process of drawing some weird chitinous contraption from his suit, a gun, much like the kind that had gotten Katrine into this position in the first place, she pulled it free, it had clearly been designed to be used in a creature’s mouth, with the handle sideways and the trigger meant to bite down upon, but by holding her hand out, it could still be used by a biped.

Another guard had rounded the corner, but she froze at the sight before her, her dead ally, and the cat, her claws covered in green ichor, and scariest of all, holding a weapon in her paws.

Author's Note

The second chapter, we have Princess Luna, now currently just a soul, moving around with electricity and radio waves, controlling and powering machinery... I guess you could call her a Ghost in the Shell! And the introduction of our second main character, Katrine...

Her character was difficult, I didn't want to repeat my characters from Kriegbats, and originally I had accidentally written Katrine as a copy of Cursed Symphony (Completely driven by emotion, of which she is extremely overemotional, with violent mood-swings)... But when I realized that, I started to think of ways to make Katrine different, and in the end, I made her a sociopath (Of which I have some experience with in real life, seeing as my own father was one.)

Thus far, each of my characters embodies a different result of a law-driven totalitarian government: Depression, Anger/Rebellion, and (Spoiler) Nihilism