Chapters THE EQUESTRIA FILES
A RIDICULOUSLY OVERTHOUGHT MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC FAN FICTION BY RANDOMMAN295
There was darkness for a long time in the small room. There was a man inside. No, two men, but one of them did not know that the other was there. That man was named Damon Carter. He was a middle aged, scrawny man who had spent the last five years as a janitor for an archive system in Sacramento, California. Why, you may ask, was he here for? Crammed into this mysterious room? Thrust into darkness? Well, rumor had it that he was insane. Batshit crazy. So crazy, in fact, that in the last week, he started talking to himself about things. Absurd things that nobody else had heard of. Things that he had never heard of before until this very week. Things that nobody understood.
Nobody but him.
A horribly bright light blazed to life right in front of Damon in the room. His eyes strained desperately to adjust to the now bright room, revealing to him in the process that he was in a confined concrete room, almost like an interrogation room. 'Am I being interrogated?' Damon thought to himself. After shaking around a bit in fear, he revealed himself to be in a sitting position with his hands sloppily cuffed to the armrests of a wooden chair. Damon nearly panicked.
Giving him nearly no time to think any more, a mysterious voice spoke to him. It was deep and raspy, but sounded strangely familiar. Damon couldn't see the face behind the bright shine of the light, so he couldn't tell who it was.
"What happened last week?" the voice said.
"What is this place? What are you doing to me?!" Damon's voice sounded panicky and squeaky, on the contrary to what it used to sound like, which was smooth and calm.
"Please calm down. I need to know what happened last week."
Damon tried his best to calm his voice. "What do you mean, 'last week'?"
"You act as though you know something we don't, and we need to find out what it is. Please tell us."
There was an awkward silence, then Damon spoke up again.
"The last week for me was nothing short of bizarre. I can hardly remember any of why it happened or who made it happen. All I can remember is what happened. Vividly. It was almost as if I was there... But I wasn't supposed to be. As if it was forbidden..."
"What is? What's forbidden?"
"...But I still read it. I read all of it. It felt as if I was there... There. That describes my experience with the E File. I was there."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm sorry if I'm confusing or frustrating you, but words can't really explain to you what it's like. Well, maybe words can... It would just take a lot of them. And a lot of time."
The mysterious man suddenly seemed interested. "I have time... Tell me more about this 'E File' you speak of."
"I'll do my best, sir. But before this account of events gets pinned down as ridiculous and absurd, I would like to point this out. All of this happened. You just don't remember any of it. But I do."
"Get on with it."
[FROM THE MIND OF DAMON CARTER]
It was a long day at work. Being a janitor was much more difficult than one might think; you seem to clean up after everybody, and nobody seems to appreciate it. I hated it. Every single day seemed to be exactly the same, and nothing ever changed. I loved change. Call me weird, but that's me.
I worked in the basement of an odd building in California, which was an archive for all sorts of things. I liked reading things, so I figured the job would be fine for me. As it turned out, you don't really get to read any of it. People came and went, picking up and dropping off files, but I never got to see most of it. Well, most of it. I'd often stay at the building after work. tricking everyone else into thinking that I had already left. I would read the open files, finding unpublished historical events, classified news, never before seen screenplays, and all sorts of other good stuff.
But of the thousands of file cabinets in the building, one intrigued me the most. It sat, alone, locked up in the basement. I can recall everything about it. It was old and rusted, and it obviously hadn't been touched, let alone opened, in years. However, the most peculiar part of it was what was on front of it. Right on the handle, in stencil font and made of brass, was the letter 'E'. All of the other files in the entire building had some elaborate name, like 'PkT459K' or '55gRT22', but this one was just a single letter. I figured that it must have either been really old or important.
Directly under that letter was something even weirder. I had seen nothing else like it in the entire facility. It was a shield, with half of it resembling a sun, and the other side resembling a moon. Over that, which perplexed me the most, was the black outline of a horse. A horse with wings and a horn protruding from its forehead.
I had seen that file on the first day of the job, and I wondered what it meant ever since. It was always locked, and as far as I was concerned, it hadn't been touched, even in the time that I was there. I was admittedly frightened of it.
That is, until today.
Like I said, it had been a long day at work. I was returning to the basement to lock up, but I wasn't interested in reading today, so I was just going to leave.
Taking my key ring, I started to shut off the lights, one by one. I slowly went down the line of ten switches, making the room ever so dimmer as I activated each one. Soon enough, I got to the last switch. The room was almost dark now. In one absent-minded routine, I lifted up the key, jammed it in the slot, and crammed it down with the weight of my own arm.
Something very unexpected happened in that very moment. I heard the crack of plastic, and a sudden twisting in my wrist. When I looked down at the switch to see what had happened, I was shocked; the key snapped. This had never happened to me before, and I was almost scared that it did. Now that I couldn't shut off the light, the room suddenly had an eerie glow coming from the back corner, which I could barely see shining through several isles of archives. I could feel my heart race inside me as I locked my eyesight on it.
Overcoming my fear of how creepy the room suddenly looked, I decided that it would be best to investigate, and maybe take out the lightbulb if I had to. I quickly found myself walking towards the light, never dropping eye contact with the source of light. I treated it as though it was dangerous, although I couldn't exactly say why.
As I rounded the isle corner and faced the light, I realized why I treated it dangerously. The single lightbulb was dangling over something that made my heart skip several beats. The light was gleaming in one area: Straight over the cabinet that contained the E File. I wouldn't usually be terribly alarmed at this, but there was one small thing that made me have a heart attack.
The E File was open. Wide open.
Slowly moving myself towards it in fear but curiosity, I felt an increasingly large drive to find what was in there. I had no second thoughts; nobody else was there, so who could stop me? I wanted to reveal what mysteries were in there. Badly.
Really badly. The drive was intense now, but for some reason, I didn't want to resist it.
Without even thinking about it, I found myself kneeling down to pick something out.
As I neared the cabinet and pulled it open further, I was shocked by what was in there. Well, more specifically, what wasn't. There was only one file. It was thick, yes, but the rest of the cabinet was empty. I was intrigued...
I slowly picked the file out of the cabinet with a shaky hand. I admired it, wondering just how old the file was. It felt hefty and satisfying in my hands, as I realized how rare it was. But without any warning, the file stared to do something on its own before I had a chance to open it. I couldn't believe my own eyes; it looked as though it was melting! I did a hardcore doubletake, then came to an impossible realization that it was actually happening.
But it didn't really melt like it should have; rather than seeping into the floor and in between my open fingers, it simply... disappeared.
I did another doubletake, this time feeling even more fear than before.
It was gone.
Everything went white, but in the process, did what I now believe to have told me what was in the file. I felt a spinning feeling, then felt myself hit the ground, now completely limp. Everything went from white to black in an instant. It almost felt like someone wanted me to read it.
Actually, I take that back. It felt more like something.
[FROM THE MIND OF STRONGHOLD]
My eyes slowly crawled into a state of awareness as I found both of them staring straight out into a single blinding halogen light bulb. For a while I couldn't see anything at all, but after a couple of seconds, my vision cleared to reveal to me that I wasn't home. It wasn't until a machine beneath me sputtered to life that I realized I was encased in a small glass bubble. Instinctively, I tried to remember my past to see how I got here... But much to my avail, could only bring up my name, what I looked like, and where I had lived before... This. I was a gray unicorn who used to work as a guard in Canterlot... for... Damn. Couldn't remember even that. In fact, I couldn't even recall the details of my family... Or even if I had a family. At least I could recall that my name was Stronghold. That appeared to be all, though.
The glass bubble that I was lying in started to split into two neat glass halves that rotated around me until I found myself lying in what resembled a bed. It had bluish gray sheets and was a shiny white around the edges. Looked rather futuristic. I hoisted myself onto all fours, feeling an odd kind of resistance on my joints, like I was wearing spandex. I looked down to find myself wearing an explosively orange jumpsuit. Rolling my eyes in disgust to try and get past that, I observed the room to find myself incased in a bizarre cubical room. Three of the walls were made of glass, which revealed a boxy hallway beneath it. The floor was made of a thin looking concrete, while the fourth wall had a large door-looking thing. Rather boring, but still creepy.
A voice crackled to life in an unseen speaker, and out came a robotic, but not monotone, female voice. "Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science Testing Facility." Oh. Frakkin. Shit. I panicked. This sounded WAY too familiar for my liking. She continued her speech about 'how I got accepted to be a test subject' and all of that crap, but I was just more concerned about how the hell I would get out of here. It wasn't until I heard the end of it that I realized what was sort of going on, and those words I will never forget.
"Stand back. The portal will open in three, two, one."
And just like that, the bizarre blocked doorway opened up a door in front of me It didn't even swing open... Just opened. Like a shutter. Orange colored, and had a weird kind of noise to it when it opened ("WHUMM". There, does that help?). But it wasn’t until I saw myself in the doorway that I panicked. Standing in front of me, in an elevated glass room, surrounded by a curved hallway, was me. Surprised look on my face and everything. I raised a hoof and was alarmed to find that I saw my second self do the same thing as me at the exact same time. Even weirder, I noticed that my hooves were strapped to four miniature pogo-stick-looking things. I looked at myself again. My mane was spiked forward and orange, while my tail jetted out backwards and was colored likewise. I stepped backward. He (I, I guess?) stepped backward also. I looked further into the bizarre door to find myself in the hallway that I was just surrounded by. Portals... A real life portal... Wow. This could get either scary or awesome really fast, I realized.
After I was over my fascination with seeing myself in the portal, I decided to see what would happen if I stepped into it. Hesitantly, I raised a hoof through it to find that I instantly lost my sense of direction after my first step. I was now in the hallway that just surrounded me. Holy bit. That was crazy.
I moseyed down the glass and concrete hallway with an uneasy feeling. No matter how cool that portal thingie was, I still didn't exactly know where I was, and the fact that I could hardly remember anything about me didn't help at all. I continued walking, and looked up to find a security camera staring at me. I moved left. The white, metallic casing guided the red, electronic eye towards me. That was officially beyond creepy. And to add to that, the entire facility seemed to be vacant.
"Hello? Can anyone hear me?" I yelled.
"Yes. Although it is a surprise to hear a test subject talk. I haven't had one like you in days. This will be fun."
"How did I even get here? Where is this place? What the hell is going on here?"
"Now, now. There's no need for swearing. You'll find out soon enough."
I stopped in defiance to her statement, then realized that I would get nowhere by doing so. I then reluctantly trotted into the doorway at the end of the hall, which was round and small. Inside was another cold, vacant concrete room. Whoopdeedoo. Okay, vacant in the sense of other ponies. It had some things in it, the most interesting of which were a large, valved tube coming from the ceiling and a large red button on the floor next to it. And then the creepy lady spoke up again.
"Alrighty then. Lets see if you can still use magic." The valve on the tube opened up, dispensing a large cube, which then bumped to the ground, making an alarmingly quiet noise for its size. Grey, but still had a cool design on it. "Take the weighted storage cube and place it on the button to open the door to the next chamber." Sounded simple enough. I tried to use some simple magic to lift the cube off the ground, but only to find that I couldn't. I tried again. No cigar. Yeah, this can't be good.
Her voice came back on again, this time hinting insanity. "Oh, right. You can only use magic on what I want you to use magic on. Which is nothing. Sorry. Weighted storage cubes appear to not be on that list. Which is still nothing. HAHAHAA."
DAMMIT! That makes everything suck. Great.
Being the reluctant unicorn that I am, I didn't want to make any movements, but stubbornness turned to motivation when the voice came on again. "Just put the damn cube on the damn button and get a move on."
I wandered over towards the cube to see what I could do with it. As I observed it, I found out it was made out of a very light ceramic. Interesting. I could clearly see that the goal of this was to get the cube onto the button, so I gave it a shot by rearing up behind it and giving it a nice buck. The initial impact didn't hurt as bad I expected, and it softly landed on the large button with a satisfying 'Ka-chunk' as the pressure plate depressed and the door next to it opened.
"Well done, filly. That's as easy as they come, though. But don't be a Fluttershy. Head through the door and into the elevator."
"I'm not a female, you know..." I said, irritated with her already.
Fluttershy... Where have I heard that name? It sounded famous to me for some reason... I couldn't remember why though. Odd.
I looked down the hallway to find a bizarre force-field looking thing was blocking my path to a cylindrical elevator. "Umm, freaky robot lady? How do I get by?"
"I have a name, you know. And I'm more than just a robot. I also have a name, too. It's GLaDOS. That thing you appear to be afraid of is an incandescent particle field: it will incinerate any unauthorized equipment that passes through it, such as that weighted storage cube. Good thing you're authorized."
Well, that certainly freaked the hell out of me. I still knew that that was the only way out of here, so I was left with no choice. I stepped through it. After what felt like minor electrocution, I stepped out unscathed. Wow. I felt good, but I still didn't want to do that again. Too unsettling... Hard to explain (even to myself), so... Moving on. I continued to walk down the cold concrete hallway until I was greeted by a rather large metal door, which was open. Inside this 'elevator' was a circular room with padding inside, like the kind in an asylum. I didn't like this at all now.
I stepped inside to find that the doors had closed right behind me, and now we were already moving up. We, you might ask? Oh, yeah. About that. Just as the door closed and started moving upward, I heard a different voice. This one not so monotone. And, strangely enough, it had a rather sophisticated accent. "Hello!" He waited a few seconds for me to stop freaking out and regain a proper breathing pattern. "You know, I'm so glad you came here. I've been trapped in here for weeks... Not a single test subject has come through here in an entire month! Can you believe it?" I looked up to find a metal ball looking down at me through a trapdoor in the ceiling. Strangely enough, it looked like a metal eye. This place was getting weirder by the minute, and I've really only been here for about four minutes.
"Who the hell are you?" I snapped.
"Oh. Terribly sorry for not formally introducing myself. Wheatly. And you?"
"Stronghold. What I guess I meant to say is, what the hell are you?"
"Personality core for... Her... working in Pony Management at Aperture Laboratories."
Personality core... Weird. "Ah. A core, you say. You know what, I have no idea what that means."
"Oh. Sorry. We cores are specially designed robots that attach to and slightly alter the thoughts of other robots." He said that to me like it was the most casual thing to say to me.
"Oookay. I'm honestly surprised that I haven't freaked out that much about having a near-alive robot in front of me... So, what's your business here, in a creepy elevator talking to a unicorn who can't even seem to remember his family?"
"Damn it! That bloody AI erased another mind... Wait. You said you remembered your name. What else do you remember?"
"That didn't answer my question."
"Oh. Right. Well, I'm actually here to help you help us escape. You see, I hate this place just as much as you do, and I need a human's help to do it. So... How about that."
"But what do you mean by 'her'? Was that the weird voice I heard back in the glass room? GLaDOS, she said?"
"Oh. You woke up there... Interesting... So that means this elevator is parked in test chamber 00 on testing course 6652A. And yes, she is that voice. In fact, she runs this entire facility. And she's mad. Crazy. She tries to kill every single 'test subject' that runs through this rat maze of hers... She has already succeeded several times, but I plan to stop her ASAP. So, waddya say: We escape, justice is served, and I might add, we both survive."
"Sure, but..." He cut me off there.
"Great! Hold on a second while I take manual control of this." The elevator suddenly jolted to a stop, and within a split second, we were back up and moving. This time, backwards. Well, forwards. I couldn't tell, but either way, it wasn't moving like a normal elevator. A canned version of 'her' came on through an unseen speaker. Fine. GLaDOS. She's still just a random creepy robot lady to me...
"What are you doing? Stop it!" Her voice hinted both rage and surprise. Well, it's official. She's pissed.
"Hang on, Stronghold! We're goin' through!" By this time, I was very confused about what was happening.
"Through what? Where are you taking me?!?"
"Out!"
"Out to where?!?"
"OUTSIDE!!! HAHAHA!!"
Now, as you can probably easily tell, I did not like how this situation was going straight to hell. And that was before GLaDOS actually tried to do something about it. The third voice came in, the elevator still accelerating. We must have been going at least 80 kilometers an hour...
"Not if I can help it." The small room jolted to a stop and struggled to move in the opposite direction, almost like a war was going on for me. This wasn't a mechanical override, even. This was straight up physical. However, I still didn't know at this point was shaking this small room. While the elevator wasn't even moving. And there wasn't a single damn thing I could do about it. As the massive jolt knocked me to the ground, I realized what I had on my hooves. Those bizarre pogo-things... I quickly took advantage of them and sprung back to my feet. As badass that I thought that may have looked, I still had no control over the situation. And having the door of the elevator ripped off by a giant robotic arm reminded me of that.
A second after I was thrown into the ground, a few large dents made their way into the metal door. And what seemed like just a second after that, a hole was suddenly carved in between the elevator doors as a large, blue metal hand protruded through.
That's the funny thing about humility. You lose all of it until something life-threatening happens. And it just did. As the blue and grey metal arm tore off the metal door and threw it down, I panicked. We were REALLY high up.
It was a shocking sight to see where we actually were. Picture this: A giant, mostly vacant space that seems to go on forever. Then add some horizontal and vertical rails strewn across the blue void, then put several oddly blocky rooms on said rails. Add some more rails connecting said rooms, then put on them cyndrical elevators and robots that looked like Wheatly. So, pretty much the scariest place for someone with an undying fear of large spaces and height. I happened to be terrified of both. And since this place seemed to be indoors, that only amplified my fear for some reason.
"Hey! I can't hold on to this much longer, so I'm going to have to ask you of a tad crazy favor... Drop down and look for a way back up! You can use the old testing chambers down there, but be warned: You'll need a special tool! A gun that shoots holes! Well, not bullet holes, but you'll figure it out! Just let go!" Wheatly snapped me out of my mental state of pure fear and back into the real world, where there was still a freaky robotic arm trying to kill me. On a rail, suspended who-knows-how high. Or low. And, as I might add, back into a world where I had sub mindedly saved my own life by stopping myself from soaring out the open doorway. Because GLaDOS was trying to kill me. For no apparent reason, I may add.
"Are you crazy?" I yelled back at him.
"JUST DO IT! THERE'S NO TIME LEFT TO EXPLAIN IT FURTHER!!!"
It all happened in one, long moment. I felt Wheatly ram himself into my flank, knocking me forwards and out the door. Into the very void that I was terrified of. The robotic arm swiped at it from the right and crashed into the elevator that I was in just milliseconds before, completely destroying the bottom of it and sending several pieces of metal shrapnel towards me. It also revealed the place Wheatly was, which was a small roof compartment in the elevator.
I came to a sudden realization just then: Holy shit. I'm falling! Fast! As I saw the robots battling it out on the inverted railing above, I realized what had happened with the pogo-shoes. Bouncy... Maybe they could slow falls. I quickly righted myself to a downward position in mid-fall to find that the space beneath me was gradually turning darker and darker as I accelerated to my doom. I noticed the buildings whizzing by me upwards were slowly getting more... Spherical? Where the hell is this place, anyway? A salt mine? Well, that would make sense. And, BAM. No, not landing. Rather, just as I thought that, memory came rushing back. Well, at least some of it. As it turns out, I had worked as a guard for Princess Celestia, but I went to a night shift when she went missing and her sister, Princess Luna, took over. And when I mean night shift, I mean it. The sun hadn't risen for two weeks after she took rule. Which, coincidentally, is when we are now... Two weeks. Then I had another thought... Was she down here in this wretched place? I didn't doubt it. But what Luna is doing right now is the real concern, because I had no idea.
That's the funny thing about falling. At first, everything seems to go by fast, like 'life flashing before your eyes'. But after a while, you can almost enjoy it. I had been falling for at least a minute now, which means that I must have been at least two kilometers down this shaft thing. And I hadn't a care in the world... Until I landed. At around the minute mark, three kilometers down, at over three hundred kilometers an hour. That's my guess, at least.
That's the funny thing about landing. The anticipation is unbearable, but when it happens and it's over, you're shaken, but your thoughts are clear: That wasn't so bad. I righted myself in midair as I spotted a glow start to increase in size beneath me. Looked like a bunch of fires were happening down there. But the rapid rate that it was coming was nerve racking. I straightened my legs, bracing for my legs to shatter from one hell of an impact.
It never really happened. All I can remember is a 'THOCK', a 'WHOOSH', and then opening my eyes to find myself alive, but at the bottom of this horrendous void. Post-apocalyptic style, bitch. But with no broken bones, so of course it's okay. HAHA! NOT.
Wheatly's last few sentences disturbed me... Gun. Shoots holes... Hold the phone. Does he mean those freaky-ass portals back in the glass room? And if he did, was there really a device that could create them? I hoped for the best as I stood up shakily as I found myself in a large, open topped cylindrical room strewn with several forgotten pieces of metal and concrete. I then I spotted a small doorway in the wall across from me and started to walk towards it. I found my way and made my way through the dank, dark corridors that held years worth of scrap and debris, noticing that everything was dripping with mildew-ridden sludge and had an unearthly glow to it, like a poorly made fire was next to it. I looked a little farther ahead to find an opening from the corridor to a much larger room. I stepped further, looking for a way out of this God forsaken pit I was in. I stepped out of the corridor and into the room to find a much larger area than anticipated, which was essentially the larger part of the bottom of the void. Honestly, it looked like a concrete jungle, but this time, literally. And everything was large, dark, and downright frightening. And moist, I might add. Eeaugh.
I was equally alarmed to hear a female voice coming from the debris, this time a sure bet on another pony. "Who goes there?" It was a really hoarse and shaky voice, at that.
"Um, me. My name is Stronghold. Where and who are you?"
"Stronghold... My GOD! Is it really you?" I heard some rattling around beneath a large concrete pipe to my left until a head popped up out of a small hole in the ground. It was scrappy, shaggy, and possibly diseased, but it was still an unmistakable character with her long pastel hair and large horn.
"Princess Celestia? What the hell are you doing down here? How long have you been down here?" Questions came pouring mindlessly out of here until she answered a few of them.
"Calm down! I've been down here for about two weeks. How did the public take this?"
I could still barely talk to her. "Well, as you could have guessed, Luna took over as leader, but she was having trouble raising the sun. Everypony misses you but nopony knows where you are. What... Were you scared that the public wouldn't take you back in as leader?"
"No, it's just that I'm afraid that Luna will kill me."
HOLD THE PHONE. "Explain, please."
"You know GLaDOS? That would be Luna's creation. She went psychotic and started 'testing' on the citizens of Equestria, but after I found out, she tried to erase my memory and threw me down here. I've been able to stay alive just by the adrenal vapor she releases into the air down here. I can only assume she's still erasing minds and killing innocent ponies as we speak..."
Holy shit. That explained a little too much of what was going on down here then I'd like to know.
"Is there any way out from here?"
"As far as I'm concerned, the only thing I can think of is through the old Co-op testing course." Right... Just like Wheatly mentioned a while back. Or up.
"Old? How old?"
"Ages! This area of the facility was shut down in the sixties, so it's at least 70 years old... But since you're down here, how about some testing?"
The single thought that was suddenly coursing through my mind at that very moment: Oh god.
"Wait a second. Testing? That's the very thing that got me thrown down here in the first place. Why would I want to do that again?"
"I know it sounds desperate, but it really is the only way out. And now since you're here, we can actually do something about this."
"Woah, woah. Hold on. Another guy up top gave me a broken promise, and I don't want to get betrayed again." I accidentally let that slip, not realizing for some reason that at the moment I was talking to the Princess.
"Betrayed? This is life or death we're talking about here! Just go with me!"
I was surprised by the way that she didn't seem to notice how I was talking to her, but seriously: Way to bring the crappy concept of death into an already crappy situation. Again.
"Okay, fine! But, what's so dangerous about this testing?"
"Huh! I guess you didn't see very much while you were up there, didn't you? How about this: You'll see. Hold on, I'll grab us some portal guns."
Guns. Portal guns. Well, my prediction was right... A gun that shoots portals. Celestia went back into the small hole in her makeshift concrete shack of a home, and came out a few seconds later, this time holding two strange devices. Both of them looked like two white metal footballs fused together at the tips, and included a handle in the back, while the front end had an opening, surrounded by a claw-like thing. Bizarre, to say in the least. "Take your pick. You can use magic on these, but it can't go further than five feet from your horn, or it doesn't work."
I levitated the one on the left up to me to observe it and found myself absentmindedly stroking it with my hoof, to get the texture. In a nutshell, cold like metal, looked like plastic, and felt like glass. And I had no idea what it was made out of. "Wow. Luna made these too?"
"I can only assume so. Give it a try... There are three levers on it. Bottom lever fires a blue portal, top lever fires an orange portal, and the middle lever grabs stuff."
"That dinky claw?"
"Don't underestimate it. Here, try it on this." She picked up a chunk of metal that was on the ground and held it up in front of me. Curious, I pointed the device at the chunk and tripped the middle lever.
The front end of the gun flashed bright white, temporarily blinding me. When I regained my vision, I found that the claw wasn't actually grabbing it, but levitating it somehow about a decimeter in front of it. As a result, I couldn't feel any extra weight on the gun.
"Impressive, huh?" Celestia remarked.
"Wow. How does it work?" I inquired.
"It's rather interesting. Some of the old tests down here were for harnessing magic from unicorns, and apparently somepony found a way to use the energy through a device. Which also happens to be what you're holding now."
"Huh! That's crazy... Sounds like a lot of work went into this stuff."
"Yeah, maybe too much work... Anyway, you should test out the other two levers."
I set down the hunk of metal and looked to my left to find a chain-link fence with a concrete wall behind it. I aimed the gun at it using my magic and tripped the bottom lever. The gun momentarily turned blue, and a bright beam shot out of the front of the gun. It made a strange sound as the beam collided with the wall, then made a bright blue oval appear on the wall. I was in awe of what just happened, but that didn't stop me from trying out the top lever. I fired an orange portal on a wall to my right to find the two portals linked, allowing me to see directly through one and out the other. Holy shit, I think I just changed my mind! I want to see where this goes!
[FROM THE MIND OF STRONGHOLD]
"Well, what are you waiting for? Walk through!" Celestia's motivation scared me enough to heave my sorry flank through the portal. One split-second of disorientation later, and I found myself to be on the other end of the fence. Eeyup, that may never get old. I stepped to my side to allow Celestia to come through the portal. "Okay, since it looks like you don't need help with aiming the device, let me show you this."
She took aim with her portal gun and shot her two portals at the floor beneath my orange one, and the other on a nearby wall, but about twenty feet higher. I was more alarmed by the fact that her portals were red and purple than that she was trying to catapult me to a ledge. "Okay, now what?" I asked.
"Well, since it looks like I'm going to be the one to teach the things that GLaDOS didn't, Walk through your orange portal and then run back at the blue."
"What? Are you crazy?"
She gave me a wretched smirk. "Maybe."
"Ugh. Fine. I already fell about three kilometers today, so what could be worse..." I back stepped through my set of portals to find myself back where I started. I reared up, then charged out at the blue portal, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. It wasn't until i was already past the first portal and careening towards the second portal that I actually figured out what was going on. I was about to fall down into the second set of portals with forward momentum, so that when I come out of the final portal, I would be flying diagonally upwards, onto a nearby ledge, which should have been unreachable. Fucking genius. But if I had to think like this to survive down here, I might be screwed.
The thought of it happening passed quite slowly as I had my 'moment of dawning comprehension', but the real thing happened really fast. I dropped into the second portal, flinging myself upwards, and making me land with a crash on the ledge twenty feet above where I was just a second before. "Holy shit! Genius!"
"I know I am." Celestia said with a smirk, just before repeating my actions that got me up here. When we were both up on the catwalk, I chilled out enough to realize what Celestia didn't do. Fly. I feared the worst.
"Um, Celestia?"
"Yes?"
"Why didn't you just fly up here?"
"This is why." She lifted up her wing slightly to show me that it had been surgically clamped to her side. I cringed after I realized what I was looking at.
"Does it hurt?"
"Only if I try to fly. I can sort of glide by doing this," And with saying that, she extended her wings a couple of decimeters away from her body. "But it isn't very effective."
"Well, at least you have that. But now what?"
She stared at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. "Well, dummy, we climb up the stairs. What else would we do?"
I looked up to find that the ledge was attached to a large concrete pillar, which had a staircase spiraling up it for about a hundred meters. And on top of that, was perched a large geodesic sphere, supported by large steel beams connected to the sides of the void.. This one about two hundred meters wide... Dammit, why must everything here be so massive? "Holy shit. That's scary."
"Well, it was built seventy years ago. What did you expect?"
"To be honest, a cube. Not a sphere. But... Why a sphere?"
She laughed and gave me a dumb look. "How the hell should I know? Luna built this, not me!"
That's right... I still couldn't get over that. Well, I could to the point where it didn't disrupt my life, just the thought part of it. We started walking up the stairs side by side, talking pretty much the entire way.
"So where are we headed through to get up?"
"I thought I already told you. The old cooperative testing courses. They are dangerous, but it is the only way up."
"How many other testing courses are there?"
"Thousands more. And each one of those has around five to thirty testing chambers in them. Throw in a couple thousand offices, a few control centers, about a hundred pump stations, and a command module, and you can get an idea of how massive this place really is. It was originally built in the site of a salt mine... Started in the late forties as a harmless science experimenting ground. It wasn't until several ponies disappeared down here that investigation started to take place. Sure enough, the investigators disappeared, followed by the ponies that went looking for them. Soon enough, Aperture Sciences, as it came to be known, was unstoppable. They were both the cause and solution to most of the problems in Equestria. And all along, I knew that Luna was behind all of this, but I couldn't prove it. And sure enough, the second I find out where all of those disappearances were taking place, I disappeared too."
"True story?"
"True story. All of it."
Now, usually I'd be exhausted by now from climbing twenty stories up, but whatever Luna did to the air in here really messed me up. And I can't tell if that's in a good way or not... Here, I can lay it out to you:
Pros: Never hungry, thirsty, or tired.
Cons: I feel sick beyond measure, and I have absolutely no idea how fast time really is passing, so I don't know how long I've been down here. It could be anywhere between twenty minutes and two hours...
I still knew that I needed to get out of here, so I trudged past my sickness to continue upwards.
"Celestia?"
"Yah."
"Where exactly are we?"
"Directly beneath Canterlot. The entire city is built directly above this pit... And as I would guess, if you were lucky enough to get on an elevator that moved up, then you would end right up in the Canterlot sewer system. Climb up another twenty feet? Canterlot."
"So this pit was dug before Canterlot was actually founded?"
"Yeah."
"Then what about Hearth’s Warming Eve and the meaning of all of that?"
"It's an odd story. The original Canterlot was actually in the Everfree Forest. You know the castle ruins up there?"
"Who doesn't? That site is pretty much infamous by now."
"Well, the supposedly infamous incident of Luna and the Nightmare has an untold side: Luna never went to the moon. Nightmare moon is just the Nightmare trying to imitate Luna, and the Nightmare was the only one sent to the moon."
"Whaaat?"
"Yeah, sounds crazy, I know. There was a war between us, but we won and banished it to the moon. Once we won, we were forced to relocate our civilization to somewhere else. Unfortunately, our best land for settling was already taken up by the salt mine that we're in now, which was only used for resources back then. About thousand years later, the modern-day Canterlot palace was created, and when we had to expand, we just closed up the salt mine and built over it. Odd decision, I know, but it was the best at the time. Besides, nopony expected the new Canterlot to last longer than a few hundred years anyway. A while later, the Nightmare returned, trying to take Luna's place again, but this time she was stopped before any damage was done. Luna went out of her secret rule and back to the public, and you basically have what happened about seventy years ago. However, then she went psychotic for real, and here we are now."
"Facinating..." Although I couldn't think of anything else to say afterwards, I still meant it.
By now we were almost to the top of the tower and into the 'enrichment sphere' (as the signs pointing up said), so I stopped to take a look at the view from above. And to be honest, it looked exactly like a book that I vaguely remember reading... The City of Ember. Basically a sci-fi novel about citizens of an underground city. Looking back down at the glowing fires and the desolated rubble that inhabited the bottom of this 'facility', a question came into my mind. "Celestia, who originally dug out this pit?"
"It was an odd group of settlers who started it long go. The descendents of the original settlers, actually."
Well, guess what? We're here! The precariously perched sphere suspended in the bizarre pit. Of course, it looked a lot larger up close, but when we rounded the top of the stairs that lead to a ladder going in the sphere, we were in for a surprise. As I climbed up the ladder and poked my head into another dark and grimy room, I took account of my surroundings. This room was a bizarre cylinder, filled with all sorts of trash and leaky pipes. I stepped fully into the room. Smelled mustier than down below, but that didn't make a big difference to me.
Towards the back of the room was a dark sign in bold forest font, reading 'TO TESTING'. Next to it was an arrow pointing to an open doorway that led to a corridor. I shuddered at the sight, but I could guess that it was the only way through, so I continued.
Celestia followed not too far behind me, so by the time I could get a good idea of the surrounding area, she was already in with me. She prodded my flank with her horn. "Oh, come on. Get going."
"Okay, fine." I stammered my way through the room to the corridor. And to be honest, the condition in there wasn't all that different. Still nasty. When we reached the end of that, we ended up in a lobby that looked like something straight out of the Jetsons, but throw in some horror and a lot of time and you've got what we're dealing with here. Damp, degrading retro sofas, rotted coffee tables, even throw in some abandoned offices and busted TV's.
We were both alarmed to hear a male voice come on overhead on unseen speakers, which sounded familiar... This fuzzy memory thing was just becoming frustrating. "Hello fellow citizens of Equestria, and welcome to the Aperture Science Testing Facility. We have some great science adventures planned out for you today. If you were the ones to sign up for zombie response training, pick up a rifle and follow the black line. If you signed up for the cooperative portal training, grab a portal gun and follow the orange line. If you signed yourself up for harnessing magic for the Magic for Earth Ponies program, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that program got postponed until we can figure out a way to stop fellow ponies with those bizarre spontanious combustions that I mentioned earlier. The good news is that we have a much better activity for you..." His speech went on for a while until I spoke to Celestia.
"Hey. Do you know who that is?" I looked over at her to find that she had a look of surprise on her face. "Celestia? You okay?"
"No. That was Prince Blueblood. I should have known he was behind this... What a bastard." Great, now she's mad and I don't know why.
And finally, more memory came back. I was relieved to know now more of where I lived (two story house on the southeast corner of 35th street and Kilmore Ave.) and who I was acquainted with. I still had a lot to uncover, but I didn't know what I could. At least I found out who Blueblood was: A snooty, stuck up stallion who's intent on everything was to have more of it than anypony else. So basically the stereotype of a rich kid, but one who should know better in the first place. And to make matters worse, he was royalty. It would only make sense for him to be part of the monopoly that was Aperture. At least it wasn't Luna, or else we would have had a huge problem on our hooves. All I can say at this point is that even though I've lived in Canterlot for all my life, I still haven't figured out the royal system yet. I mean, seriously... Two princesses, a prince, and no known king or queen? What.
After Celestia had a chance to cool her jets (literally, her wings had started to flare outwards in... rage, I suppose?), we followed the orange stripe of peeling paint that headed to our right and soon found ourselves in front of a rectangular, vault-like door. It was locked shut.
Celestia put down her portal gun. "This place must have been condemned... Here, let me try something. Stand back."
I stepped back and watched Celestia in awe as her horn started to glow red hot. She touched it to the door, and to my surprise, began melting away at the locked metal door. Soon enough, a circular pattern was beginning to take shape on the door in the form of melted iron. In about ten seconds flat a hole was carved large enough for us to walk through, leaving a massive hunk of metal to fall backwards and onto the damp carpet below with a loud 'BOOM!' And sure enough, we found ourselves in front of another ridiculously nasty corridor. This one we knew must have been untouched for at least a half of a century.
"Wow. I thought you couldn't use magic here..."
"Well, we can't use magic on other things, but we can on ourselves." That was a huge relief.
We waited for a while until the metal cooled enough to touch, then picked up our portal guns and made our way through. Celestia went in first, lighting the way with her horn. I followed, still not knowing what to expect. It felt as though we were still being watched, even without the presence of those bizarre security cameras. Almost like a horror movie, to be honest. Except I had nopony to tell me when to duck or not to enter a room. Then again, I never had that in the first place.
As we sludged our way through the cold, mildewed hall, I tried talking with Celestia to ease the impending doom that lingered in the air here. "Um, how does one test cooperatively?"
She caught on to what I was trying to do quickly and dead-ended the conversation. "You'll find out in about four seconds. Shut your trap."
And as she (sort of) promised, the hallway came to a stop and turned right, leading us into a tall, square room. Everything was still made of concrete, with the exception of two black metal tubes hanging downwards from the ceiling and a large section of the opposite wall was taken out to reveal a large, dark room. Blueblood's voice came back on. "Well, congratulations! You qualified to take place in our Cooperative Testing program. Remember to think with two sets of portals, and good luck on your science adventure. The testing will start in three... Two... One."
Floodlights filled the room with brightness, revealing a fairly simple obstacle course made entirely out of rusty steel and mossy, damp concrete. The room looked retro, while still holding a spacey, futuristic feel to it. Kind of weird. I liked it.
"Alrighty then. Where do we start?" I asked.
"I'm not entirely sure... But that doesn't mean we can't start looking for an answer." And with a dastardly smirk, she was on her way, surveying the test ahead. Her ambition towards this alarmed me, but that didn't stop me from following her lead for some reason.
I surveyed the concrete and metal room... Large, rectangular, and had a large gap in the middle that streched all the way to the left and right. Filled with a vile green sludge, so probably deadly. At the other end of the gap was a doorway to another hallway, perhaps leading to another test chamber. In one corner to the left, there was a large, open faced metal box with a concrete ceiling and floor, with a horizontal incandescent particle field wedged in between. Like it was meant to have a portal on top and bottom, perhaps generating confined speed... "Hey, Celestia. We can start here." I nudged my nose in the direction of the box thing while Celestia took note.
"Okay, I'm trusting you know what the particle field does, right?"
"Zaps cubes. Keeps you. That's all I know. Something else?"
"Yes. If a portal gun passes through, both portals that came from that gun will dissipate. So this thing here, the infinite loop, has to be used by the pony who doesn't shoot the portals. So, stand in there."
"Are you sure this will work?"
"HAHA! I HAVE NO IDEA!! Just kidding, of course this will work." Her voice still hinted doubt, even though her humor was trying to add a lighter touch to the situation.
I stepped forward and into the box thing as she shot a red portal directly above me, then the purple one directly below me. One split second after I was painfully aware of gravity's existence, and I was falling. It was a really bizarre sensation, pretty much like the floor you were standing on instantly dissipate. Luckily, I was half expecting it, so I didn't have a heart attack. But it still was frightening, seeing multiple Celestias whizzing upwards as I flew downwards as I was getting shocked about three times a second by the (still bizarre) particle field.
"Now what?!" I yelled at her through the wind.
"Hold on a second." She pondered for a second, then right as my speed was somewhere beyond 200 kilometers an hour, she aimed her portal gun upwards. I had no idea what she was doing until it was too late to stop what she was trying to: Her portal gun momentarily glowed bright red, then shot out a streaking beam of energy, aimed high above the entrance to the room. And sure enough, my next lap through the portal sent me soaring downwards, but now pointed towards the other end of the room. The portal gun nearly slipped out of my concentration, this thing took me by surprise! I quickly righted myself by flailing my hooves in midair, then braced for impact as I heard a familiar 'THOCK' against the floor. And before I knew it, I was on the cold metal floor on the opposite side of the room!
"Holy bit, where did you learn that?" I exclaimed.
"Self taught. Everyone down here must be, the announcements don't give any clues."
"So now what?"
"Look for a concrete slab to shoot a portal on. Then shoot one back here so I can get over there."
"Can do!" I walked into the hallway at the end of the room, found a portal-compatible surface directly to my left at another turn, and soon Celestia and I were walking side by side again to the next test.
"Well, now. That wasn't so bad, now was it?"
My legs were shaky, I felt sick, and I could hardly breath. I rolled my eyes and smartassed her. "Sure."
"Good. Let's continue."
We were already in the second bend on the steel corridor, so all we had to do to get to the next chamber was turn to our left. As we did so, we were met by a shock. Not literally, thank God, but still... The entire next room was gone. We could tell because the faint lighting nearby hinted jagged metal edges around the end of the hall, but we still couldn't tell what was ahead. We stepped forwards to find out. We must have triggered some sort of motion sensor, because the voice of Blueblood came back on.
"WelcdvnnhZZZZCKKM..." A long, awkward pause followed. "Well, it would appear as though the first test wasn't a problem for you, so let's get you a little bit harder one." The familiar shine of floodlights suddenly filled the room, revealing what appeared to not be a testing chamber. Rather, a void. Again. This one in the shape of a giant sphere. The entire bottom of the sphere was flooded with the green sludge to about ten meters, looking like the stuff in the last room. And by the looks of it, there could be a connection between the two. The sphere looked as though it was split in half by a large concrete slab, and we were on the left side. So, basically, we were looking at the shell of the large sphere we were in. I guess I didn't realize exactly how big the ladder into here was, because we were pretty high up. About thirty meters, if I had to guess. But by the looks of things, the space between portal-compatible surfaces hinted that escape was either very difficult, or impossible. But there were some oddly oriented concrete pillars and slabs in the sludge, so that provided some hope. Naturally, I had to look to Celestia for a way out.
"Any ideas? Preferably ones that will allow us to live?" I asked anxiously.
"I got one. Let's do this... See that ledge over there?" She pointed to her right to show me an overhang of steel on the dividing wall.
"Yes... What about it?"
"Shoot a portal on the sphere forward of that, then shoot a sideways one on the platform in the sludge."
I did what she told me, even though I didn't trust what she was doing at all.
She jumped. I'm not sure if you know what level of insecurity I'm dealing with here, but when you're dealing with the two-thousand-year-old former leader of Equestria, shit gets real.
I leaned over the edge to see what had happened to her. And to my (HUGE) relief, she had already shot a red portal on a platform directly below her and had shot the other on the right side of a large, vertical pillar to the left, hopefully flinging her to the platform in the middle of everything, ultimately catapulting herself to a busted ledge on the large concrete wall to the right. Eeyup, it's official. I'd never be able to do this on my own.
I looked back up to see Celestia fly through the first set of portals and over the sludge, and then go diagonally into the second to arc her way to the ledge, landing with an all-too-familiar 'CRASH'. But she was alive, so all was well.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" She yelled at me.
[FROM THE MIND OF STRONGHOLD]
"Well, what the hell do you mean, 'what am I waiting for'? There's a freaking gap of almost certain death between you and me that contains a slim chance of survival!"
She gave me her 'Are you f***ing kidding me?' face. "What else would it take for you to just get over here?"
Eeyup, there was no safe way out of this question. "Ugh, fine. Here it goes." I reared up for a leap to my impending doom, then jumped. And, knowing my rotten luck, I felt as though I had picked up too much forward speed. My original fear was overshooting the platform and plunging down into the murky depths of major suckage, but fear turned to relief when I discovered something in mid-flight. I had instinctivley leaned backwards and stiffened up, which to my surprise, got me slowly moving in a backwards direction. I had no time to think between my initial jump and my landing, so my first words after shooting through both sets of portals and crashing down on the ledge were "Woah."
"See? That wasn't so bad."
Stopping my shaking, I responded. "Okay, now what?"
She gave me another 'Are you kidding me?' face and nudged her nose to my right, pointing me towards a steel door, that clearly put us to the next room. Well, clearly until we spotted the small white sign above the handle that said 'Employees Only'. Well, because it looked as though there would be nopony to get us into trouble, I pushed open the door with my hoof and we walked perpendicularly into a concrete hallway, clearly unused for a long time. More dim lighting filled the hallway, and soon enough, we were finally safe from those deadly tests. We spotted a sign directly in front of us, which shocked us with the black words that were on it. It read: "Attention Test Moderators! Don't forget to: (1) Wash hooves after handling used portal guns, (2) Lock up and shut down your workstation, and (3) Euthanize all test subjects at the end of testing."
Good God... This means Luna WAS actually trying to kill us! I looked at Celestia. She had the most shocked look on her face. She looked back at me. And by this time, I could tell that we were both thinking the exact same thing: 'Holy shit.'
She turned to her left immediatley and started walking. By the time I had overcome my shock and seen what she had started to do, I had to run to catch up with her. "Celestia! Where are you going?"
"There's electricity and a staff hallway down here, so there must be a quick way to get back up. Start looking for an elevator shaft." Her quick logic skills impressed me enough do get me looking in the other direction, to the right of where we were. And at the end of the hallway (dimly lit but still recognizable), were a pair of elevator doors about twenty meters away.
"Yo! Got it!" I called Celestia over as I started racing down the poorly cared-for corridor.
"Good work. Look for a generator room so we can boot it up."
When we were at the end of the hallway, I quickly located a wooden door labeled "Lift Control Room". Not wanting to deal with an annoying, rusty door, I reared up and bucked the poor bastard open. I walked inside to find a large electric motor inside, probably the biggest that I had ever seen. I scavenged around the side of the machine to try and find some switch or lever to turn it on.
"Looking for this?" I turned around to find Celestia behind me with a hoof on a wall-mounted lever. She flipped it down, emitting a small explosion of sparks before making the motor roar to life.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. Now get your flank back out here."
I walked slowly back out into the hallway to find that Celestia had already called the elevator. We both waited for about ten seconds, then a bell sounded, followed by the opening of the scaffolding doors, which revealed a small, metal room inside. "Ladies first..." I said to Celestia in a somewhat inviting manner. She could obviously tell that I didn't want to go in first, but that didn't stop her from getting in. After I got the 'okay' signal from her inside, I stepped in alongside her as the doors closed and we started moving upwards. It was slow at first, but it had constant acceleration, so we were moving at a speed of about 60 kilometers an hour within a minute.
"Where exactly are we going?" I asked.
"I'm not entirely sure, but judging by the size of that motor, this thing probably goes all the way up to the surface. Maybe further... Or into the room where GLaDOS is kept."
"I'm guessing that her room is close to the surface then?"
"Yes. Very close."
The rest of the seven minute ride was rather quiet, even though we had a lot to talk about. But most of those things involved Luna killing innocent ponies, so we just kept quiet. I could have imagined the rage (or sadness) flowing throughout her mind... I didn't want to think more about how devastating it must have been to find out your sister was a true psychopath. So what should have been about seven minutes ended up feeling like twenty. Maybe it was twenty. Like I said, I have no idea how time passes anymore.
When we were at last at the top of the shaft and the door reopened, there was good news and bad news. The good news is that the elevator doors opened straight to a large, spherical (not retro, this one was new and entirely steel) room, which in the middle, hanging from the ceiling by a robotic arm, was a bizarre robot. Obviously GLaDOS. Well, obvious until it spoke. Which leads me directly to the bad news: Wheatly was hanging from the ceiling instead. Eeyup, the familiar blue ball was in the center of the room, in GLaDOS' place.
"Hello!" The blue eyed robot spoke to us in his British accent.
I turned towards Celestia. "Dammit, now what?"
"Well, let's find out." We stepped further into the room.
I spoke up to Wheatly. "How the hell did you get up here?"
"Funny story: As it turns out, I actually didn't need you! Got up here all on my own by overriding the turret defense system and core replacing her. So, in a nutshell, I am the new GLaDOS! Me! Little Wheatly did all of this!"
A fourth voice spoke up. "It wasn't all you. You know that test subject 568 did all of this. And you KILLED her. And poor Luna has no idea." It was the real GLaDOS. Her disembodied core was lying on the floor to the right. She was orange and disk shaped rather than blue and spherical.
"Yeah, like YOU would have done something different! You kill every bloody test subject that sets hoof in here! Look at it this way..." Wheatly came to a realization. "Oh my dear God... This system. No matter what core is plugged in... they're given a desire to kill. To test! To test, then kill! That explains everything. GLaDOS. Do you have a desire to kill anypony?"
"Not a pony, but if I was able to, I have a feeling I would end up killing you."
"Why?" Wheatly was in a bonehead state of confusion.
"BECAUSE YOU NEARLY KILLED ME, OF COURSE!!"
"Hey! Where the hell is this going?" Celestia had a surprise say in the argument.
Wheatly turned towards Celestia. "And... And YOU. You filthy cheat... I just checked the test subject database. You were supposed to be dead two weeks ago."
She waved a hoof at GLaDOS and Wheatly. "Shouldn't have given me these, then."
"Celestia, you're not helping. Let's just wrap this damned conversation up and get the hell out of here." I said to her.
"You know what? I don't even need you. I don't need any of you. I can run this place on my own. And you know what? I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill all of you." Wheatly's voice reached its peak of insanity.
Well, I had a feeling that it was going to happen eventually, but not this soon... At least we got back up here fast. But we weren't going down yet. Especially not GLaDOS. "Look, there may not be much time before he goes completely insane, so I might as well tell you this. Okay, I'm sorry I almost killed you. It was compulsive, and I was actually trying to kill him. And about Wheatly..." She said to me.
"DON'T TELL HIM!" Wheatly piped up.
"SCREW YOU! I'LL TELL HIM ANY THING I WANT! Now listen! He's going to destroy this place if he stays in there for long enough. He was built to be a bad decision maker. That's why he rerouted the elevator in the first place."
"Why the hell should I care? Just get me out of this place!"
"Fine. WHEATLY! GET LUNA ON THE PHONE!!"
Oh God. She dropped the bomb. "Fine, I'll do it!"
Shit. This could be it. I heard a disembodied phone ringing. Within two rings, before anyone could prepare for the conversation that followed, she picked up the phone.
"Queen Luna speaking, how may I assist you?" Luna said in a rehearsed voice.
"Great. Now she's calling herself a queen." I found myself saying aloud.
"Excuse me, there can only be one queen, but as many princesses as anyone wants. So when Princess Celestia went missing, I assumed the role as a queen. Now, what do you want?"
"Missing, you say. Do you have any idea of where she is?"
"No. Is that all?"
"Well, no is not a good answer to me. And by the way, my name is Stronghold. And Celestia is right next to me as we speak."
"Hello, Luna. Long time, no see. If you call two weeks of rotting in the pit below Canterlot a long time." Celestia said.
"Celestia? Stronghold? Impossible."
"Possible. Now what are you going to do with me? Feed me to the Hydra? Throw me in the dragon's cave?"
"No idea. I'm speechless. I have no choices left. GLaDOS, kill them."
"Can do!" Wheatly spoke up instead.
"You're not GLaDOS! What have you done to her?"
"Oh, just a core transplant. But that's no problem, is it?" Wrong move, Wheatly.
"AARGH!! SCREW THIS WHOLE THING!! NOW ALL OF YOU ARE DOOMED!!"
Nobody new what that meant until a computerized male voice came on overhead. "Nuclear reactor core meltdown imminent. This facility will self destruct in five minutes." I suppose that explained where all of the energy in this place came from...
Just then, some of the steel panels lining the room flipped to reveal TV screens, all of which had timers on them, counting down from five minutes. And to make matters worse, Wheatly took a direct order from Luna and started trying to kill us. By throwing bombs. "HAHAHA!!! TAKE THAT!!!"
"SHIT!!! WHAT DO WE DO?!?" I yelled at Celestia.
To my surprise, GLaDOD ended up being the one to respond. "Over to your left! Theres a pipe that has a special white gel in it! What ever the gel splatters on, portals can be shot on."
"How?" I said, not out of question, but out of spontaneous curiousity. Everything in this place seemed impossible..
"There's no time to explain! Okay, maybe there is! It's made of moon rocks, which conduct portals! There! Happy?"
White gel... Conduct portals... Holy shit!!! That was it! "Celestia! I know how we can beat him and escape! Follow me!" I ran to my left and beneath the white pipe, all the while dodging poorly aimed grenades shot by Wheatly. And just as I predicted, one stray fire blew up the pipe, sending lead shrapnel and white gel soaring out in all directions. Sure enough, within seconds, the entire room was portal compatible.
"AARGH!!! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!?"
Thinking fast, I smirked. "Self-defense."
Out of frustration, he started lobbing more bombs at us. I was ready this time. I shot an orange portal at my feet while jumping back back and firing a blue one on the wall behind Wheatly. Sure enough, the bombs hit him directly on his bad side and soon made him go into an odd, dormant state of rest.
"Good work, Stronghold!" Celestia quickly praised.
"Thanks, but now what? We only have four minutes left!"
GLaDOS piped in. "Hey! What about me?"
"Yeah, what about you?"
"I can replace him! Plug me into the station at the back of the room! In case that-" GLaDOS was cut off there. A crazy noise had taken over our ears, like a ravaging wind mixed with a crumbling explosion. To my shock and horror, a hole had caved into the room, in the exact place that she was. And she fell. And there was nothing I could do about it. And sure enough, the void was taking over the room as we were in it. Every helpless moment that the nuclear wind ripped at us, a new hole was created, and soon enough, we were stranded on a small concrete platform in the middle of the room, and Wheatly shared a similar fate as GLaDOS. Surrounded by doom. That was us.
Well, almost. With about a minute left on the countdown, a small beacon of hope came down from the heavens. Almost literally. I looked up to find that a hole had caved in above us, revealing the moon shining bright above us. I had a crazy idea in my head, but Celestia was the one crazy enough to put it out: Going to the moon.
"HOLD ON!!!" Celestia screamed.
"TO WHAT?!?"
"TO ME, DAMN IT!!!" I grabbed hold of Celestia's frontal leg as she shot a portal below us, then one directly at the moon.
Before I could even think of what could have happened, all of it seemed to happen in an instant. In one puny section of time, no longer than a few seconds, the entirety of our hope was completely gone.
I looked over at Celestia just in time to see a shadowy figure spawn right behind her. I knew instantly who it was.
Luna.
With one swift move on her part, she reached out both of her front legs, grabbed Celestia's neck, and before she could react, snapped her neck with a powerful twist and a horrible crunch. I felt my body go into shock before I could comprehend what I was watching.
I nearly watched poor Celestia fall to the ground in slow-motion. Before I could retalliate, or even hear another snap coming from her body, I saw Luna's horn glow with a nearly white blaze.
They were gone.
Both of them.
I then recognized what Luna did to her. A time-travel spell. A powerful one.
Suddenly realizing the situation at hand, I made a panicky movement into the portal below me out of shock. I felt the usual disorienting feeling, the rush, but this time felt different...
I hit a soft mound of soil with my face what seemed like minutes. Silence fell. Looking up and at my surroundings, I nearly had a heart attack from realizing where I was. I was on the moon. And I was breathing! I was alive! I was victorious! Over what, I wasn't sure, but it felt fairly good nontheless.
Of course, then the thought of Celestia entered my head once again. Hopelessness surrounded me again. She was probably dead... Or worse. But then I thought: She brought both herself and Celestia into the past. She wanted her alive... But for what?
I couldn't find an answer.
After several hours of trying, I finally ended up landing back in Equestria. It wasn’t easy, and I still don’t know what town I’m in, but at least I’m alive. I can only hope that Celestia is the same.
Hope is a weak word.
[FROM THE MIND OF STARNOTE]
My evening commute home that particular day started normal: down one of the more desolated roads of Canterlot, in one of the more 'ghetto' areas of the large city I lived in. I lived an average life, with a wife and a single child, and all of us lived in a small, one story house on the corner of Chain street and 56th avenue.
Allow me to formally introduce myself. Starnote's the name, and playing's my game. Bass, that is. I'd like to say right away that that's my cutie mark, and I'm damn proud of it; playing the bass was my primary career at the time. And I kicked flank with it.
Green base fur. Shaggy, spiky blue and red mane and tail. Basically your average Earth pony. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet.
Like I said, the commute home that day was average. I had my usual yearning to get the hell out of my studio and get home, where I could count on my wife and filly waiting on me.
It was always a winding path to get home from my studio, but over the several months that I had been working there, I had developed a few simple shortcuts to get home. One of them led me directly into the middle of a major street, with several high rise buildings. That's where I was when it happened.
The asphalt directly beneath my green hooves shifted about an inch. I though nothing of it other than just being weird, so I continued on my way.
It happened again. This time, a small crack appeared in the street to my right. I looked up and ahead of me to find that a small cloud of dust and ash was rising from the horizon, getting larger and closer by the second.
I heard one word coming from the screaming mouth of a pony further towards the cloud of ash, which set everypony into panic.
"EARTHQUAKE!!!"
I felt it. The harsh rumbling of the ground beneath me, followed by the explosion of cracks in the ground right at my hooves, followed by a pounding spike of adrenalin, followed by me turning away from the cloud and running like hell.
I could vaguely see the faces of other terrified ponies as their sad images rushed by me, but that didn't stop me. I was hell-bent on survival, and I wasn't sure what was going to happen to me or them.
I kept running... And running... And I was sure as hell not looking back now. My heart rate went through the roof, as only one thought screamed throughout my head: Run. So I did.
I was blurry eyed from the ash that was catching up to me, and near deaf from the harshly loud cracking and jolting sounds coming from the street below me, the crashes of crumbling buildings behind me, and the deep and harsh screams of ponies meeting their fate face on.. It was only then that I realized what I was actually running to: Canterlot Palace. I knew that I would be safe once I got there, but the real problem was making it there alive.
The image of the gleaming white castle and the large mountain it was on gave me a spark of hope. I picked up more speed, but by now I was nearly deaf. I could tell that there were several ponies running alongside me and in front of me, but if they were trying to tell me something, I couldn't tell.
The castle drew nearer still. I could feel the ash biting at my flank, and it stung. I couldn't stop though. I had to press on. Although I wasn't headed for the castle itself, the slope to the right of it provided some safety.
It was only about another twenty meters until the mountain started its slope, so by now I was exhausted from bearing the pain and the running.
The mountain's slope had started, and the stampede of ponies that had galloped their way up here came into clear view of how large it was. About fifty ponies... But as I looked closer, I could tell that something was wrong. All of them were Earth ponies.
However serious that may have been, I had no time to think of it. The slope of the road was becoming steeper and steeper by the second, and that meant that my legs were becoming less and less capable.
I had risen about fifteen meters above the level part of the road before the road turned to dirt and grass, and became even steeper. Just as I thought I would pass out from exhaustion, the ground slowly leveled out, and about twenty vertical meters later, I found myself on the top of the mountain with several other ponies.
I collapsed in pure shock, confusion, and trauma. I don't think I had ever been more satisfied to crash down into the soil and grass below me.
I poked my head back up to see a plume of smoke and ash billow up from the slope below me, resulting in all of the ponies on the mountaintop (including me) to cough up our own storm, which honestly hurt like a bitch that I obviously hadn't met before.
By the time we were done scraping our throats from the inside out, the plume had dissipated, allowing the rest of us to see the wreckage and debris below us. What was usually a tall, well run, clean, white, and friendly city was now a wasteland, torn apart from the ground up, leaving most of the buildings either destroyed or damaged beyond repair. To make matters even worse, the ash had lingered in the air for a good five meters above the streets, creating a thick layer of death that coated the once busy streets.
The visual and physical pains that came from this were quickly erased from my mind when an emotional pain made its way into there.
My wife and kid could be dead...
That word echoed in my head like a bullet casing hitting a concrete floor at subzero temperatures.
Dead...
Dead.
I was in shock. My stomach wretched itself in place. I told myself it couldn't be.
There was an oddly dramatic silence coming from the crowd as we looked onward, until somepony behind me broke it, sending everypony into despair instantly. "Holy shit. What the fuck do we do now?"
"Well, we sure as hell can't get off this mountain. Look at us! We might as well be surrounded by lava! This stuff has got to be pretty damn deadly!" Another voice spoke up.
I snapped out of my state of complete paranoia and looked back to find several arguing ponies on the grassy mountaintop. Trying to find a good thing to say to them and failing, I just decided to say the first thing that came to mind.
"The castle."
Several ponies stopped and stared at me with a look of confusion on their faces.
I followed through with my statement. "Canterlot palace! Can't we just go there?"
A few murmurs emitted from the crowd before somepony responded a few seconds later.
"Yeah, why not... We could look for help there. Celestia and Luna aughtah be here, right?"
"Yeah, sure. Let's head down there." Somepony else said.
In one odd motion as one fairly ordered crowd, most of the group turned around and went back down the mountain slightly. The rest of them just stayed behind, clearly in too much shock to do pretty much anything.
As we neared the castle gates, which were just above the blanket of ash, we discovered something: The gate was locked, and on it was a note written on a small scroll attached to the lock keeping the gate shut.
Somepony shakily and nervously read it aloud. "Dear loyal subjects, The Princesses Celestia and Luna are currently in Manehattan dealing with the several problems that seem to come with Parasprite invasions. If you have questions or problems with this, please reach... It ended there! What the hell is this? Both of them gone? Coincidence my ass. I'd like to speak them..."
The group erupted into Discord-grade chaos. I personally left within a minute of it, knowing that we would get nowhere with everypony acting like idiots. I trotted around the perimeter of the fence lining the entry courtyard, looking for a possible way to get around or over the fence, finding nothing for the first twenty or so meters.
Twenty one. That's my guess of how many meters it took for me to realize what I was looking at. A fence. Not just any fence, but a fence that had been standing for only a few days... Coincidence? The 'innocent' thought of Celestia and Luna predicting this event and not bothering to care soon turned into the thought of them planning it. I tried not to think much of it, because I knew it would just end up in me making false accusations and assumptions.
I walked further around the fence until I spotted something a little more interesting: A hole dug out. Right under the fence, too... like we weren't the first ones to suspect something.
I decided I wanted a closer look and crawled through the hole as a result. It was fairly small and took some time to work my way through, but it was worth it once I found myself on the other end of a normally locked-in fence. I looked over at the group of ponies, who were still pointlessly rambling out conspiracies.
Looking back to what was in front of me, I had a sudden urge to get into the castle to find more details on what exactly was going on here. I trotted forward, having no time to admire the always-colorful gardens out front. It wasn't a very long walk to it, but the tension and doubt that I had in me stretched that time out before I got to the massive double-doors leading into the main hall.
With a shaky push, the doors creaked open just enough for me to slip through and find what was inside: Nothing. The entire place was vacant, and not a single pony was in sight. The main hall, even though I had only been in here twice, looked oddly... well, oddly frightening.
Seeing nopony there gave me a green light to look further into the massive building, so I began to look. I wasn't exactly sure what for, but I had a feeling that I'd know it when I saw it.
I vaguely recalled that Celestia's and Luna's rooms were on either side of the massive staircase that stretched across the front of the hall, so I decided that it was best to search there first. The wooden stairs sounded lonely as their creaking echoed throughout the empty room, and it only pounded the thought of death further into my head.
Sure enough, after only a minute or two of walking, I found myself in front of the door leading into Celestia's chambers. The door was wide and wooden, and also appeared to be unlocked. I nudged the door open with my hoof to find a shockingly messy room in front of me, with something in the middle that made my heart rate spike again.
An earth pony, who appeared to be a guard, was sitting on the ground weeping. I stepped up to him and asked him what was going on.
"What's going on here? Why are Celestia and Luna gone?"
"I-it's... n-not... p-parasprites..." His voice was dark and shaky.
"What?"
He turned towards me to reveal his face, which was mangled and bloody. "CELESTIA WANTED TO KILL US ALL!!! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?!?"
I cringed and tried to regain thought to reply to him. "She knew about this? How?"
He waited a few seconds before responding. "I know too much... I've seen too much..."
Before I could comprehend what he was trying to tell me, he pulled a pistol out of nowhere, making me jump back. He slowly pointed it towards his own head, his hand shaking the entire way as he looked towards me.
I tried to say something to stop him. "Hey! Wait! What are you doing?!?"
It was too late. The trigger had already been pulled, echoing the sound of an explosion throughout the entire building. An explosion of crimson shot out from his head, staining an entire wall with his blood. His now lifeless body slumped to the ground, letting go of the gun as it fell to the ground and skidded towards me.
I was in shock. Questions began spraying mindlessly through my head as I shakily picked up the gun and stored it, knowing that I would probably need it later. What had he seen? What had he felt to make him end his own life?
I had to look for more clues. I tried to ignore the lifeless body in front of me as I trudged through the messy room, eventually ending up at a nightstand next to a large bed. On it, was a journal. I picked it up, noticing that the title read "TOP SECRET" on the front. I sheepishly opened the cover and began to read it. It read:
Property of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Do NOT read.
I flipped the page.
The process has started. Project Underground is underway. First few tests have been completely unsuccessful, more tests will be underway soon.
Confused but interested, I flipped the page again.
The next few tests hinted success, although the result only lasted a few minutes before the test had to be terminated.
The results of the last few seemed to only work on half of what we wanted, with examples being that some only received wings, while some only received horns.
I was shocked. Experimenting? With what? I read on.
Our first test subject that received both came forward today. However, the mutations spread and the subject was soon dead.
I feared the worst... Was she trying to create other alicorns?
The test subjects appear to come out healthier and healthier every time. However, successful the tests may be so far, the subjects never seem to survive longer than a few hours afterwards.
I kept asking myself more and more questions. Who were these 'subjects'?
We reached a milestone today. One of our more recent tests has lasted an entire day. Two days doesn't seem to be far off.
I could only think of this as twisted... I didn't know what to say...
One week has been hit. The survival times are increasing exponentially: More good news is on the way.
I couldn't speak. My throat was cringing in my neck at just the thought of what was happening.
We've done it. Magic, flying, and everything... Another one of us.
It ended there. I dropped the journal in pure shock. Celestia wouldn't do such a thing... Would she?
[FROM THE MIND OF STARNOTE]
The book flopped down onto the expensive bedspread, bouncing back up slightly and flipping over just enough to reveal an entry on the back... Stricken with even more fear, I picked it up and read it.
All the unicorns are gone. All of the pegasi are gone. But it was worth it... It was been completed. It has also escaped... And as a result, I must too. Guards who may be reading this: if there are any survivors of the earthquake that are questioning what happened, tell them that it was natural and I am dead.
I was in more shock than I ever thought I could be. The pegasi and unicorns... Dead. I couldn't understand why I didn't notice it before... I hadn't seen any in days.
I pondered on that for a while... What escaped? Was that why Celesia and Luna left? Was she actually the causer of the earthquake?
I flipped through the empty pages of the book in hope of finding more answers. The pages seemed to be blank, but then something fell out of it... It was silvery on one side and colorful on the other. A photograph. It started fluttering down, but I caught it with a hoof before it could reach the ground. I brought the photograph up to my face, realizing that it was two photos stuck to each other. The top photo was a picture of a purple alicorn. Not Luna, though... I looked closer. It had a mangled and bloody face and body, like it had been badly injured before and just returned the favor. I wouldn't doubt it if that was the case. I looked even closer to find that the background was a pure metal room smeared with blood with no windows or furnishings. Well, there was one... A small operating table in the background.
I tried to get the other photograph off of it, only to find to my surprise that they were glued together with blood. After several seconds of prying them apart, I found that the other picture revealed the mysterious alicorn's face up close and personal with the camera, as if attacking the cameraman.
I turned the photo around and cringed at what it said: Test Subject 451: Successful! Status: Alive. Mood: Enraged/depressed (bi-polar). Former name: Violet Rose.
Violet Rose... I knew that name... My friend. An earth pony. She wasn't even bi-polar, but she told me a few days that he was going on vacation. She didn't say where though... That was unlike her. What did Celestia do to her?
I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to do. This was personal now. Those two bitches were going to pay.
I had no time to dwell on the thought, because the door to the room suddenly reopened, revealing two other earth ponies behind it, both unknown to me.
Both of them were male and enraged. One of them spoke to me.
"Where the hell did that gunfire come from?" I had no time to respond to his question before he looked down on the ground to find the dead guard, who was now in a pool of his own blood.
"It's not what it looks like! He killed himself! I swear!" I hastily responded.
"Yeah right. Tell us... What were you after?"
"Truth! That was it! Here, look at this!" I threw him the photographs, expecting him to look at them and understand. I was shocked and frightened when he swatted them down with a hoof out of midair and started slowly walking towards me with a fiery look of determination on his face.
"You. Little. Bastard. What have you done? You just killed the last pony here that could have told us the truth! And here you are telling me that you were after the truth?"
"I ALREADY FOUND THE TRUTH!!!" I screamed at him.
He continued forward. I had several thoughts racing through my head, but one of them took over me completely. I can't exactly describe to you what that thought was, but I can describe to you what it did. It made me panic. I turned around and bolted away, barely noticing where to. The opposite end of the room held a large window, which I could only trust would lead to my survival.
I heard a faint "AFTER HIM!!!" behind me as I continued accelerating towards the window. Even though I was tripping over cluttered books and clothes, I could still hear that the other pony was following me closely.
I jumped. It felt clumsy as my hooves left the ground, but it had to do. And do it did: It was just enough height to send me smashing through the glass, sending countless pieces of crystal shrapnel to embed inside my skin as I soared outside. The pain struck my body immediately, sending me tumbling and screaming into the ground.
As you could see, I was terribly unprepared for a landing at the time. I smacked back-down into the grassy hillside, sending me sliding down the slope several meters and driving several shards of glass through my back. I howled out in pain as I skidded to a stop.
Landing and getting impaled by thousands of glass shards seemed like a piece of cake once I realized what was coming next. I looked back up at the side of the castle just in time to see the other earth pony leap through the window, landing a split second later next to me.
I quickly got back up on my hooves and tried to prepare myself for a fight. The other pony regained his balance and charged at me, teeth gnashing and everything. I reflexively charged back at him, not sure what would happen. Before either one of us knew it, we collided in a fury of flying hooves and teeth. Literally. I think I knocked out one of his teeth on impact.
I couldn't tell what was actually happening at the time, so I really could only perceive what happened afterwards. I took a massive strike to the shoulder, sending me flying backwards and into the grass, further cutting me up. I guess he must have had more speed coming down... That gave me an idea.
I clamored back up again, breathing heavy, but this time with a plan. I charged again at him, but this time, when he started charging at me and we were about to collide for a second time, I quickly sidestepped, catching him off guard and tumbling down before he received several rug burns and skidded to a stop. I continued running up the hill and stopped just before where I originally landed, waiting for him to return.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, he stood up again and continued to run towards me. I crouched down, waiting for a strike.
Although I can say that I tried my best, that still won't hide the fact that I wasn't expecting what came next at all. Instead of directly attacking me, he lunged and dove over me, grabbing me by my back legs on the way down and swinging me over him, letting me land in the glass once again.
I had done all I could. I wanted to give up, not because of the impossible-to-attack opponent I was facing or the excruciating pain I was going through, but both. I crashed down on the grassy hillside in pure defeat. He approached me with an intimidating gaze, but that gave me one last ray of hope. Just when he was above me and ready to deliver me one final, crushing blow, I outstretched a hoof to the ground, dug up the first glass piece that I could find, swung it up, and rammed it through his throat at the last second.
His blood flowed down the glass shard and down my arm, tickling my fur as the thought of murder swept through my head like wildfire. I had never killed anypony before...
A wall-eyed stare was given to me as he fought for his last few moments of life. I let go of the piece of glass as his eyes glazed over and he fell over on the ground, now dead.
I tried to stand up, but the shock that had overcome me was already physically affecting me. My legs completely stiffened, giving me no balance whatsoever and causing me to stumble under my own weight and collapse to the ground.
I slid down the mountainside several meters before receiving several rug burns and coming to a stop on my back, just then coming to a realization of what I had actually done. I had murdered another. Not just seen a life come to a close, but to end one myself...
I was a murderer. Fuck. I didn't even know the guy!
I continued to lie there for the next few minutes, trying to plan out what to do next, but only able to think about killing him and nothing else.
I suddenly felt the surge of adrenalin wear away, revealing the intense pain that it was masking. Screaming with pain, I rolled onto my belly and flailed my hooves across my back in a desperate attempt to remove the glass that was piercing my flesh, managing to remove most of it but only increasing the pain. This time, it had cut up my front legs too.
I tried to suppress the pain and stand up, taking in an account of where I actually was. I was faced downhill while the castle was still to my left, which had a low balcony a little ways down the slope from where I was. I figured that I could get back into the castle from there and continue looking for clues to what happened to Violet Rose. I slid down the grassy slope a while until I reached the two concrete posts holding the platform up, the shortest of which was around two meters tall. I could climb this...
I scaled the post rather easily and heaved myself onto the railing to see what I could do to get in. There was a large set of double doors that appeared to be unlocked, so I figured that it was definitely the best way to go. It was only then that I realized what I didn't use in the fight I just had: my gun. I pulled it out again and admired the cold, black steel, noticing that it had a name written on the bottom of the clip.
White Forest. Didn't sound familiar, but I figured that name would come in handy later. I loaded the gun to find that it had fifteen bullets left, all of which could presumably kill a pony. I had to use them wisely.
I got up on my back legs and aimed. It wasn't too hard to do because I was an earth pony, but sustaining the pose might take some focus. Holding the gun in front of me, I shakily pushed open the door in front of me to find that I was in a rather interesting place: a dining room. But wait... 'Dining room? Food might be near...' I thought to myself.
I was at the far end of the vast, fancy, vacant rectangular room. In the middle was a long wooden table with nothing on it, but several poofy chairs around it. I had no interest in the dining room itself, so I just went straight to looking for the kitchen itself. I needed food badly now.
Gun still aimed hastily in front of me, I searched the three archways on the other walls of the room, still looking for food, starting with the arch on the wall to my left. Just a hallway. I slowly walked towards the arch on the far side of the room. Just the ballroom. My heart pounded even more with tension as I reached the final archway.
Anxious to see what was inside, I peeked my head in to find a long, silvery hallway lined with ovens, pantries, pots, pans, and toasters. I had found it. I put down my gun and walked up to the nearest cabinet in search of something edible.
My hoof pulled open the metal cabinet slowly, allowing an unwanted screech of metal grinding to echo throughout the building.
I heard another voice in the distance. "You guys hear that? I'll bet that creep found his way back in here!"
That was followed by the quick stepping of several hooves stampeding through the hall. Hastily, I pulled out my gun again and aimed it towards the end of the silvery hallway in hopes of a target appearing. Rather than one, I was soon greeted by several.
"Well, well, well. It's you again. What happened to my friend? Wanna say anything on that?" The one that I saw before spoke up to me again.
"He's dead." I replied.
"Oh really?"
"Yah really. Go see for yourself." I nudged my head in the direction of the double doors at the back of the dining room. He ordered a couple of his minions to the door as he said 'he wanted a word with me'. That didn't stop me from putting down my gun, though.
"So. Found a gun, huh?"
"You'd better believe it.”
[FROM THE MIND OF STARNOTE]
"Let's not be too hasty with this. I was only searching for answers myself."
"So you're ready to listen to what I have to say?"
"Sure. Whatever the hell you want to call it."
I slowly put my gun back. "I can wrap it up in a nutshell, but it will come as a surprise to you. Celestia has been trying to create other alicorns. However, she has been killing several other ponies to do this. Supposedly, one of the successful test subjects escaped, and apparently Celestia used the parasprite invasion as a self distraction to let her try and kill it because it went crazy on her. Now although I'm not entirely sure, I can guess that the earthquake was a result of an attempt to kill it."
He stared at me suspiciously. "What proof do you have?"
"All the proof that you needed was on the photograph that you rejected from me."
"Fine. I'll go back and get them."
Before he had any chance to leave the hallway, his other two friends came back, this time freaking out.
"Holy shit! Grey Flame really is dead!"
The leader of the group turned around and turned towards me again. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
I backed down. "It was out of self defense! I literally had no other choice!"
Choked up, he looked towards the ground, lightly sobbed, and looked back up while sighing. "I can give you that one, but we're still enemies. Well, at least enemies with a common interest: Finding the truth."
"True that. You gonnah head to the bedroom, or what now?"
"We go to the room. All of us."
The short walk to Celestia's bedroom revealed a lot of the group. The leader's name was Boldkey, and his two friend’s names were Pierce and Pick. For some reason though, the other two wouldn't give me their full names... I don't really blame them, though. Pick was dark blue and Pierce was orange, by the way.
We reached the room to find that the dead guard and clutter were still there. Thankfully, the journal and photos weren't that hard to find, so within seconds, all three of them were reading the sickening notes of Celestia.
"Holy shit. How long has this been going on?"
"Not sure. There were no dates in the journal." There was a couple seconds of awkward silence after that statement of mine, but it gave me an interesting idea for some reason.
"Wait! Remember the name of this project? Project Underground?" I asked.
"Yeah, why?" Pick said.
"Well... What if this entire operation was performed underground? Like, underneath this very castle?"
They thought about it for a second before responding. "Yeah, that would work... We should probably start searching the area. A combing." Boldkey said.
That fateful search started in the dark corner of Celestia's library in hopes of more journals or documents similar to the one found in her bedroom. The large, marble, multi-story room was fairly easy to find with it's location being pretty close, so we were there in no time. The massive room was dimly lit by only one small chandelier, and it featured two curved staircases on each wall of the place, all of it surrounded by literature. And sure enough, the four of us found ourselves in the doorway confronting thousands of books.
"Holy shit, that's a lot of books..." Pick barely muttered.
"Yeah, too much for us to handle. Yo Peirce, check the area for offices and let us know if you find any," Boldkey suggested.
Peirce followed Boldkey's order diligently as the rest of us stood in a circle.
"Anypony know how these libraries are categorized?" I asked.
"Yeah, I think I can give it a shot. I remember being in here once, and from that I could tell that the fiction was on the East side, non-fiction was on the West side, and the documents were slightly past that section. I can't recall any more, though," Pick said.
"That's all the info I'll need, thank you." I walked further into the room and admired the massive room, taking in the scent of fresh paper as I trotted up the staircase heading to the right.
I stopped dead on the stairs then and there. "Wait a minute... Fresh paper..." I muttered to myself before coming to a sudden realization. There might be printing going on here. And with printing could come life...
I finished the short climb to the top of the staircase and took in my surroundings. The document stations were clear on their location: Brightly lit and directly behind the non-fiction. I continued forward, noticing that the sound of hooves clacking on a keyboard was getting louder as I was getting closer to the light from behind the bookcases.
The sight of a frizzy mane behind a chair at a desk clearly came into view as I stepped past the final isle of bookcases. The desk he was at had a computer and several stacks of newspaper, all of which stated the same headline. I couldn't tell what it was though. He appeared to be male and a pegasus...
"Um, hello?" I sheepishly greeted him.
"Gotta type. Gotta type. Everpony must know. They betrayed us." His voice sounded dry and jumpy, kind of like me after too many energy drinks.
"What? You mean Celestia and Luna?"
"Yeah. Them. No. Wait. Just Celestia. Luna's good. Luna good. Good Luna."
I stepped closer to him to find that the headline read "Celestia deemed responsible for disaster, Luna innocent!"
"Do you mind if I read one of these?" I asked.
"No. Yes. Sure. Read it. Here." He reached out towards a large printer on the desk and handed me a warm copy. I took it and sat down, holding it in front of me as I began to read.
CELESTIA DEEMED RESPONSIBLE FOR DISASTER: LUNA INNOCENT!
The disaster that happened yesterday. You remember, right? Well, some of you searching for answers might have been looking in the wrong places. That note on the gates to Canterlot Palace... That rumor you heard from your sister. All of these stories are false, and we can prove it. Serious investigations took place yesterday in and around Canterlot Palace to find one vital piece in the puzzle: Celestia's journal.
Knowing what came next, I skipped forward.
That's right! All of it was a plot! Luna was framed! The parasprite invasion was planned!
I was confused. The earthquake had only happened about two hours ago... Where did this guy get this kind of information?
"There was no investigation, was there?"
"No. I just had to make them believe."
"Make who believe?"
"Everypony."
I folded up the newspaper and bolted down the stairs to find that Boldkey and Pick were still talking with each other.
"Guys! I have another clue!" I intruded.
Before either one could respond, another voice spoke up from behind us. "And I have about forty thousand more. Come here. Now." It was Pierce, who apparently had made another discovery. Or forty thousand.
We all made our way into the room where he was, only to find that it looked like a normal marble office. Well, at first glace, at least.
"Alright, what is it?" Pick said, obviously annoyed.
"Look," Peirce said, pointing to a semicircular line carved into the ground below us.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Well, if action movies had taught me anything, it's a secret door. However, we need to find some sort of switch or button somewhere that opens this sucker. Look for some sort of clue that relates to the phrase "Everypony Must Believe"." He replied.
"Holy shit. Where did you find that phrase from?" I found myself mutter.
"Underneath the wooden desk, it was carved there. Why?"
"Nothing. Nevermind."
Everypony else just stared at me stupidly until we went our separate ways about five seconds later.
I looked around the room to observe the room and found some interesting things. An old file cabinet in which Pick was digging through, a large bookcase that Peirce and Boldkey were tearing through, and a desk. A desk with a typewriter on it... Curious, I stepped closer. There was nothing else on the desk... That gave me an idea.
Shakily, I typed in the phrase 'Everypony Must Believe'. The second that the final 'e' was typed, the entire wall that had the bookcase on it shifted in a circular motion. And before I could tell what was going on, the section of wall surrounded by the circular crack was completely sideways, revealing a dark and cold stone corridor behind it.
I looked around the room to find the other three in a state of shock. It seemingly took forever for somepony to talk afterwards, and it was me, actually.
"Well. Ladies first."
We slowly and warily filed into the stone hallway to find that it was mossy and poorly lit with scattered torches. I grabbed the nearest one with my mouth and held it out in front of us as we walked into oblivion with me leading the way.
The slow walk through the hallway was tense. We had no idea what to expect at all, although we did kind of expect the massive descending flight of stairs that quickly followed that. After several minutes of hoof-killing descending when the hallway leveled out again, we found ourselves face to face with something that made us (and our heart rates) jump. Well, somepony.
Standing inches away from us, dimly lit from the fire of an old torch, was Celestia. And she was pissed.
"You shouldn't be here."
Stunned, I got a spike of adrenalin. Luckily, that gave me a burst of courage. "Give us one reason why we shouldn't be here."
"Leave. That's an order."
"I'm not going to until I find out the truth about the earthquake."
"It was natural. Go back. This is your last warning."
"Natural? Bullshit. I still refuse to go back." I looked back to see if my group mates were still behind me. They were still there, but in a shaky, sweaty state. One by one, they nodded at me.
I turned back towards Celestia. "We refuse to go back. And about what we found in the castle: What's with Project Underground?"
"Very well. I didn't want to do this, but..." Before anypony could stop her, she let some of her own magic swipe Peirce from us and dangle him in the air by his back legs directly in front of us.
It took all of us by surprise, but Peirce in particular, who panicked at the feeling of being dragged in mid-air. "ShitshitSHIT!!! PUT ME DOWN!!"
Celestia gave us a wicked smirk and turned Pierce sideways, showing us his side. "Now you tell me all you know about this or I start removing his spine bone-by-bone. Starting with this one."
We saw Peirce shriek in pain as Celestia made a small glow appear in his back, followed by the gut-wrenching sound of bone splintering. The clatter of bone on the ground happened below us. When we looked down, we found a mangled, bloody spinal column piece sitting on the ground in front of us. That bitch just teleported a bone out of his body...
"Now tell me what you know. Or I do it again."
"Oh no you fucking won't!" I remembered I had my gun and made a quick move on her. Reaching back with my right hoof, I pulled out the gun and swiped it back, loading it while simultaneously aiming at her and echoing the sound of gunfire throughout the hallway as I crammed down on the trigger as fast as possible.
An explosion of red splattered out from her front leg as it buckled down in pain, sending her into a kneeling position as her blood flowed down it and she cried out in pain. She lost concentration completely, sending Peirce down on his head with a sickening 'GRUNTCH'.
"Shit!! Peirce?!?" Boldkey rushed over to him in aid as Celestia raised her head and looked at me.
"You shouldn't have done that, you know." She tried to stand back up, only to find that her head had been smashed into the ground by an enraged Boldkey.
"YOU BITCH!!! YOU KILLER!!!"
"SILENCE, FOOL!!!" She had one last say in it as she used her last bit of magic on me. The gun that I was holding seconds before had been torn out of my hooves, just as she reloaded it and aimed it towards Boldkey. She slowly stood up as Boldkey stepped down, giving her the height advantage over him.
The gun stopped moving. Just as I thought Boldkey was going to get murdered, the gun was taken over by a darker glow. The gun started shaking. Violently. And ever so slightly, as Celestia tried to reverse the affects, it slowly was aimed towards Celestia's head.
A surprise voice came from further down the hallway. "PULL THE TRIGGER!!" I dropped the torch in shock and looked behind Celestia, doing a double-take. It was Luna.
"What?"
"JUST DO IT!!"
Following an impromptu order, I ran towards Celestia and jumped at the gun, only to find myself being swatted down by Celestia's good front leg. The wind was knocked out of me as I fell towards the ground and skidded several decimeters on the stone floor, eventually stopping with more pain in my back than I ever thought imaginable.
Luckily, I wasn't the only one that heard Luna: Boldkey had caught Celestia off guard and seized the moment in one last, desperate attempt to save somepony's life.
I could nearly see it in slow motion as I propped my head up with my sore neck: The powerful but clumsy leap on Boldkey's part set the stage for him putting on one hell of a rage face. The gun was seized with a hoof, and in one desperate attempt to strike, flung his other hoof towards the trigger hole, resulting in a deafening explosion right in the middle of the intensity.
It was a bizarre sight to see the leader of Equestria meet such an ironic fate as she collapsed to the ground, dead even before her landing with a slow 'thud'. I couldn't tell if it was horrifying or satisfying... Or both.
Shocked at what I just saw, I shakily stood up and stared at Luna with a dumbfounded look on my face.
"What the hell just happened?" I exclaimed.
