Romance, Mortality, and Cyborgs

The urgent summons should have been the first clue that something was up. The multitude of royal guards greeting her at the train station should have been the second clue.

It wasn't until the lead guard had approached her and demanded that she come to the darkened carriage with blacked out windows that Rainbow Dash knew with a third clue that this wasn't just another friendship mission.

Despite being hesitant even though half the fantasies going through her mind made the trip seem exciting and adventurous, Rainbow followed the guard to the black carriage and entered.

Inside, the car betrayed the gloomy outlook with a rich exterior, the leather padding easily conforming to Rainbow's body to be comfortable yet alert, and the roof using a rare electric lightbulb that usually costs millions of bits just to put one inside a carriage. Sitting across from Rainbow was another pegasus, with a light blue coat and a white mane that was combed back, and wearing what she thought was, in her terms, 'an egghead coat'.

Once the speedster was situated, the lab coat pegasus knocked on the wall behind her, and they both felt the carriage lurch forward towards their end goal.

"I vill be brief, madame Rainbow Dash, as ve vill soon arrive at our destination," the pegasus said. Rainbow only quirked an eyebrow once she heard the thick accent of the lab coat in front of her.

Urgent royal summons, guards at the station, a black carriage, and now a foreign scientist is the fourth clue. I really am about to die, aren't I?

The cyan wonderbolt decided she wouldn't go down without a fight. "Alright, I've had enough of the weirdness here. What's with all the secret stuff and security? I thought this was just a mission the princesses needed me to do!"

"Calm down, Madame Dash, ve are not 'ere to hurt you!" the pegasus raised up their forelegs in a non-threatening manner to show her point.

Rainbow only pointed a hoof, "yeah, well that's what villains like you would say when there's all this weird dark stuff happening in order to trick the hero!"

The scientist could only facehoof. "Ze princess varned me that you might ve a little suspicious... As a colleague vonce told me, Madame Rainbow Dash, it is sometimes better to ask forgiveness than permission, and so now I must ask you to forgive us for ze secrecy. Ze crown needs to make sure ze information ve are currently classifying does not reach ze general public."

It did little to calm the speedster, but it was a start. "Alright. So what's the issue then? Got some upcoming enemy that needs a good ol' one two from your pal here?" Rainbow asked, raising her front hooves to show them off.

"Not so fast, I am afraid," the scientist answered, pulling out a small and thin tray from underneath her. "Even vith your great exceptions as an Element of Harmony and many times vorld hero, we must follow protocol for this specific task. Here," she pushed the tray out to Rainbow but still held it in her grasp, "place your dominant front hoof on the marker. You vill have to agree to ze words I say of security before zhe marker can activate and add a magic hex to your horseshoe, to make sure you do not accidentally or purposely reveal ze confidential information."

Alarm bells again rang in Rainbow's head. "And if I don't want to put ol' rightie there?" she asked.

"Then I am afraid I vill ask you to leave this carriage. My own horseshoe hex cannot let me say any more on ze matter," the scientist answered, letting go for a moment and raising her own front right hoof to show a green hex just around the edges of her own horseshoe. Rainbow sat there for a moment, lowering her head in thought.

Well, I'm here already. I don't like any of this at all, but I guess it's time to go for the long haul. I can just ask Twilight to see if she can take the hex off, I'd bet she know a counterspell anyway.

The cyan pegasus raised Ol' Rightie and pressed down on the weird tray. "Okay, let's do this. So what am I agreeing to?"

"Do you swear, at risk of treason to the crown, to not ever share any information, written or oratory, that I or others vithin our current classified project share vith you, to your family and friends?"

Rainbow only rolled her eyes, thinking it was some sort of swearing in like at a trial. "I do."

"Do you swear, at risk of theft to the crown, to not take, swipe, or steal any information or evidence, written or otherwise, in your reasoning to perform your own experiments, so that our project can centralize all research and understanding may progress vorward together?"

What, do they think I'm going to nab an alien for my own or something? Am I seeing an alien???

"I, uh, I do." Rainbow swore in, a bit hesitant at the implications of what exactly she was dealing with.

"And finally, do you swear, at risk of your health and vellness, that you understand the nature of the current project may vorce you or your fellow colleagues into situations zat may physically or mentally injure yourselves, or even cause death?"

Hah! I knew I was going to die! Bring it on!

"I do!" Rainbow answered, a bit more firmly than needed. She readied herself to tackle the scientist if it looked like she was ready to fire a weapon. Her right hoof glowed green for a moment under the tray before the tray simply disintegrated in their sights. Rainbow looked at her hoof to see the small hex settle in place exactly as she had seen on the scientist's hoof, except after a few moments it totally disappeared. Probably the secret aspect just to make sure no one else knew.

"Now that ve have that out of ze vay, your main objective for us is quite simple. Ve just need your professional opinion on these numbers," the scientist said, handing Rainbow some papers. For her part, the cyan speedster just looked confused as she quickly scanned the papers.

She at least expected something a bit more than math from such a secret project.

"Hey lady, I know numbers are cool and all to you egghead types, but you probably would have wanted Twilight or somepony else more interested to look at these."

"Princess Celestia has said they may need Princess Twilight's expertise for another aspect of the project, but if you looked closely at these numbers, madame Rainbow Dash, you will see why ze princess chose you."

Rainbow only quirked an eyebrow in response before looking at the papers again. It wasn't homework full of equations, just simple parabolic formulas and data that meant speed, acceleration, downward force in neutons, upward opposite force...

"Huh. It's just flight recordings. But why me?" Rainbow asked the blue scientist in front of her.

The lab coated pegasus could only smile in response. "Have you ever seen the flight data for some of your own personal aviation achievements, madame Rainbow?"

"Well, yeah, I mean, I went to flight camp, I know how to keep personal math to the brain whenever I fly just to work with what I got, but that doesn't mean anything compared to..."

Rainbow looked at the numbers. Then she looked at the numbers again. And then again. And on the fourth time she could only deduce...

"These numbers do not make sense," Rainbow Dash said, pointing to the same flight data now on a giant chalkboard in front of an oval table, where a bunch of ponies, all pegasi, while dressed in lab coats, stared at her. Some of them even groaned, already knowing the same answer as Rainbow Dash just announced.

"... If it's a regular pegasus, I mean. And if it's with me, that's even still stretching it with some of this data. And it would still make no sense with any other flying thing, like griffins or even dragons. But the thing about flight data is that some of the info is implied, which is where you have to use those numbers to get these numbers. Things like, how big is the object, what's the BMI, what's the weight, what's the magic measured in Swirls that the object is capable of using to fly against gravity, and the least useful of that info always being the temporal gravity shift you take into account at high altitudes," Rainbow explained, before turning her head to the side. "Always hated those ones. I get the timing right when I'm up in the air, not just figuring it out on stupid paper..."

Some of the scientists wrote into their notebooks, adding to their knowledge of the current project. One scientist raised their hoof. "If it helps, we know the, uh, 'object' is about three thousand kilograms."

Rainbow's eyes widened. "That's... Bigger than a dragon! Did you study a meteor or something?!"

"No, we actually found the object deep underground, in the crystal caves below the palace. It was hidden deeper than the usual expeditions, so we never found it until recently. When we tried to analyze the object, we kept getting a signal that translated into that flight data," the same scientist.

Rainbow raised an eyebrow yet again, feeling like she was channeling her inner Applejack today. "The object had a," she hesitated, "signal?"

All eyes were on the scientist that spoke, and he gulped before continuing. "It is difficult to explain the nature of the object unless you look at it yourself, Miss Dash. But understand that we did get a perceived signal that, as I said, translated directly into that flight data, but in a repeated loop."

Rainbow Dash thought she had seen, and fought, everything in life, but this was entirely a new one to be seen. As for fighting it, she had no choice but to do the 'go with the flow' approach.

"Okay... Well, if that's what it weighs, then," Rainbow began, looking through the numbers once again to see anything that might pop out to her eye. That's when she saw one set of numbers that provided the first clue to unlocking the mystery.

"The overall speed. They're the exact same at the beginning and the end," she announced.

"We already knew that again, Miss Dash. And considering the weight we are sure that's still not a possible speed."

"Of course not. Because it's one kilometer per hour more than the possible terminal velocity. Exactly one more, down to the decimal points here."

Rainbow's answer silenced everypony in the room. A few gears in heads broke at the simple yet out-of-reach explanation of a breakthrough the team needed.

All scientists then grabbed their notebooks and started writing. The air was alive with the whir of feathers marking pages and the eggheads in lab coats mumbling to themselves. Rainbow would have laughed at how Twilight would fit in so much with this group if at that moment she did not feel suddenly ignored by everypony.

"Hey!" she yelled. "What does any of this even mean?"

The feathers stopped scratching as all the scientists looked up at her. The same scientist that spoke up from before now stood up in his chair. "Forgive us, miss Dash, this is just another example of science overcomplicating the situation. What you just revealed has been the first breakthrough we've had in weeks since we first realized the signals were broadcasting flight recordings. As for what it could mean, well..."

The scientist held his head low, thinking out loud, "Considering our professions, and considering our current project, I have no doubt that this is not a coincidence. Obviously the signals are on purpose, since it repeats the same flight data, and now we know there's a specific order to the data as well."

Rainbow cocked her head to the side." So, what, you think it's something like Hurricane Code?"

The speaking scientist, which Rainbow was now sure he was the head egghead, flinched back in disgust. "That's preposterous. It can't be that easy, we're the top in our fields and we've been studying these recordings for weeks!"

"What's Hurricane Code?" one scientist asked. All pegasi in the room looked suddenly confused and horrified at the poor mare, who was now confused on her own from everyponys' reactions. "Whyyyyyy are you all looking at me like that?"

"Did, uh, did you not go to flight camp?!" Rainbow asked.

"Um," the mare hesitated. "Not really? My pops was a supremacist, and he wanted to teach me flight his own way instead of the 'weak unification era way', and I didn't know practically anything until I fled from his house and went into Cloudsdale U."

Everypony in the room held differing reactions to the news, but they all at least were more sympathetic to the mare not knowing about Hurricane Code. "Basically," the head scientist began, "Hurricane Code, named after Commander Hurricane, is using flight recordings to hide messages in the parabolas. Each parabola was a specific line mixed between two loops in real life that when graphed and put to the light or something, it makes out a letter. Whole flight recordings would contain simple messages, usually about stuff the counselors couldn't know, like 'I've got beer' or 'I got some mags'."

Rainbow nodded. "Some colt even tried to ask me out to some ice cream in Hurricane Code, but he turned a bit wrong due to the wind, and instead asked me out to getting iced. I thought it was something to do with drugs so I said no, because 'winners don't do drugs' and that crud we had to learn in elementary."

The same scientist that didn't know Hurricane Code piped up, "How did you know then he was asking for ice cream?"

Rainbow smiled, absent-mindedly rolling her eyes. "He mentioned it to me a couple years ago when I was invited to his wedding to another stallion. From the same class too."

The head scientist, eager to get back on track after these tangents, cleared his throat. "Back to the topic. As I said, it could not be that simple, Miss Dash, it would be an affront to our pedigree to use such a childish system."

"Hey, you eggheads missed the simple fact of the terminal velocity numbers. Wanna bet this is just as simple too?"

"Excuse you, what did you call—fine. We'll entertain this notion, if only for the reason that we cannot leave anything to chance at this point. Could somepony call in Crypto?"

Graph paper upon graph paper, all sketched with parabolas and lines, were stacked on the center table. A unicorn mare with a weird Cutie mark of a spinning and separated octagonal cylinder, each side containing a letter, stepped forward to shuffle the graphs, taking them in her magic before lifting them up in the air.

As the rest of the team watched, Rainbow couldn't help but feel a bit uneasy. This wasn't exactly a new feeling for her, but the way she could only describe it was a sense of tipping your hoof into unknown waters.

She really was in for the long haul now.

Crypt Mixer, known as Crypto, used her magic to lift the parabolas from their graphs so as to form any sense of symbol that could be read. To the amazement of many scientists, the slight anger of the lead scientist, and the smug satisfaction of Rainbow, the parabolas indeed spelled letters. Each curve and line was mapped out first for each letter before skipping the known space circle, before the full message could be shown.

PROJECTANGEL

"Pro jectan gel? Any idea what it could be, Crypto?" the lead scientist asked.

"I don't know about how you pegasi organized your 'hurricane cipher' or whatever, but I think it's safe to say the message is Project Angel," Crypto answered, shifting the message over to the board to be placed permanently, cutting off her magic to take a breather.

PROJECT ANGEL stood in the center of the board. The biggest breakthrough in the entire operation, and yet it teased everything it meant in an agonizingingly cryptic way to the scientists. Rainbow looked over to the lead scientist and couldn't help but grin. "I should have made you bet a hundred bits it wouldn't say anything."

"It would have been a bet I'd surely lose. I don't suppose you have any more ideas to bring us forward from this discovery?" the scientist groaned, growing tired of the smugness of the cyan wonderbolt.

"Nah, I'm as stumped as you. What in Equestria are you studying, anyway?" Rainbow asked, throwing a few fantasies around for what, or who, ANGEL could be.

"To put it simply, it's a mare. To put it not simply, it is not a mare."

Rainbow stared at the leader.

"Don't put it as a Shroedinger's object for her, Grid Frame," Crypto chided. "In better terms, miss Dash, (mind if I call you miss? I'm a big fan of your work in the wonderbolts.) we're studying a corpse entity that has the body of a mare, yet is not in any recorded history or census records, and holds certain physical features that feature technology beyond our time, maybe even beyond our space."

Rainbow let the information sink in, her inner action-girl heart beginning to brim with glee. "Wait. You mean you found a freaking cyborg!?"

Crypto rolled her eyes. "Not exactly, a cyborg would mean they are organic parts fused with machine. This entity is all robotic, yet we believe they are born as machine, as if metal skin is their organic body. Princess Celestia has proposed they may be their own species, robotic entities in service to their own civilization perhaps, though it raises even bigger questions. Are they controlled by a hive mind? Are they each an individual intelligence but with pre-defined code for different aspects of society? Do we have a soldier or explorer, wandering the dimensions in search of something, or do we have some random janitor that was just late to work one day?"

Rainbow, though she was listening, rolled her eyes at all the weird questions. "Well, thinking of what they could be ain't gonna help you anywhere if you can't just talk to her. Have y'all tried to, I dunno, activate her with a huge jolt of electricity or something? Like starting up a battery."

"We had requested that as an experiment, but Princess Celestia, vehemently I might add, denied our request. We can only guess she believed it was too dangerous," the lead scientist piped up. "Regardless, I believe she will be pleased to hear our recent discoveries. Thank you for your time and assistance, Rainbow Dash. You may see security to be escorted out."

"Now hold on, wait a minute," Rainbow held up both her front hooves, her mind turning along to see if it can come up with one last discovery. "Let's go back to the signals. You said that you discovered the mare was giving off some signals that could be translated. What if it's something like a distress beacon? Like, this message was for whoever found her to know, um."

She put a hoof up to her mouth in thought. "To know how to fix her! Or maybe how to start her to fix herself! Like an activation phrase!"

Some of the scientists heard her out, but others, including the lead scientist, quickly dismissed her. "Why would a machine sent out signals to somepony just so they could show that somepony how to fix themselves. That doesn't make any logical sense!"

"Well it's the best idea I've got. And I already had two great ideas. Third times the charm, right?" Rainbow countered. The scientists looked to themselves, shifting nods and unspoken statements.

"I say let's try it," Crypto said. "We don't have anything else to lose except our mental or physical lives."

Ignoring the grim reminder of their project's protocols, the lead scientist looked among his peers to see they also were willing to try the idea. He shook his head, sighing, "At this point I ought to just turn my credentials in, being led around by a civilian. Fine, prepare the center for the next experiment, and inform Celestia to oversee it. Come, miss Rainbow Dash, let us show you what the entire Equestrian Scientific community has been studying for the last few months."

The team shifted out of the room, with Rainbow Dash looking one more time at the wall.

PROJECT ANGEL. The cyan wonderbolt could only wonder what sort of angel.

The project center itself, at least the upper half she was in, was fascinating to Rainbow. She heard of secret military facilities housing technology never or not yet seen by regular pony eyes, but this was straight out of a secret spy movie. Many ponies and species of all kinds were personnel to this operation, either working on fancy technology or running to and fro to inform other personnel about how to use their fancy technology.

'Ask security to escort her out', pfft. Rainbow was here, and she was here to stay. Not even Daring Do could write up or even dream of being a part of this.

"I see you have exceeded the expectations of my brightest, Rainbow Dash," she heard a familiar voice say. Rainbow turned around to see the diarch of the Sun, Princess Celestia, greeting her with a smile. The wonderbolt bowed down quickly in acknowledgement before standing back up and walking alongside her.

"Princess Celestia! This is just sooooo cool! It's like I'm in a Hoof Bond movie! And I helped eggheads! Wait, does this mean I'm an egghead now?" she said quickly, raising a hoof at herself in quick confusion at her last question.

"For your situation, you are known as a valuable asset, not a, um, egghead, as you say," Celestia replied, holding back a chuckle at the nickname for her best and brightest of the kingdom. Excluding her own pupil, of course.

"By the way, thanks again for asking me to come here, but even still, why didn't you get Twilight instead? I'm sure she'd have jumped and skipped at a chance to witness this cool stuff and the m—whoa!"

Both Celestia and Rainbow stopped at the railing of the center to see a massive glass case strangled at the bottom with wires. Within the case was a bronze statue-like shell of a mare, multiple cables seemingly plugged in various sockets in her and in instruments that were closely monitoring her. She was laying on her right side as if she was frozen in time staring in shock at something, and her left hind leg seemed to be severed violently, with various cables spilling out of the limb.

Her eyes were closed, and Rainbow thought she saw tiny screws at the middle portion of her eyelids, as if it slid down one plate before closing fully.

"Wow. So, like, is she an android then, if she isn't a cyborg?" Rainbow asked.

"We do not know. We do not even know if she is a mare. They might be a species where our concepts of gender and sex is different to ours, or perhaps even entirely irrelevant to them," Celestia explained. "We hope you are right with your idea of an activation phrase."

"Yeah, we hope. But," Rainbow spoke hesitating for a moment as she considered the possibilities, "What if we activate it and it turns, I dunno, angry or mad at us? We got a fail safe plan of wires, or is ol' rightie here and your horn the back up plan?"

Rainbow lifted her hoof up to show Celestia, but the princess didn't look, choosing instead to look at her own right hoof, a look of consternation crossing her face. "Let us hope it does not come to any violence, or more, Rainbow Dash. Are we ready to start the experiment?" the princess called out.

"Just about!" a voice called out from below the upper center platform. Most of the personnel stopped to watch the upcoming experiment next to the Princess and RD, hoping to see something more interesting than some latent signals coming from the machine. "Okay, we're ready to go. Start it, Princess!"

The princess looked to Rainbow's direction. "I believe the honors of the phrase should be yours, young wonderbolt."

Rainbow, upon hearing those words, grew ecstatic. "You're serious!? Okay, um, here goes."

The entire op center was silenced, waiting for the phrase and hoping, praying, wishing for something or anything could come of the experiment.

"PROJECT ANGEL!"

Be careful what you wish for.

All instruments studying the machine began to overload, burning out in sparks and even exploding in small flames. The machine's eyes suddenly opened, with blackened orbs staring out of the body, but not immediately responding.

The whole operation center began to shake as ponies clung to railings or whatever else for their lives. Rainbow Dash flew up in instinct, believing an earthquake was happening.

That's when they all heard the sound.

If a computer, or any digital machine, could groan, that was the sound that was now reverberating from all corners of the op center. A synthetic sounding low whine combined with weird, high-pitched pops every few seconds. Every pony looked to the walls to see where exactly the wail was coming from.

They weren't expecting it to be coming towards them.

"In the main hallway!" somepony yelled. Everyone looked to see a black mass of squares and rectangles coming in through the main hallway doors, encircling the perimeter of the main platform quickly. The mass looked like a low resolution digitized goop, slowly but surely closing in.

That's when the screams began.

"Whoa hey, something is grabbing me from the other side!" a pegasus yelled, curiosity making him put a hoof in the mass, and regret now making him try to pull his foreleg out. Before he could say anything more, he was quickly sucked into the mass, never seen again.

The mass then began to grow weird shapes in its walls, before it swiped at personnel with tentacle versions of its square and rectangle form.

"I had wished to learn a bunch, not to end up as someone's lunch!"

"Not the horn, not the horn!"

"Hey, give me back my good talons! Let go you little–"

As Rainbow and Celestia stared in horror at the chaos around them, they didn't notice the trap set above them. Before the wonderbolt could react, a tentacle swiped at Rainbow Dash's hind legs, ensnaring itself around her lower barrel and below, and ensuring parts of her wings couldn't flap away free.

"Princess!" the wonderbolt called, being pulled up towards the ceiling away from the platform. Celestia, thinking quickly, grabbed Rainbow by her front legs, using her own alicorn wings to pull her back. It was to no avail, however, as they both felt the mass encroaching closer and the tentacle pulling harder on Rainbow.

The cyan speedster cried out in pain. Underneath the mass, her body felt as if each bone, each blood vessel, and each muscle sinew was being forcefully ripped away from her like they were nothing more than hairs or feather being plucked out. "Celestia, please! Don't let me die!" she yelled.

To her horror, the princess's eyes drifted down. "I'm sorry, my little pony," was all she had to say before Rainbow saw her princess of the sun look her in the eyes, and then felt her let go of her forelegs, to be swallowed by the black mass.

In the last moments of her life, Rainbow saw Celestia, guardian of all Equestria, turn and glow an eerie electric blue, before rushing down with one powerful flap of her wings to strike the ground with her front right hoof.

R E S E T