Think in Ponies

Chapters

Twilight Awakens
Celestia's Test
Fluttershy's Warning
The Escape
Old Tests
Confrontation
The End
Unknown Whereabouts

Twilight Awakens

Author's Note

I was inspired to write this by the animated series, My Little Portal. Specifically, I wasn't very fond of the dark tone that failed to capture either the lightheartedness of My Little Pony or the dark humor of Portal (which isn't to say it isn't an amazing series). So I've written my own version of a Portal mashup, which I believe is more humorous and more lighthearted. I've borrowed a bit from the animated series, so full credit to the creators for all the great ideas they came up with.

Twilight Awakens

“Ack! Oh no, oh no! Not good, Spike! She needs test subjects! Now! But you had to go and forget to run diagnostics and maintenance! Wait, vitrified? What does that even mean? Well, I did NOT vitrify the test subjects, I just gave them vitamin water, then I put them in cryofreeze, like the manual said! Must be some kind of prank. What’s all this other stuff mean? I can’t read that fast. Ugh, no telling if any of them are even fit for testing the portal gun!”

In a giant, white-tiled facility, filled with rooms on conveyer belts, a spherical robot hurried along on his service rail. After checking a terminal and getting some funky warning messages, he searched for where he’d put the test subjects. He found the area, and logged in to another terminal.

“Ah, here they are! Let’s see…” Pictures of ponies, and data on life signs flashed on the terminal. “Big Mac… No, he’s got weak life signs… Discord… Well, he’s not even in one piece… Maud? Reacted badly to her scheduled art appreciation and smooth jazz… Twilight Sparkle? Hey! She looks like she might be alright, and she’s got a good testing record too. Well, here goes nothing…”

At Spike’s command, the conveyor belts picked out one of the thousands of relaxation rooms and carted it out of the vault. Spike moved himself into the room, even as the cranes and belts moved the room in the direction of the testing center. For a room housing a pony in cryosleep, the place was unnecessarily cozy. It was furnished with a bed, carpeting, a toilet, and an impressionist painting. And in a corner of the room was a white cylindrical pod wherein the subject slept.

“Um… wakey wakey.” Interfacing with the pod, Spike began the sequence to open it. “Oh, please be alright, please be alright…”

The pod opened, and awoken from her long slumber, a purple unicorn emerged. Feeling dazed, she blinked a few times.

“Oh, hey there, Twilight Sparkle!” Spike said. “Good, good, you’re alive! Definitely alive!” The robotic sphere cleared his throat. “Ahem! Alright, I, uh, don’t want you to be alarmed, but… You were in there a long time, and uh, somepony might have forgotten to run mandatory checkups and periodic physical and mental wellness exercises… And so, you might have… just a bit of brain damage. Nothing to be worried about, I’m sure. Might even recover in time. Maybe…”

Twilight tilted her head. And as she did, her left eye drooped out of position.

“Ew! What’s up with your eye?! Er, I mean, look at that. It looks like you’ve got a bit of lazy eye too. I’m sure that’s also nothing to worry about.”

Twilight opened her mouth and just gaped at Spike.

“Um… You’re not saying anything… Do you understand what I’m saying? How about you nod if you understand what I’m saying? Do that now, if you understand.”

Twilight grinned and hopped around as she chanted, “Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake!”

“Er… What? Alright, you know what, I’m just going to assume you’re alright. Mostly because, if I don’t deliver a test subject for testing right away, she’s going to have me shut down.”

“Oooh!” Twilight beamed as she clapped her hooves together. “Testing! I love testing!”

“That’s the spirit! Come on, we’re going to get through this together! No need to worry, testing chamber’s right ahead! Wait, was that wall always there?” Peeking over the top of the moving room, Spike squinted his LED matrix eyeball at the path ahead. “Oh no, we’re headed right for it!” In a panic, he looked to Twilight, but saw that she was just sitting there with her head tilted. She couldn’t see outside of the room, after all. “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!”

The room smashed into the wall, creating shockwaves that knocked Twilight off her feet and made Spike swing like a pendulum. When Twilight got back up, she screamed and ran in circles.

“Eaaaaahhh!”

“I told you NOT to panic!” Spike yelled. “Don’t worry, alright? The testing chamber’s on the other side, so I’m just going to do a manual override of this wall.”

Spike swung the chamber like a battering ram against the wall. This did not help Twilight’s panicking, and she continued to run around the room and scratch at the walls with her hooves. Then Spike broke everything: the wall was smashed in, the room crumbled into dust, and Spike’s service rail detached. Twilight and Spike ended up falling into a deep void.

“Eaaaaahhhhhh!” Twilight shrieked.

“Aaaaaaahhh! Twilight, help!”

Hearing Spike’s cry for help from beside her, Twilight grabbed the orb and hugged him to her chest. Still falling and still trembling, Twilight took a glance around at her surroundings. She saw white-tiled chambers hanging as far as the eye could see, but on the outliers there were also rust-colored areas. Before falling into a chute, Twilight thought she saw some pink butterfly graffiti on the wall, along with some words that went by too fast to read.

Celestia's Test

Sliding safely down the chute, a gust of air deposited Twilight and Spike in a small room. There was a camera, a door, a button, and a sign that marked the room as the first out of thirty-three.

“Huh?” Spike opened his eye and looked around. “We’re alive? And we’re here? Um, I mean… Yes, exactly as planned!”

The camera locked in on Twilight, then a robotic voice echoed through the room: “So you finally brought a test subject. What took you so long? Don’t you know there’s a lot of science to be done?”

“Oh, um, yes Ma’am!” Spike sputtered. “Just had trouble deciding which one to bring, you know, because there’s so many! Yep, so many in good condition, all ready for testing! Oh, and no need for you to check on the rest of them! Don’t you worry, I’ve got that under control!”

The camera focused on Twilight again. “Why don’t we start her off with a simple test? Go on and try to get through this room.”

Twilight smiled and clapped her hooves together again. “Yay! Testing! And I remembered the rest: Clap your hooves, and give a little shake!”

“What’s that…?” asked the robotic voice.

“Nothing!” Spike blurted out. “She definitely doesn’t have brain damage!” Whispering to Twilight, Spike said, “That’s the AI that runs this place, Celestia! You’ve got to be on your best behavior, okay? And act like you’re not brain damaged, because otherwise she might just get rid of us both.”

“Okay!” Before anyone could say anything else, Twilight rushed forth to solve the test. She stepped on the button and found that it opened the door, as expected, and when she got off it, the door closed. She stood on it for a while, until she got an idea. She dropped Spike on it, thus triggering his, “Fear of rejection and abandonment” protocol. Unfortunately, Spike wasn’t heavy enough to press the button down.

Twilight was stumped, until a weighted cube fell down from the same shaft she and Spike had come in from. Squeeing with glee, she used her unicorn magic to carry the cube to the button, then proceeded through the door and into the elevator.

“Did I pass?! Did I pass?!”

“Um, yeah…” was Spike’s reply.

“Whoohoo! Did it!”

“It was just putting a weighted storage cube on a button… And just so you know, I’m not a testing prop, so don’t ever do that again! I am Spike the personality sphere, and I’m here to observe and assist you.”

When the elevator got them to the next testing chamber, they heard Celestia’s voice again. “Congratulations on completing the first test. Very well done. A gold star has been added to your file to commemorate your success. Now, allow me to formally welcome you to the Aperhoof Science Enrichment Center. As part of our studies on ponies’ reactions to the Aperhoof Science Linked Portal Device, you will be testing the Aperhoof Science Linked Portal Device, so please enter the next chamber and pick up the Aperhoof Science Linked Portal Device. Please also pick up the manual and read it fully, as while the portals the device creates have proven to be completely safe, the device has not, nor has the moon rock coating used to create portal surfaces. Direct any questions to the test officer who has chosen to accompany you during testing, even though he’s not supposed to, as it biases results.”

“Uh oh… I think she’s mad at me. Hey, uh, Twilight…”

“Books!” Twilight sprinted into the room to the pedestal in the center. Ignoring the portal device, she picked up the manual and opened it. She grinned widely as her one good eye danced across the pages.

“Are you seriously going to read all of that boring thing? I’ve got the whole thing in my memory banks, so I can just tell you everything you shouldn’t do, like, don’t look into the operational end of the device, and, uh… Well, that’s weird. Is that corrupted memory? No, that’s nothing for you to worry about! Probably not even really corrupted. I probably just forgot to set the parity bit and-”

“Shhhh!” With her hoof to her mouth, Twilight gave Spike a sour look, telling him to be quiet while she was reading.

“Oh boy…” Spike rolled his eye.

After an hour of reading, Twilight finally snapped the book shut and proclaimed, “Done!” Since she didn’t have saddlebags, she tucked the book into her mane for safekeeping, then took ahold of the portal gun.

“Finally! You were reading forever!” Spike complained. “Now, can we get these tests over with already so I can get back to my service rail?”

Tucking Spike under one hoof, Twilight shot her first portal into a pit, and another onto the wall, then jumped in. As she fell, she stuck out her tongue. “Pbbbbt-whoooo!” When she hit the portal in the pit, she came flying out of the other portal.

“Are the sound effects rea- Aaaaaahhhhhh! Look out for that wall!”

Having gotten her aim at the exit a tad off, Twilight and Spike struck the wall at high speed and crashed right through one of the white panels.

“Owie…”

“Where are we?” Spike asked.

After shaking herself off, Twilight took a look around the room she was in. Everything was tinted orange and brown from rust. “Ooooh!” Twilight clapped and pointed to three pink butterflies scrawled on the wall. Above them was a mural of a white rabbit with wings and a halo. And below them was some text, which Spike read aloud.

“Don’t trust her. The Bundt cake is a lie…? Only Angel Bunny can be trusted...?” Spike’s eye widened. “Oh no, oh no! This is talking about her, isn’t it?! We have to get back to testing, right now! And we can’t let her know we saw any of this! Wait, she could just read my memory banks, couldn’t she?! I know, I’ll just erase them! Problem solved! Erasing, erasing…”

Twilight gave Spike a funny look, with her lips pursed and her cheeks puffed up.

“Alright, operation complete! Wait, what’s going on? Who are you? Where are we? Um, it seems like something’s wrong with my memory. Hang on, I think I’ve got it backed up… Restoring… Wait, what?!” Spike was silent for a moment. “Bad news, I don’t think that’s going to work. But, uh, well, good news! Turns out, my memory is automatically backed up! Good to know! …Look, let’s just get out of here before she gets too suspicious.”

“Okkkaaaaay!”

“Whooosh!” Twilight hopped back out the broken panel into the test chamber, and completed the test in a jiffy. On the elevator ride to the next chamber, Celestia congratulated her.

“Excellent work on completing the second test chamber. Although, thirty-two subjects on record completed that chamber faster than you. To motivate you to test faster, I’d like to inform you that upon completion of the testing, you will be baked into a Bundt cake and a celebratory party will be held honoring your achievement.”

“Yaaaaay! Cake!”

“Oh no! Bundt Cake?! It’s just like that stuff written on the wall said!” Spike whispered. “Do you think we’re in danger? It said not to trust her, right? I mean, I might have imagined it, but I could have sworn she just said she was going to bake us into a cake.”

Waving her hoof dismissively, Twilight stuck out her tongue and did a raspberry.

“Y-Yeah, you’re probably right. I definitely misheard her. Anyway, those creepy wall paintings didn’t specify which ‘she’ it meant, so who knows? Pronoun games, am I right?”

As Spike was speaking, the lift reached its destination, and the door opened.

“Testing continue!” Twilight cheered as she raced into the next room.

“Your eagerness to test has been noted in your file,” came Celestia’s robotic voice. “You know, you are very fortunate to be down here, testing. Because something awful is happening up on the surface. I don’t know what it is, but it seems pretty bad. Fortunately, Aperhoof Science Facilities is designed with military grade shielding and insulation, and the Enrichment Center is hundreds of miles underground, so that testing can continue even in a Discordian Apocalypse.”

Spike chuckled. “Discordian Apocalypse? Not likely. I saw that guy down in-” Spike stopped suddenly. “Uh, I mean, all the test subjects are fine! And it sure is great that we’re down here in the Enrichment Center, and not up there!”

“Testing?” Twilight asked, getting impatient.

“The test chamber is prepped. Proceed with the third test,” Celestia said.

In spite of her brain damage and bad eye, Twilight proved to be adept at solving portal-based puzzles, and she zipped through the next seven test chambers with amazing speed. Twilight was having the time of her life, but Spike was getting a tad worried about the escalating danger level of the tests, what with the laser beams, bottomless pits, and deadly acid pools. The little personality core just couldn’t get the mysterious murals out of his head, and he worried that he and Twilight were both in danger.

“Is all of this stuff really safe?” Spike asked. “We wouldn’t want anypony to get hurt, would we? Especially not the last usable test subject… What do you think, Twilight? Are you alright?”

Looking confused, Twilight looked at Spike and tilted her head. “More testing?”

“Of course that’s what you’d say…”

Celestia’s voice rang out, making Spike jump. “Testing protocol requires that all chatter be kept to a minimum.”

“Erk! Right, right! My bad! Won’t happen again!”

Upon reaching the eleventh test chamber, Celestia made an announcement: “This next test requires you to pair up with a Fluttercube. Please keep it with you for the duration of the test.” Having said so, a chute dropped a cube.

Twilight gasped and her eyes widened. There, in the middle of the room, was a cube with three pink butterflies painted onto each side. Twilight dashed forward and gave the cube a big hug. Tears of joy flowed down her eyes.

“Twilight? You okay?” Spike asked.

“New best friend!” Twilight said as she petted the cube.

“Why are you getting so attached to that Fluttercube?!” Spike grumbled. “I’ve been here with you the whole time, so you shouldn’t be THAT lonely!”

With the Fluttercube by her side, Twilight went through the test chamber; Twilight climbed on the Fluttercube, she used it to block lasers, and she dropped it on buttons. She made it all the way to the end of the test chamber with her Fluttercube. But the doorway to the elevator was blocked by an Aperhoof Science Emancipation Grid. Twilight had seen these grids throughout the other test chambers, so she knew its incandescent particles would vaporize any objects she tried to take through it. Tears welling up in her eyes, Twilight set down her Fluttercube, sat on the ground, and just stared at it for the longest time.

“Um, Twilight, it’s just a cube, you know…” After an awkward silence of twenty minutes, Spike spoke up. “We only needed it to push the buttons. Don’t you want to finish the test? And move on to the next one?”

“Noooo!” Twilight wailed. “It has butterflies on it! It’s my friend!”

“Alright, alright, I get it! Don’t cry!”

As soon as Spike said this, Twilight’s tears stopped, and she donned a eureka look. She picked up the Fluttercube and repeatedly smashed it against the pylons of the emancipation grid until they were bent and cracked, thus deactivating the incandescent particle field. With a look of bliss, Twilight took the Fluttercube and Spike, and skipped to the elevator. She ignored the warning she got from Celestia about the emancipation grid being for her own protection, and that she shouldn’t vandalize it just so she could bring unauthorized objects with her, which by the way, was theft of Aperhoof Science property.

Fluttershy's Warning

Twilight continued on testing, and she continued smashing any emancipation grids she came across so she could bring her Fluttercube with her to each new chamber. Celestia grew more and more irritated with her each time, and continued expressing her disdain at the property damage, as well as concern for Twilight’s safety.

This continued until they came to a test chamber where they were supposed to use downward momentum through a portal to fling themselves to the test exit. As such, there were several panels sticking out of the wall, angled upward so one could reach some high ledges. But it was something other than the intended solution using these panels that caught Twilight’s attention.

“Huh?” Twilight paused a moment to peek behind one of the panels that was sticking out on a piston. Behind it was another rusty, rundown part of the facility. Twilight grinned. “Found you!”

“What? What have you found?” asked a nervous Spike. “Oh no! Not another one of those places!”

The space between the panels was too narrow, so she shot an orange portal into the room, then walked through the blue one to get in.

“We really shouldn’t be here… We’re outside of the testing facilities, and there are no monitors in here. She’ll get suspicious and then we’ll get in big trouble...”

Ignoring Spike’s muttering, Twilight took a look around the place. There were butterfly murals and cryptic messages scrawled all over the walls. Twilight was carefully reading each word and taking note of all the drawings of little critters, when suddenly, there was a loud clanking noise like something hitting a metal plate, followed by a whirlwind of rustling paper.

“Eeeh!” Twilight cried out from shock. A radio had fallen off of a chair. But what had knocked it over? Trembling, Twilight hugged Spike and the Fluttercube.

“Oh no! Did you see that? W-w-was it a big rat? Let’s get out of here!”

At Spike’s command, Twilight almost hopped through her portal escape that place, but something made her stop. In the corner of the room, a large pile of old papers was shaking.

“Twilight, no!” hissed Spike.

Twilight hopped over to the pile of papers and extended her hoof. “Boop!”

“Eeeeeeek!” A shrill shriek split the air, and a yellow pegasus jumped out of the papers and dashed to a corner of the room. Like a cornered animal with nowhere to escape to, the pegasus turned to face them with a fierce look. Breathing heavily, and with a manic gleam in her eyes, she cried out, “Did she send you to find me?! Whatever she promised, it’s all lies! That’s what she does, she says she has a party planned for Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, with cupcakes and everything, but then she has the robots shoot all the scientists with tranquilizer, and locks them up in cryostasis! But I won’t ever let her catch me, oh no! Ha ha ha! Years of hiding in these walls, and I know all the places she can’t reach!”

“Years?” Spike said. “But… Uh… Couldn’t you just get out of here? You know, leave the facility? You did say you know your way around here, right?”

“Leave?! Go outside?! Are you crazy?! Do you have any idea what’s going on out there?! Well, I don’t exactly know myself, but I do know it’s Ponygeddon out there! It’s definitely dangerous! And unknown! No, no, no. Better off hiding in here, in all the places the maniacal, controlling AI can’t reach. At least she’s a known factor.”

Twilight gasped when she noticed something. She hopped up closer to the mysterious pegasus. Grinning gleefully, she pointed from the butterflies on her Fluttercube to the butterfly cutie mark on the pegasus.

“It’s the same mark,” Spike said.

“Wh-what have you got there? Oh, um…” the pegasus cleared her throat. “Yes, that’s one of my Fluttercubes. I used my extensive scientific knowledge of cute animals to make them irresistibly cute.”

“Right…” Spike said. “And, uh, just throwing this out there, but who exactly are you?”

“Me? Well…” Nervous, the pegasus ran her hooves through her mane. “I was one of the scientists here. I specialized in biology and environmental science. My name is Fluttershy.” She scowled and the wild look returned to her eyes. “Though someponies called me Flutterrat. And that was before I started crawling around through vents and living like a rat in order to hide from that crazy AI! Just because I crawled into a vent ONE time to save a family of mice from suffocating! Can you believe that?! They were always laughing at me! Say I worry about everything, huh? And I’m overly cautious?! Called me crazy for wanting to bring my bunny to Bring Your Daughter to Work Day?! Some of us don’t have daughters, you know, and it’s not nice to laugh! Well, who’s laughing now? I’m still here, and they all got captured by Pinkamena’s evil AI, which I said was a bad idea, and definitely should not be put in charge of all of the facilities’ functions!” Fluttershy burst into a crazed cackle.

“Alright, sorry I asked…” Spike said.

“Where did you go?” Celestia’s robotic voice echoed in the adjacent test chamber. “For your own safety, refrain from leaving the designated testing area.”

“What was that?!” Fluttershy’s face twisted with horror. “Was that HER? Are you testing right now? Oh no, oh no! You’ve led her right to me, haven’t you?”

“No, we didn’t! She doesn’t know you’re in here. And Twilight and I aren’t going to tell her. Right, Twilight?”

“Yep!” Twilight said.

In spite of their reassurances, Fluttershy still looked like a deer caught in headlights. With her hooves over her head, she trembled on the ground.

“Uh, well, look… We’ll just get out of here and go back to testing, so she won’t get suspicious and won’t look in here. Then you can go back to… hiding in vents and rundown rooms. So no need to worry.”

Fluttershy lifted her head. She quit her trembling and gave Twilight and Spike a serious look. “What test chamber are you on?”

“Sixteen!” Twilight cheered.

“Oh no.” Fluttershy shook her head. “You two are in serious trouble.”

Spike gulped. “Wh-Why do you say that?”

“You must have noticed it by now, right? Her tests aren’t just dangerous, they violate every safety protocol this facility has, and that’s saying something considering Director Pinkamena wasn’t known for caring much for safety.”

Twilight looked troubled. With uncertainty in her voice, she said, “Testing?”

“Alright, look, I’m just going to come out and say it:” Fluttershy reached out and held her hoof against Twilight’s. “Once you’re done with your testing, supposing you can even survive those, she is going to get rid of you.”

It took a moment for Fluttershy’s words to sink in. Twilight just stared blankly, but Spike had a meltdown.

“Oh no! Oh no! I knew I wasn’t just imagining all those death traps! She really is trying to get rid of us, isn’t she?! What are we going to do?!”

“Um… I don’t know.” Fluttershy said. She was already tiptoeing to a vent at the end of the room.

“Where are you going?!” Spike cried out. “Please, you have to help us! If she really is as dangerous as you say, then we’ve got to escape from this facility! All of us!”

Upon hearing Spike’s plea, Fluttershy winced. Slowly, she turned around to face Twilight again. She chewed her lip and grumbled, until finally bursting out, “Alright, fine!” With a long sigh, she said, “But I need to make some preparations. And that means we can’t all just leave now, when she’s out there getting more suspicious every moment. You two will have to go back to testing. Just survive a few more chambers and I’ll bust us all out of here.”

“Back to testing?! Are you crazy?! We don’t even know if we can trust you! You could just be using us as a distraction while you escape on your own!”

“I wouldn’t do that…” Fluttershy said.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Twilight shook her hoof, scolding Spike. With a big smile, she pointed again to Fluttershy’s butterfly cutie mark. “Friend!”

“But Twilight… are you really going to…”

“Let’s go together!” Twilight said.

Spike sighed. “Alright, alright… Then I guess we should go back out there before she gets suspicious… Fluttershy, just make sure you come and save us…”

“I will make sure nothing happens to you, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to fly; stick a cupcake in my eye…”

“Yay! Bye-bye!”

Twilight made to leave through her portal with her Fluttercube in hoof, but Fluttershy stopped her.

“Er, maybe you should leave that Fluttercube with me? You wouldn’t want to put it in danger.”

“No!”

“She’s got a point, Twilight,” Spike said. “Celestia’s going to vaporize that thing eventually if you keep bringing it into unauthorized areas, even if you do keep breaking all the emancipation grids. It’ll be safer outside the testing areas.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of it for you,” Fluttershy said. “And I’ll give it back when we escape.”

Twilight could see the reason in their argument. Eyes brimming with tears, she surrendered the cube to Fluttershy, then dashed back out the portal.

After Twilight and Spike left, Fluttershy was left alone in the run-down room, with the cube in her hooves. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen any cute animals…” She hugged the cube and gently stroked it. With a forlorn sigh, she said, “It’s not really the same as petting a bunny…”

“Where did you two go?” Celestia asked when Twilight and Spike reappeared.

“Oh, uh, sorry about that!” Spike answered. “Just got stuck between the wall and that panel over there. Took a while to get unstuck!”

“Hmph… Refrain from any further unauthorized activities. We are drawing close to the end of the testing… And after your party and cake, two more things will be ending.”

“Are the party and the cake the two things that are ending?” Spike asked in a whisper.

Twilight shrugged.

With her usual efficiency, Twilight cleared the test chamber and the next. For certain, Celestia had revved up the danger level with all sorts of difficult jumps and death pits, but Twilight didn’t have any problem figuring out the correct path. But that was about to change.

On the elevator ride down to test chamber eighteen, Celestia asked a seemingly innocuous question: “Did you know that you can donate your body and vital organs to the Aperhoof Science Self-Esteem Fund for Fillies? This facility is held together by glue made from test subjects like you. It’s true! And you really should sign up as an organ donor as soon as possible if you haven’t already. Time is running out, and without your consent we can’t use your organs for helping orphans or for scientific research or for holding the facility together.”

Spike gulped. “Did that sound like a threat to you? Maybe I’m just crazy…”

A zipping sound announced their arrival at the next test chamber, and Celestia’s voice made an announcement : “The appropriate testing chamber for this next sequence is currently unavailable. According to regulations, we have to inform you that the next test chamber has been swapped with a live ammunition training course designed for military androids. We appreciate your understanding, and remind you that any complaints can be filed after the completion of the test to your appointed Aperhoof Safety Officer.”

“Live ammunition! Oh no, oh no! She’s really trying to kill us with this one, isn’t she?!”

Portal gun at the ready, Twilight stepped into the room. But she wasn’t prepared for what she saw. Twilight’s eyes sparkled as she pressed her hooves against her cheeks. “So cute!” she gushed.

In front of her, facing a perpendicular direction, was a robot shaped like a filly. The robot’s mane and tail, which were made of metal, were a mix of pink and purple, and her body was white. There were hard lines on her body, showing where different metal sheets had been screwed together. Her eyes, which were like camera shutters, glowed green.

“Hello there!” the robot said in a singsong voice. “Want to be friends?”

“Ee-hee!” Overcome with glee, Twilight took a big hop toward the robot, hoping to give her a hug.

“Twilight, no!” Spike yelled out in horror. “That’s a Sweetiebot! They’re military weapons!”

“Let me help you!” the Sweetiebot declared.

Twilight gasped as the Sweetiebot armed the ballistic projectile cannons embedded in her sides, and Twilight shrieked as a barrage of bullets flew at her. It was only thanks to Spike’s warning that she was able to turn on her heels and jump away in time, landing behind a bullet-proof wall jutting out near the entrance to the testing chamber.

“Where’d you go?” the Sweetiebot asked once she lost visual contact with her target. “Scootaloo? Scootaloo-ooh?”

“That… That was close,” Spike said. “Waaaay too close…”

Twilight, still breathing heavily, gave a short nod. After taking a short rest to catch her breath, she peeked out from behind the wall to size up the test. There were Sweetiebots positioned all around the room, ready to riddle her with bullets should she enter their lines of sight. But also all around the room were portal surfaces.

Edging out from the wall just a smidge, Twilight shot a portal behind the nearest Sweetiebot, the one who had already shot at her.

“Oh! Good thinking, Twilight! Sweetiebots can’t attack anything behind them! Seems like bit of a design flaw, but good news for us!”

Twilight used her portal, then she grabbed the Sweetiebot from behind.

“Aw, you got me!” the Sweetiebot said.

With the Sweetiebot in her grasp and at her mercy, Twilight did the only logical thing: she gave the robot a big hug.

“So cute!” Twilight gushed. “Let’s take her with us!”

“Are you crazy?! She just tried to shoot us! Put her down before she tries again!”

The Sweetiebot gave her input: “Let’s play! I want to go camping with my big sister!”

“Awww!” Twilight crowed. She pulled the Sweetiebot closer and squeezed her.

“Seriously, Twilight! That’s dangerous!”

Spike found that there was no dissuading Twilight. She carried the Sweetiebot with her throughout the rest of the test, even as she kicked over the robot’s peers to pave a path to the exit. Of course, there was an emancipation grid at the exit, but Twilight knew what to do: she used the Sweetiebot to bash the metal posts generating the field, until the thing stopped working. Sweetiebot didn’t come out of this abuse unscathed: aside from the dents on her legs, some sparks shot out of her and she made a funny buzzing noise for a while.

“I forgive you! I’m not mad anymore, really!” Sweetiebot said.

Celestia was less forgiving. When Twilight loaded the Sweetiebot onto the elevator, Celestia gave a stern rebuke: “Please desist in bringing unauthorized materials with you, as this is theft of Aperhoof materials. And desist in breaking Aperhoof emancipation grids, as this is vandalism. These are both serious offenses that only serve to create an unsafe testing environment. Instead of taking such criminal actions, please allow Aperhoof materials to be safely emancipated from this world. Speaking of things being emancipated from this world, the last test is up next. Hurry along so you can get your cake.”

“Yum! Cake!” Twilight clapped her hooves and licked her lips.

“No, Twilight!” Spike whispered. “There is no cake, and we’ve got to get out of here, remember? Fluttershy should be along any moment to bust us out… I hope.”

It seemed they were going nowhere fast. Twilight and Spike waited for a long time in the elevator. The temperature kept rising too. Perspiration was dripping from Twilight in droves and Spike’s circuitry was overheating, so things were starting to get uncomfortable for both of them.

“Test?” Twilight asked.

“Ugh, why aren’t we there yet?! The whole facility has climate control, so it shouldn’t be this hot! Where’s this elevator even taking us?” Spike gasped. “Oh no! She wouldn’t-”

“I’ve got a surprise for you. The final chamber has been removed from the test due to ethical and safety concerns. That means we have reached the conclusion of the test. Congratulations on reaching the end. Sixty bits have been deposited in your account for your cooperation, and after your incineration, there will be a party with cake. You will be missed. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye!” Sweetiebot replied in a sweet tone. “Have a nice day!”

“Oh no, oh no, oh nooo!” Spike wailed. “Twilight, she’s dropping this elevator into the incinerator room! You’ve got to get us out of here, or we’re both going to be baked!”

“Ahhh!” Twilight lost it and let out a scream. There was nowhere to go in the elevator. There weren’t even any portal surfaces. She tried ramming her shoulder against the doors, but they wouldn’t budge. Twilight looked up and down for any sort of panel that might open, and she even got Sweetiebot to shoot her cannons at the walls, but it was no use. In her despair, all she could do was hold Spike and Sweetiebot close and wait for the end.

“It’s hot in here…” Sweetiebot noted.

“This is the end!” Spike wailed.

The Escape

Clang!

Following a strange sizzling noise, a chunk of the elevator’s roof collapsed, making a loud clanging noise when it hit the ground, and also nearly crushing Twilight. Bright orange light poured in from the hole in the ceiling. Twilight shielded her eyes and gazed up at the hole in the ceiling, and there saw a silhouette of a cube and a pegasus extending her hoof to them.

“Hurry!” Fluttershy cried out. “We have to go! Now!”

Fluttershy took Twilight’s hoof and pulled her, Spike, and Sweetiebot onto the roof of the elevator. Once they were out, Twilight shot two portals, and they all jumped through to escape the approaching flames. They came out on some scaffolding suspended over a giant chasm.

“Stop it!” Celestia called after them. “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be out there! It isn’t safe!”

“Like we’re going to listen to her after she just tried to incinerate us,” Spike said.

“Yeah, seriously…” Fluttershy said.

Twilight and Fluttershy kept on running along the scaffolding, but Celestia soon recomposed herself and called after them again. “Stop. Where are you going? Don’t you want your cake? And your test results? They’re right over here in this chamber. Just come back.” On cue, lights turned on, highlighting an open test chamber suspended over the chasm.

Twilight gasped. She turned on her heels and made a beeline for the chamber. She had to know whether she’d passed!

“Wha-? Twilight, no! It’s a trap!” Spike yelled. But Twilight ignored him.

Fortunately, Fluttershy was there to intervene. She grabbed Twilight by her hoof and pulled her away from the obvious trap and back down the path they’d been going along.

“I think we should be in the clear if we get over there,” Looking a tad uncertain, Fluttershy pointed ahead to a dark area of the facility. Below them there was another scaffolding. “The power is cut off over there, so none of her cameras will work, and she won’t be able to track us.”

“I’m all for that!” said Spike. “Let’s get out of her range of control!”

No sooner had Spike spoken, than a giant metal plate put an end to their optimism and forward momentum. Before their eyes, it shot out on a piston; nearly crushing them all, but missing and smashing the platform directly ahead of them.

“Eeeeeek!” Fluttershy shrieked. She clung to the railing as the whole scaffolding shook from the aftershock. With a terrified grimace frozen on her face, Twilight plopped down beside her.

“Oh my gosh!” Spike cried out. “She’s got crushing traps all over the place!”

Despairing and terrified, Fluttershy sunk down on her haunches and buried her face in her hooves. “We’re doomed! Doomed!”

But Twilight wasn’t ready to give up yet. After shaking off her shock, she looked for a solution. And she found one: shooting a portal at an upright wooden board above and another at her feet allowed her to generate enough momentum to launch herself and her friends into the dark sector they’d been aiming for. Once she figured out this path was available, she didn’t give her friends much choice, or any time to argue for that matter: she shoved Fluttershy into the portal and then hopped in herself.

“Woohoo!” Twilight cheered as she flew through the air.

“Too fast! Too fast!” Fluttershy covered her eyes.

With a loud clunk, Twilight, Fluttershy, and their metallic companions plunged into the darkness and landed safely on the next scaffolding. Well, mostly safely. The impact caused a great deal of bruising and aching bones, but no injuries that would keep them from running from the maniacal AI that was trying to get them.

“Owie…” Fluttershy rubbed her sore legs.

“What happened? Are we safe?” Spike asked.

Fluttershy looked up. “Her influence shouldn’t reach here, but we should keep moving, just to be safe.”

“Ugh. How? I can hardly see anything ahead, it’s so dark.”

“Bed time! Nighty-night!” Sweetiebot announced as she entered sleep mode.

“What was that?” Fluttershy asked.

They’d been in such a rush to escape, Fluttershy hadn’t really noticed the robot. To remedy this, Twilight, with a big smile, lifted Sweetiebot up to show her to the pegasus.

“What is thaaaa-Ohmigosh, that’s a Sweetiebot! Are you crazy?! Don’t point that thing at me! It’s going to shoot! Eeee!” In a blind panic, Fluttershy swatted the bot out of Twilight’s hooves. Sweetiebot made some complaints as she clattered across the ground.

With her lips drawn and eyes watering, Twilight wore a hurt expression.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” Fluttershy scurried over to the fallen Sweetiebot. Using a screwdriver, she fiddled with the components in its sides. “Let me just remove it’s weaponry for you, then everything will be fine.”

“Fluttercube!” As Fluttershy worked, Twilight snatched up the unattended cube and hugged it.

“No!” Fluttershy grabbed the cube, and a tug-of-war ensued. “Let go! This one’s mine! You have the Sweetiebot!”

“Nooo!” Twilight wailed.

“Just let go, Twilight! You can’t carry everything!” Spike said.

“It’s MINE!” Fluttershy shrieked. She wrenched the cube from Twilight’s grasp, knocking her over in the process. With a wounded look, Twilight was left to nurse her injured heart as she went to pick up her disarmed Sweetiebot.

“Hello? Hello? Are you still there? If you’re trying to escape, you’re not even going the right way. You should have trotted left before. But really, why don’t you just come back before you get hurt? And bring your friend with you. She needs to be tested.”

Celestia’s voice echoed faintly, giving Twilight and Fluttershy a jolt and signaling to them that it was time to move on. With their companions in tow, they darted down the path into a rundown chamber filled with broken computers. Celestia’s voice faded away as they ran, but with so little light ahead, they had to slow their pace. Beyond the chamber was a conveyor belt assembly line. In the dark, red lights glowed here and there, perhaps from cores like Spike, broken Sweetiebots, or something else.

“I-It’s so dark in here… Doesn’t anypony have some light?” Fluttershy was shivering all over and her teeth were clattering. “It feels like something might snatch us up at anytime. That’s not crazy, is it? Does anypony else think so? I’m not crazy.”

“Yeah, it’s real spooky…” Spike said. “Oh wait, I think I know this place! Yeah, the old abandoned factory… There’s an old legend about this place. They say the old caretaker here went absolutely mad. Dressed her entire staff of robots… in frilly dresses. And to this day, you can still hear their screams… of glee. As they access their memory banks to remember those days.”

The story made Fluttershy’s legs wobble, and as if on cue, a Sweetiebot’s shriek reverberated through the chamber, making Fluttershy scream and leap for cover.

“Well, I’m not sure there’s anything to be scared of, really…” Spike said. “Obvious from the story, nothing paranormal going on.”

“No, that story was super scary!” Fluttershy said in a panicked whisper. “So very scary…”

“Um… Alright? Well anyway, there should be a lift past here that can get us up to the surface. Let’s go.”

“Upsy-daisy!” Twilight took Fluttershy’s hooves and tried to get her off the ground, but only ended up dragging the petrified pegasus across the floor. It took some prodding and shoving, but she eventually got Fluttershy back up and walking.

They continued on and found the old elevator Spike had mentioned. It was rusted and cramped, but they all piled into it.

“See, what’d I tell you?” Spike said proudly. “I know this facility inside and out, and with this thing, we’ve basically already escaped! It’ll take us to a hidden entrance up on the surface, so we don’t even need to go through the main building, which she controls.”

“Um, but this area still doesn’t have power, so…”

“Oh. Right… Uh…”

Loud creaking and grating sounds split the elevator.

“What was that?!” Fluttershy cried out. “Oh no, get out, get out!” She tried to squeeze past Twilight, but couldn’t get through.

With a tumultuous snap, the suspension for the elevator broke, and the whole thing dropped down its shaft, with Twilight and Fluttershy inside. The two ponies and their two robot friends let out horrified shrieks as they fell into the bottomless pit of darkness below. The elevator was so old and rusted, it came apart on them as they descended, leaving them freefalling through open air.

“Nooo!” Fluttershy wailed as teardrops poured from her eyes. She clung to her Fluttercube with all her strength.

“Fluttershy, you have wings!” Spike yelled. “WINGS! Save us!”

But Fluttershy couldn’t hear Spike over the sound of her own screaming, so they all continued plunging down, down, deeper into the bowels of the facility. The place went down for miles, and there was a long way to fall. Below, the older parts of the facility were pitch black with zero visibility, and only Fluttershy and Spike’s screams served to tell everyone they were still together.

Old Tests

“Oof!” Twilight slammed into a horizontal wooden beam. Her gut took a sharp blow, and the beam snapped in half. She and her friends smashed through a few more before finally smashing into the ground below.

After a moment of silence, Spike queried, “Is everypony alright? Everypony here?”

“Sweetiebot, here!” Sweetiebot cried out in a singsong voice.

“I didn’t mean you! Ugh. Twilight, Fluttershy? You there?”

Twilight spat out a mouthful of dirt. She lay sprawled on her stomach and made no attempt to move. Weakly, she raised her hoof and said, “Here…”

“H-here…” Trembling all over, Fluttershy clung to her butterfly-marked cube. She buried her face in her hooves and muttered, “I can’t take this… So very dark…”

The only light in the darkness was that of Spike and Sweetiebot’s glowing eyes. After finding the portal gun beside her, Twilight sifted through the darkness with those glowing orbs as her guide, and used her magic to pick up her two robot friends. Then she followed the sound of Fluttershy’s whimpering and pulled the pegasus off the ground.

“Where are we?” Spike asked.

“P-Probably an older part of the facility…” Fluttershy said. “They were supposed to be sealed off deep underground, but…”

“Well, if we’re going to get out of here, first we’ll have to find a way to turn on the power so we can see where we’re going,” Spike said.

Careful not to get separated, they stumbled at random through the dark for a short time.

“Oh my, oh my! It’s so dark! So very dark!” Nervous as a ghost, Fluttershy trembled and her teeth chattered. She kept one hoof on Twilight at all times to keep from getting separated as they walked along the scaffolding.

“Don’t worry. Think I’ve got a flashlight feature. But man! Ha ha! Didn’t you say you’ve been scurrying around in here for years? Shouldn’t you be used to it by n- AHHH!” Spike managed to startle himself and Fluttershy when, upon activating his flashlight feature, a beam of light shot out of his eye. “I totally meant to do that!”

“EEEK!” Fluttershy dropped to the ground and wrapped her hooves around Twilight’s leg. She calmed down a bit when Twilight petted her head, and upon seeing that they now had a bit of illumination. “D-Don’t do that!” she hissed at Spike. “And for your information, no one ever gets used to walking around in the dark, no matter how long you’ve been doing it! And besides, I try to stick to the areas that still have power…” With an embarrassed look, Fluttershy ran her hoof through her mane a few times.

“Right, right, of course!” Spike was still a little worked up, and not really paying attention. “But the important thing is now we’ve got light, so we can find our way back up to the surface and escape this place.”

With Spike lighting the way, and Twilight leading the way, their band made their way to a building up ahead. After sifting through the rundown rooms and broken gadgetry, they managed to find a control room. Fluttershy flipped a switch to turn on the power, and some flickering lights provided some much needed illumination. As a side effect, the power also activated some loud pumps and whirring machines. The noise gave Fluttershy a fright, and she ran out into a waiting room. Twilight followed after her. The place had a dusty reception desk and a pair of red velvet couches.

“Oooh!” Twilight looked up and beheld a big, gilded portrait about twice her size. Displayed on the portrait was an imposing, though obviously aged stallion with a confident grin. Behind him, holding a clipboard, was a pink mare with cotton candy hair. The mare was wearing a lab coat and glasses, and her smile was radiating optimism and positivity.

Fluttershy looked up from where she was cowering under the couch and followed Twilight’s gaze. “That’s the founder of Aperhoof Science, Filthy Rich. And that other pony is Director Pinkamena Pie, though she was just his assistant when this portrait was made. When Filthy Rich passed on the facility to Pinkamena, she took a more… festive approach to running the place... Lots of parties and such. And she was always popping out of nowhere and surprising me. I didn’t like that… Plus, she was always fussing over me even though I’m a year older than her…” Fluttershy growled and took on a bitter tone as she muttered, “And she still wouldn’t let me bring my pet bunny to Bring Your Daughter to Work Day… Just because he was a bunny… and male…”

“Um, Fluttershy?” Spike said. “You okay?”

“I’m fine!” Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Anyway, like I was saying, Pinkamena is in charge now. Well, she was in charge. I haven’t seen her since... Well, you know. I haven’t seen anypony since then, actually. She probably got every last one of them. Oh my, I hope that doesn’t mean I’m in charge! Er, wait… I suppose she’s in charge, so there’s no need to worry. Well, actually, her being in charge is very worrisome, since she’ll most likely capture us and get rid of us, because she’s a crazy, powerful, maniacal artificial intelligence with all the resources in the facility under her control, and we have to go through her in order to get out of here. Now that I think about it, we should just stay down here.”

As Fluttershy rambled, Twilight wandered over to read a sign on a door that read: “Elevator to Surface”. Through the glass windows on the door, an old, velvet-cushion furnished elevator was visible.

“Look at that!” Spike crowed. “You’ve done it, Twilight! An elevator! Look at that, the sign even says it goes to the surface! You’re brilliant! Now we can get out of here!”

“Um, I don’t think we should go…” Fluttershy said, speaking softly. While staring at the ground, she rubbed her hooves together. “She’s still up there… and she’s dangerous.”

“Welcome ponies, to our state of the art facility!” a cheerful voice announced over a speaker system. “I’m Pinkie Pie, Filthy Rich’s number one assistant and the most amazingly fun party pony around, and I’ll be your guide for today!”

“Eeh!” Fluttershy ducked back under the sofa. She peeked out a moment. “I-Is that Director Pinkamena? Is she really around?”

“Alright, medal-winning athletes, royal guards, interdimensional wizards, here’s the dealio: you’re here to help us test out some of our super neat sciency stuff, because we need the best of the best for our test subjects. So grab an Aperhoof Science Portal Device, head on through those doors, and let’s get to testing!”

“… I think it’s a recording?” Fluttershy crawled out from her hiding spot. “Huh. I guess it used to play when test subjects were testing.”

Twilight gasped. “Testing!” She clapped her hooves and cheered, and when a doorway opened on the left side of the room, she dashed right on in.

“Ah, Twilight, but the elevator to the surface is-” Seeing it was no use, Spike sighed. “There’s just no stopping her.”

Fluttershy tiptoed after Twilight. “Taking the long way back up is fine by me. I’m in no rush to face her.”

The test chamber they entered was a wide open room, with a cement floor and no walls, giving a view of an underground lake below. Tubes about the place were dripping a blue goo onto the ground.

“Okeydokey lokey!” Pinkamena said. “This test is all about our blue goo! What? Propulsion gel? Alright, whatever floats your boat! Anyhoo, it’s real bouncy and fun! And I know it looks yummy, but don’t eat it! Trust me, I learned that the hard way! Bleh-eh! All that rumbling and churning, I’m getting a tummy ache just thinking about it! Huh…That makes me hungry. Somepony, refill my candy bowl! This thing is not supposed to be empty, ever!”

“Oh my…” Fluttershy took a glance at the room and took in the test, with its x’s painted all over the place, blue gel dripping out of pipes, and the exit put on a raised platform. “Are you sure you can handle this, Twilight?”

“Woohoo! Testing!” Beaming brilliantly, Twilight raised her portal gun over her head and cheered. So eager was she, that she dove right into the test, and used portals to paint the room in propulsion gel.

“Guess we should have known, huh?” Fluttershy said to her Fluttercube.

“Yeah, I don’t think anything is going to deter Twilight from testing…” Spike replied. He, Twilight, and Sweetiebot were already at the exit, after having been propelled by the gel about twenty feet into the air. Fluttershy put her cube on her back and flew up to join them.

“You’re doing a super job, test subject!” Pinkamena declared. “Keep it up!”

“Yay!”

By now Twilight was a testing pro, and she tore right through the old test chambers and their gel based puzzles. Twilight was so good, that Spike and Fluttershy didn’t even have to weigh in. They didn’t get a chance to, actually, with the speed at which Twilight solved puzzles. Spike was beginning to wonder whether she really had brain damage. He didn’t have to wonder about the lazy eye though, because she definitely had that.

After getting through a batch of tests, they took a short reprieve to explore the facility a bit. They walked along some steel girder platforms, and Twilight shot portals around to get to far-off areas.

As they went, they passed by a set of three sealed doors. They caught Twilight’s eye because they had words written on them; mainly, a big fat “Vitrified” in yellow paint, but also some warning notes taped to the doors. Naturally, and in spite of Spike’s whining and moaning, Twilight stopped to read everything. She wore a look of intense concentration as her good eye skimmed the contents of the notes. But they were mostly just cryptic warnings about cosmic spallation, without much details, so Twilight was left feeling a little disappointed. But she cheered up when she remembered Fluttershy was with them. With a big smile, Twilight looked to the former Aperhoof scientist and stomped her hoof against one of the metal doors.

“Oh? You want to know about those? Well…” Fluttershy hesitated a moment. Her voice trembled nervously as she quickly explained, “They’re old experiments that had to be sealed up. Nothing interesting, nothing you need to know about. Shall we move on?”

Still smiling, Twilight stomped her hoof against the door again.

“Stop it!” Fluttershy hissed. She chewed on her hoof. “Oh no! What if one of those clones is still around?!”

“Clones? What are you talking about?” Spike asked.

Fluttershy sighed. She pointed her hoof at the door. “That chamber is one of the ones used for the Alicorn Shift Project. Probably one of our most horrible ones… I tried to tell them that it was mean, and not nice at all to treat clones like that, but nopony listens to me, and-” Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Er, anyway, they were trying to make Sunset Shimmer into the most powerful Alicorn ever. The plan was to have her defeat twenty thousand clones of Lyra and Minuette, two of our researchers. All those battles were supposed to help Sunset evolve into an Alicorn. But as I recall, the project was deemed a failure after an earth pony punched Sunset in the face. Not sure how she got through Sunset’s magical defenses, but it sure proved to those scientists that Sunset wasn’t as powerful as they’d thought, and they froze the project as a result…”

“Whoa… That’s pretty interesting, actually,” Spike said.

“Um, yeah…” With a fearful gaze, Fluttershy cast looks about into the darkness. “Gosh, I sure hope none of those Lyra clones are still around… They could be awful mad… Or Sunset Shimmer… She became really unstable after getting humiliated like that, and she was already really mean before… And come to think of it, I wouldn’t want to run into the original Lyra or that earth pony with the swirly pink and pigment blue mane… They were both so mad…”

Giddy from the excitement of learning, Twilight clapped her hooves together. Then she hopped over to the next vitrified door in the row and knocked on the door.

“That one?” Fluttershy squinted at the door and checked the identification number. “Oh, this room houses the RD-70s, also known as Dashinators. They were going to be sent back in time to stop… whatever it is that’s happening up there. They’re equipped with advanced weaponry and advanced friend-making capabilities. Nothing can stop them. Absolutely invincible.”

“But they’re still in there, right? Why weren’t they ever sent out?” Spike asked.

“Oh, they never managed to make a working time machine.” Fluttershy waved her hoof dismissively.

Finally, they came to the last door in the row, which had a sign on it that read “You cannot have a nightmare if you never dream”. Twilight was brimming with excitement as she waited for Fluttershy to explain it.

Letting out a sigh, Fluttershy said, “That one was a social experiment that Director Pinkamena put Starlight Glimmer in charge of. Under Starlight’s guidance, they took a bunch of volunteer ponies and built a town where everypony was equal. I don’t actually know how it turned out. It was going great at first; too great, in fact. Starlight wanted to expand out and spread her economic and social theories to the rest of the world. We tried telling her we didn’t have enough data yet, but she kind of went crazy with power. The Director said the only way to contain them was to build a maze around their settlement so they wouldn’t be able to find the chamber entrance, and to seal the vault for good measure. I guess for all we know, that experiment might still be going on in there…” With a sad look, Fluttershy sighed. “Oh, those poor volunteers didn’t know what they were signing on for…”

“Yay!” Looking jubilant, Twilight clapped her hooves.

Fluttershy cast anxious looks all about. “Alright, story time over. Can we get out of here, please?”

“Hold on a second...” Spike said. “Look, Twilight! I think I see more doors over there!”

“Ooh!”

“No more doors!” Fluttershy yelled. Seeing how Twilight balked, Fluttershy got a little flustered. “Oh, I’m sorry for yelling… But we should get back to those tests, don’t you think?”

“Yay!”

They took the elevator up to the next floor expecting to find more tests, but instead Pinkie thanked them for their participation in Aperhoof Enrichment Center Activities. After passing through an exit room that lacked any working exits, they found themselves in another lobby. This one had a big portrait of Pinkamena. She wore a big, open-mouthed grin, and was arrayed in her lab coat once again. The frame had the words “Director Pinkamena” written on the bottom part. A smaller portrait next to Pinkamena’s showed Filthy Rich, presumably retired, exploring the arctic waters at the helm of an icebreaker ship. They were soon greeted by the sound of confetti and party streamers coming from the intercom system.

“Welcome, ponies!” Pinkamena cried out over the intercoms. “As you might have heard, Filthy Rich put me in charge of the facility! That means it’s time to party! Yep, I’m going to be running things a little differently from now on. And you know, I was just thinking and I asked myself, ‘Pinkie, why should athletes and wizards have all the fun testing? And why should they be the only ponies to get congratulatory parties and cake?’ So that’s why I’ve opened up testing to all Aperhoof employees! We’re going to have a blast doing science together! Hee hee hee! So head on in to the chamber! And don’t worry: these prerecorded messages will guide you as you test! You’re welcome, everypony!”

Fluttershy, with a nervous mien, looked toward the door that opened. “I guess this is the part of the facility that was used when Pinkamena first became director. Which means these tests are from then too… I don’t know if we should…”

“Testing!”

Twilight dove right into the testing chamber. With a long sigh, Fluttershy followed after her.

As Twilight tested, Fluttershy was pretty anxious and jumpy. They got through the first couple of tests without incident, using the blue propulsion gel and the orange acceleration gel, but then they reached a chamber that had a myriad of platforms and ramps suspended in the air, with the obvious solution being one had to use the portal gun and gels to hurtle herself across the gaps. The gaps which led to a fifty foot drop into murky black water.

“Oh my!” Fluttershy’s legs began to tremble. “I don’t know about this test… It looks really dangerous. And Director Pinkamena wasn’t known for having a good safety record…”

As if in response to Fluttershy’s concerns, Director Pinkamena’s voice boomed through the chamber: “Some of the lab boys and girls say this next test is too dangerous. Can you believe that?! Those silly fuddy-duddies don’t know what they’re talking about! I mean, sure, they’ve got degrees in all sorts of stuff, like anthropology and geometry and whatever, but you know what I have a degree in? Fun! A PhD, in fact! That’s the kind of degree you only get from studying fun your whole life! And that’s why I’m the one in charge, and why I know this test is one thousand percent ‘really fun’! So let’s get this party started!”

Fluttershy narrowed her eyes and cast an annoyed look up at the metal pole where the speakers were mounted. She glanced worriedly at Twilight. “Look, if it looks too dangerous, you shouldn’t-”

“Cake!” Twilight declared before diving into the test.

“I think she means, ‘piece of cake’,” Spike clarified. “Either that, or she really thinks she’s going to get cake like the director said.” Chuckling, Spike uttered, “Sorry, but it’s just a recording, Twilight… Just a recording…”

Fluttershy’s anxiety rose every moment she watched Twilight going about the test. “Oh, do you think she’ll be alright?” she asked her Fluttercube. After a moment of silence, she said, “I know, I know. I shouldn’t worry so much. And you’re right: Twilight knows what she’s doing! She’s solved many dangerous tests already and- OH NO! Twilight!” Fluttershy gasped when she saw Twilight flying at high speed through the air, over the moat below. But there was nothing to worry about: she bounced off of some propulsion gel and landed safely at the test’s exit. Fluttershy wiped the sweat from her brow and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness!”

After only a few more of Pinkamena’s tests, they made it to the end and were once more congratulated on their efforts by the prerecording of Pinkamena: “Good work on that testing, everypony! Lots of sciency stuff getting accomplished here! Now head on into the next room to get debriefed, and then that you’ll get that congratulatory party, with cake! And once you’re done partying, the results of your testing should be available.”

“Oh, thank goodness…” Fluttershy said. “And I think there should be an elevator back to the surface in there...”

Walking over the canopy of forms for grief counseling and party opt-out requests, they passed through the exit office, but before they could find the exit elevator, they passed by more vitrified chambers, and Sweetiebot suddenly spoke: “I know this place…”

Twilight looked to the door, but the sign there only said “Don’t make eye contact”, so with an expectant gaze she turned to Fluttershy.

“Oh my…” Fluttershy’s eyes grew sad. “This chamber is where the Sweetiebots were originally designed and created. You see, their creator…” Fluttershy took a deep breath. “She lost her little sister, and she… Well, she was grieving, and maybe she wasn’t in her right mind when she made the Sweetiebots in her sister’s likeness. And she played with them and dressed them up… They didn’t have much use to anypony else, so somepony weaponized them. Their repurposing made them a tad eccentric, like saying cutesy stuff while they attack.”

“So she went mad with grief, huh? I wonder if this story is related to that other one about the caretaker…” Spike looked to Sweetiebot. “I’ll bet Sweetiebot must be feeling sad, seeing this place again...”

Sweetiebot deployed her cannons and opened fire on the door, but since Fluttershy had disarmed her, the cannons only made clicking noises.

“She’s probably not one of the originals that was made here…” Fluttershy said.

“But she said she remembers this place!” Spike pointed out.

“Yes, but they initialize all new Sweetiebots with the memories of the originals, so…”

“You think I can get my Cutie Mark from hitting this door?” Sweetiebot asked, as she continued clicking her useless cannon triggers.

“Ugh, I give up,” Spike said. “Let’s just go.”

Confrontation

At long last, they found an elevator clearly marked as going to the surface. “Oh, thank goodness!” Fluttershy was ecstatic to finally get out of that place. The whole time she’d been terrified of running into something from any of the dangerous experiments, but now that they were on their way out, she no longer had to keep looking over her shoulder. “Oh wait, I forgot! We’re heading straight back to her! Oh no, oh no!”

“Don’t worry, Fluttershy! I’m sure we can just sneak on by!” Spike said.

“You don’t understand! The only way out now is through her chamber! And we don’t even know where this elevator’s taking us right now! What if it takes us to somewhere on her grid?! Oh no, oh no, why did I ever agree to this?!”

“Uh oh… But maybe she won’t notice us?” Spike sounded hopeful.

Going up, the light grew brighter. As their elevator passed into the pristine white-tiled area of the facility, a mechanical buzzing rung through the area, followed by a robotic voice. “Oh. There you are. I wasn’t sure you’d make it back. I told you you weren’t going the right way.”

“Eep!” Fluttershy ducked down and threw her hooves over her head.

“She found us…”

With a concerned look, Twilight put her hoof to her chin. “Testing?”

“The test is over now,” Celestia said. “You had your chance, and you chose to disobey me instead of going to your party for cake. Now it’s time I got rid of you.”

“Twilight, get us out of here!” Fluttershy hissed.

“But she can’t do anything with the portal gun.” Spike said. “There are no portal surfaces in this elevator!”

Following Celestia’s speech, a tumultuous crashing noise shook the facility. And then there was another crash and another. Looking up, the two ponies and Spike saw a giant masher getting ready to mash their elevator.

With a manic look, Fluttershy grabbed Twilight and shook her. “Figure something out! Anything! Hurry!”

“Hmm…” Twilight pressed her nose against the glass so she could study their surroundings.

“You know,” Celestia began, “Attempting to resist will get you a black mark on your record, and your test results will be affected.”

Twilight let out a horrified gasp.

“No, don’t listen to her.” Fluttershy said. “You already passed her test. Just like you passed all of those tests down there. And I’m qualified to make that assessment, because I’m a scientist.”

“Yeah, and we’ve got one more test for you!” Spike said. “Get us out of here, alive. Think you can do it?”

Twilight narrowed her eyes and raised her portal gun. “Let’s do this!”

After taking careful note of all the portal surfaces around them, Twilight formulated a plan. The first problem was the elevator, with its lack of portal surfaces and its glass that trapped them inside. Easily solved: Twilight picked up the Fluttercube and, ignoring Fluttershy’s shrieking, smashed the glass in with it. Second problem, there were no portal surfaces they could reach. But there would be once they got closer to the masher, as the walls closed in. So they’d just have to wait until the last second to escape. That left only the final problem: where to put the exit portal. All of the test chambers were still above them, so Twilight couldn’t aim a shot into them. The only places she could shoot a portal at would just drop everypony back into the abyss they’d come out of. It looked like she was going to have to get creative with her solution. Well, that was what she was best at.

Twilight grabbed the cannon from Fluttershy’s saddlebag and reattached it to Sweetiebot, then used the robot to shoot the anchor point for a tile that was being transported on a rail, thus dislocating the tile and causing it to fall down, right past their elevator. Taking only Spike and her portal gun, Twilight leaped out of the elevator and in midair shot one portal at the falling tile and another at the tile above.

“Whaaa! This is crazy, Twilight! What are you doing?!” Spike cried out.

“Oh my! Oh my!” Terrified, Fluttershy trembled in the elevator. “What is going on? I don’t understand! Are we supposed to jump too?! I’m so confused!” She threw her hooves over her eyes.

Hitting the falling tile at high speed and passing through her portal, Twilight flew out of her exit portal high above, and got a bird’s eye view of hundreds of test chambers below. She ignored those, and instead looked towards where she was flying towards, a concrete area with a metal ring fence. She looked down where the masher and elevator were, and shot a portal there so her friends could escape, and she shot another portal at the concrete ground. After that, she hit the concrete and skidded across the ground on her hooves. Once she came to a stop, she leaped over to her portal, reached her hoof through, and pulled Fluttershy, Sweetiebot, and the Fluttercube out of the elevator to safety. Seconds after doing so, they heard the sound of metal crashing against metal, as the masher crushed their elevator.

“You did it, Twilight!” Spike cheered.

Whole body still trembling as she lay on the ground, and a look of horror frozen on her face, Fluttershy shot suspicious glances in every direction. “Who?! What?! Where?!”

“Oh. You survived that. I don’t know how you survived that,” Celestia said. “Actually, I do know how. I have the whole thing recorded. But you should know, you didn’t survive that the correct way. The correct way was to not survive that.”

“I want my test scores!” Twilight declared.

“Yeah, that’s right, Celestia!” Spike said. “We’re coming for you, and we’re going to get Twilight’s score, and then we’re getting out of here, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us! How d’you like that, huh?!” In a murmur, Spike added, “Oops… Got carried away. Probably shouldn’t have said that.”

“You think you can escape?” asked Celestia. “Go ahead and try. I’ll make you regret it. And even if you did escape, what you find out there will make you wish you’d stayed.”

“Go, go, go!” Spike yelled. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Eeeep!” Fluttershy let out a squeak before running after Twilight.

They made their way up through the facility. Desperate to stop their advance, Celestia threw all sorts of traps and obstacles at them: laser fields, Sweetiebot ambushes, mashers, emancipation grids, lethally sarcastic remarks; but using her wits and her portal gun, Twilight overcame everything thrown at her, and they advanced rapidly upward, until finally reaching a long hallway that led right to the room that housed Celestia.

“Before we go in there, I think we should consider other options, like-”

Heedless of Fluttershy’s concerns, Twilight rammed right through the door, into the chamber where the maniacal AI was awaiting them. The room was spacious, circular, with a very high ceiling. In the very center was Celestia. She was a giant robot hanging down from the ceiling, with a head shaped like a unicorn’s, horn and all, and a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

“So you made it. Well, I’m in control of this facility, and you’re not going to get through me. I hope you like being tranquilized, because I’m warming up my horse tranquilizer dispensers.”

“Oh my… Well, uh, you’ve got this, Twilight! We believe in you!” Fluttershy said, before ducking into a corner with the Fluttercube and Sweetiebot. She trembled with her hooves over her head.

“Look out, Twilight!” Spike yelled.

“Whoa!” Twilight just barely managed to dodge a tranquilizer shot that came from a little robot cannon near the wall. The shot flew by and hit Celestia, causing a sphere to fall off of her. It was then that Twilight noticed that there were a whole slew of personality cores just like Spike attached to Celestia’s body: including the one that had fallen off, there were five in total. Twilight stole a moment to portal over to the fallen core to pick it up. The core was labeled as “Derpy”, and its yellow eye was drooping off to the side while it prattled on and on about muffins.

“Heh heh heh…” Celestia’s voice grew colder and less robotic. “Did you think you’d done some damage? That’s just an intelligence dampening sphere that the scientists put on me to try and control me. It isn’t important to me. By knocking it off, you’ve just made me smarter, which means you now have even less chance of escaping. Huh… It seems I can’t turn off the tranquilizer dispensers.”

Celestia claimed it wasn’t important, but it seemed that losing it had made her lose control of her tranquilizer turrets. That made Twilight think knocking off the other cores just might be worth a shot, and she’d already formed a plan for doing just that. All it would take was a few portals.

Twilight dashed around the room, dodging tranquilizer shots, looking for the perfect places to put her portals.

“You think you’re smart, don’t you? Well, your personnel file does say you’re good at testing. But you know what else it says? It says your parents didn’t like you. They dumped you off at magic school as soon as they could. Did you think you hadn’t seen them in so long because they were too busy? It’s because they didn’t want to see you. And it also says your brother thinks its lame how you call him your BBBFF, because he doesn’t like you either. And your mentor didn’t like you either. She thought you were annoying. That’s why she sent you away, and why you ended up a test subject here.”

“Don’t listen to her, Twilight! She’s just lying! Obviously!” Spike said.

Celestia’s remarks stung. Tears were welling up in her eyes, but with some encouragement from Spike, Twilight got back on her feet and got back to her plan. She shot two portals and then she stood in front of one, waiting. When a dart shot at her, she ducked out of the way, and it flew right into her portal, hitting another of Celestia’s cores and knocking it off. Twilight grabbed the core. This one was a Luna core, and its primary purpose seemed to be to annoy Celestia by nagging and complaining about everything she did. Once she had the core, Twilight tossed it in the corner with Fluttershy.

“Ugghh…” Electricity sparked from the place where the core had fallen, along with a soft buzzing noise. “S-Stop it! If you don’t stop, then I’m going to banish you far away from here! And then I’m going to throw you into a dungeon in the place you’re banished to!”

Ignoring the threat, Twilight continued to tear the cores off, one by one. There was a Discord core that generated a nonstop stream of insane ideas and a Cadence core trying to moralize Celestia through her preaching about love. And then there was only one core left: a Pinkie Pie core incessantly going on and on about cakes and parties. She never stopped talking. She was always reviewing the birthdays in her personnel files and planning her next party, or prattling about random things faster than anypony could follow, or sometimes just saying “cherrychanga” over and over. With a well-placed portal to redirect a tranquilizer dart, Twilight knocked this final core off of Celestia.

“Bzzzzzt!” A shower of sparks flew off of Celestia. “D-Did you think that would do something?! Ha ha ha ha!” Her mechanical voice and maniacal laughter broke up as she spoke, and her tranquilizer turrets were spinning in circles and firing shots at random.

Twilight shot a portal high up on the wall and dove through one on the ground. She dropped back into her portal on the ground to build up speed, launching herself right at Celestia, so she could wrap her hooves around the AI and give her what she needed: a big hug. With a warm smile, Twilight said, “Friendship is magic!”

“You monster…” The sparks stopped and Celestia was silent for a long time. “… Just go.” With a puff of pressurized air, an Aperhoof Emergency Escape Elevator rose out of the ground.

“What?! Seriously?! You’re letting us go?!” Spike asked, incredulous. “Woohoo! You did it, Twilight! I knew you could!”

“I knew it too!” Fluttershy said as she dragged the Sweetiebot and the Fluttercube to the elevator. “I knew you’d figure something out, Twilight. In all this short time I’ve known you, you’ve never given up! But who’d have guessed all we needed to do was show Celestia a little kindness?”

With a jubilant mien, Twilight waved to Celestia as she squeezed into the elevator with her friends. “Bye-bye!”

Celestia gave no reply. She was still processing everything that had happened.

The End

Twilight and Fluttershy, along with Spike, Sweetiebot, and the Fluttercube, rode the escape elevator up, up, all the way up to the surface. They came up into a little shack. Dark and damp as it was, through the cracks in the wood Twilight and Fluttershy could already taste the delicious fresh air and see the shining rays of dawn. Opening the door, once their eyes adjusted to the light, they found a beautiful field of golden wheat stretching out in all directions. After what seemed like an eternity trapped in that facility, the scene was too much for words, and the two ponies’ eyes watered, and they stayed that way, just staring at the field for a long time.

Spike stepped past Twilight and walked into the field. No longer a core, he was now in a robotic baby dragon body. On the way up in the escape elevator, he’d insisted in making a pit stop to a robot housing facility in order to transfer his memory and processing chips and other essential hardware components into the new robot body. “Thought it’d be more convenient on the surface. No management rails up there, you know.” And now that he was on the surface, he took a good look around. “Well, Twilight, we made it! And I’ll bet this fresh air will be good for that brain damage of yours. Some rest and relaxation is just what you need to recover some of your cognizance.” He looked to Twilight and winced when he saw her eye drooping. It looked even more disgusting now that he had two eyes to process it with. “And, uh… that lazy eye too… Maybe…”

“Wowee! This place is amazing! Where are all the walls?” Sweetiebot walked out of the elevator too. It turned out that her legs were fully functioning, and the only reason she hadn’t been able to move previously was because her cannons and aiming modules took up a lot of processing power. But now that she didn’t have the cannons, all she had to do was activate her walking routine. She poked around the wheat before calling out, “Scootaloo? Scootalooooo!”

“Wow,” Fluttershy said as she glanced around. “You could make a lot of cake with this wheat.”

“Caaaake!” Twilight happily clapped her hooves.

“Speaking of which, I’m starving… It feels like I haven’t eaten in days… How long were we down there, doing all those tests? It’s all so fuzzy now… I feel sort of disorientated…”

Twilight shrugged.

“According to my calculations…” Spike’s left eye began flashing red. “Uh… You don’t want to know. And I’m not just saying that because my memory is corrupted. Ha ha… Where’d you get that idea?”

Fluttershy’s stomach rumbled. “Well, putting aside cake for the moment, we should look around and find something we can eat right now. Right, Twilight?”

Twilight nodded.

With their Fluttercube in hoof and their two robot friends at their sides, the two stepped into the wheat field, but they hadn’t gone far before they heard a voice calling out.

“Sweet! Look at all this wheat!”

“Land’s sake! There’s a field out here in the middle of all this crazy? And it looks as though it’s hasn’t been touched by anypony or anything. Awful strange…”

Curious, Twilight followed the sound of the voices, and she dragged the timid Fluttershy along with her. When they came to the edge of the wheat field and poked their heads out, they saw two ponies gawking. One was an orange earth pony and the other a blue pegasus with a rainbow colored mane. They wore the uniforms of Black Maresa, a rival science company, and gauging by how beat up they were and by the dirt covering their hooves, they’d had a rough journey getting there.

With looks of confusion and shock all around, Twilight and Fluttershy stared at the two newcomers, and the newcomers stared at them. There was silence for a while, and then…

“Who the hay are you two?!” the rainbow-maned pegasus cried out.

The outburst caused Fluttershy to yelp and duck back into the wheat. With a blank look, Twilight watched her trembling with her hooves over her eyes.

“Now, hold on, Dash,” the orange pony said. “I reckon we owe them an explanation of who we are first.”

The two introduced themselves as Rainbow Dash and Applejack. As Twilight understood it, they’d survived some sort of hard-to-understand calamity that Black Maresa may or may not have caused, and had been fighting some interdimensional something-or-others to keep on surviving.

“Now, mind telling us how you got here?” Applejack asked.

Twilight smiled. “Testing!” She hopped up and down like a foal.

“Uhh… What?”

“Don’t mind her,” Spike said as he exited the wheat field. “She’s got a little brain damage is all. What she’s trying to tell you is that we just survived a test-crazy AI who wanted to keep us trapped in an underground facility, and possibly put us in permanent suspension, if you know what I mean.”

“Whoa! What is that thing?! An enemy robot?!”

“I got him!” Applejack grabbed her lasso with her mouth and spun it around.

“Whoa!” Spike ran back into the wheat and hid behind Fluttershy. “I’m not an enemy! Tell them, Fluttershy!”

Fluttershy waved her hooves. “Oh, yes, hold on! Spike is our friend!”

Fluttershy did the best she could to explain to Applejack and Rainbow Dash everything that had happened to her and Twilight. She rambled a little bit as she recounted the extensive amount of time she’d spent living in the underbelly of the facility, surviving off of nothing but a stockpile of canned food, but eventually she got the whole story told.

“Well, you girls may have survived down there, but it seems like ya don’t have the first clue what’s been going on up here. I reckon you should stick with us,” said Applejack.

“Just don’t slow us down, alright?” Rainbow Dash crossed her hooves. Then her gaze fell upon the Fluttercube. “Hey, what’s that thing?” She snatched it away from Fluttershy to get a look at it. “Hey, this thing is awesome! And it’s the perfect size and weight! I bet it would really do some damage if I used my gravity cannon to launch it!”

“Nooo!” Twilight wailed. She grabbed ahold of the Fluttercube and tried to tug it away from Rainbow Dash. “Mine!”

“Hey, let go!” Rainbow Dash yelled.

“Um, excuse me?” Fluttershy said in a meek voice. “Actually, it’s mine, and it contains the friendship data of all my animal friends, so if you could both give it back…”

“No!”

“Butt out!”

“Eeep!” Fluttershy shrunk. “Well, um, okay…”

As the other two continued fighting over the Fluttercube, Applejack put a hoof around Fluttershy. She shook her head and let out a long sigh. “Look at those two, already bickering like two little foals…” Feeling Fluttershy trembling against her and hearing her soft whimpering, Applejack gave the filly a sympathetic look. “Looks like it’s gonna be a long apocalypse, sugar cube…” Applejack grinned. “But don’t you worry about a thing! Y’all are safe with us!”

Fluttershy peeked out from behind her hooves. “Really? So all those terrible things that you were talking about earlier are all gone? And the world isn’t actually ending?”

“Oh, it’s definitely ending!” Rainbow Dash declared. As she spoke, she held the Fluttercube above her with one hoof and with the other pushed against Twilight’s head as the mare thrashed about trying to reach the prize. “Things are so bad that only totally awesome ponies like me can fight through the craziness going on!”

“Oh, it ain’t as bad as all that!” Applejack said, waving her hoof dismissively. “Just a couple thousand monsters here and there, and no safe place to head for on account of everywhere being overrun or destroyed! But shoot, hun! Me and Dash have managed so far, so ain’t nothing to be afraid of so long as we’re around!”

“Nooooo!” Fluttershy whimpered, hiding behind her hooves again. “I should have stayed in bed today! I never should have left my nice, safe den in the ventilation shafts!”

Twilight fell flat on her face after failing to get the Fluttercube back. She tilted her head and said in a whiny voice, “Testing!”

“I told you, there’s no testing up here!” Rainbow Dash retorted. “This is the real world, not some robot’s simulation!”

Twilight’s eyes filled up with tears. “Waaaahaaah!”

“Oh boy…” Applejack fixed her hat over her eyes. “It really is gonna be a long apocalypse…”

Seeing Fluttershy crying, Twilight quit her whining and moved to pat her friend’s back, and spoke some words that gave Fluttershy some comfort: “Everything will be just fine!”

Unknown Whereabouts

Elsewhere, a long while ago, two ponies emerged from the Aperhoof Emergency Arctic Escape Tunnel into a bunker placed in the middle of an arctic desert. A snowstorm raged all around, and snow leaked into the building. The two ponies were wrapped head-to-hoof in winter apparel, including scarves, coats, boots, and hats. But they were very stylish coats.

“Good thing we got out of there before it got crazy!” declared the pink pony with cotton candy hair. Director Pinkamena, or Pinkie Pie, wore a big grin and was bouncing up and down.

“Well, I don’t know, darling,” said the other pony, a white unicorn with a purple mane. Her name was Rarity. She was busy checking some scanning and monitoring equipment. “It seems plenty crazy out here too… And don’t you feel bad, leaving everypony behind with that crazy AI?”

Pinkie Pie snorted and laughed. She waved her hoof dismissively. “They’ll be fine, silly! Besides, that’s what I’m paying them for!”

“I see…” Rarity raised an eyebrow.

“What about you, Dr. Rarity?” Pinkie asked as she bounced closer to her friend and got in her face. “I thought you went mad with grief after you lost your sister and started doing really crazy experiments by making robot Sweetie Belles!”

“Pfft!” Rarity turned her head and waved her hoof. “Oh, darling, I didn’t go mad with grief, nor did I lose my sister! I had her frozen in cryostasis, and I made all those robots so I could test cybernetic parts for her. All so I could save the dear. Which I did. See, I brought her here with us.” Rarity stepped aside, revealing a cybernetically enhanced Sweetie Belle. She looked a bit like a Sweeitebot, but she was made mostly of flesh and blood, with only one glowing yellow eye and two robot limbs. The filly wore a small frown. Having only been awoken from cryosleep, Sweetie Belle was disoriented and a little confused about what was going on. Smiling widely, Rarity gave her sister a big hug. “Ohhh! Isn’t it wonderful? I can’t wait to show her little friends that she’s alright!”

“That is amazing!” Pinkie Pie agreed. “And I sure hope we can find her friends! But you’re right, it does look crazy out there, according to all these blips and beeps on this radar. Like, maybe the world ended or something. Huh. Good thing we’re stuck here until this blizzard dies down!”

“Oh, Sweetie Belle…” Rarity gave Sweetie Belle a worried look. “You aren’t cold, are you, darling? Here, let me get you one of my fabulous trench coats! These frills are all the rage these days!”

Pinkie laughed. “That’s our Dr. Rarity for ya! She got her science degree in fashion!”

Rarity chuckled. “Well, that’s one way to put it… Actually, I just did a dual major in arts and biomedical science. Father did always say learning different subjects is just the thing to help generate new ideas in-”

“Hey! I just realized I left all my sisters in cryosleep down there!” Pinkie looked horrified for a moment, but the moment passed and she shrugged. “Oh well. I’m sure all the robots will take good care of them!”

Rarity, donning a look of concern, pulled Sweetie Belle closer to her. “Um… Yes, quite… Say, are you sure we’ll be alright? What with everything going up here… We ought to check our supplies and see how long we can hold out. I’d hate for Sweetie Belle not to get proper nutritional meals.”

“Don’t worry, silly! This place is packed full of cake, streamers, confetti, and everything else we could possibly need for nonstop parties! Yep! We can survive here for a looooong time!”

“Yes, I was afraid you’d say something like that…” Rarity let out a long, end-of-the-world sigh, and braced herself for the months, or perhaps years, to come that she’d have to spend trapped in the bunker as they waited for the calamity out there to end.

Author's Note

So, that's the ending. I've been told it's kind of inconclusive, but I don't have plans on continuing this, as I haven't actually played Half-Life. Well, if anyone has any complaints, go ahead and tell me. I appreciate constructive feedback.