Ten years after Celestia disappeared, Dash is accidentally transported to a strange world – and in her race to escape the System, she faces an enemy she never expected.
No knowledge of TRON is necessary to enjoy the story.
Ten years after Celestia disappeared with no warning nor trace, Twilight Sparkle receives a message from the lost princess calling for help. When Twilight and Rainbow speed to Canterlot, Dash is accidentally transported to a strange world – but in her race to escape the System, she faces an enemy she never expected.
Twilight winced at the involuntary shrill tenor of her own voice and focused on the cup of tea in her hooves. When did they get so shaky?
“A sabbatical, my dear Twilight.” That’s what she’d thought she’d heard. “It’s nothing to get worked up about,” Celestia added, levitating her own cup to her lips—to hide a motherly grin, Twilight was sure. She knew she was reacting poorly, but the self-knowledge wasn’t helping her maintain control.
“And really, in many ways I have you to thank for the opportunity,” Celestia continued.
“You’re leaving because of me?” Instant regret, even before she saw the shadow of pain flit across her mentor’s face. Twilight decided it was in her teacup’s best interests to set it down on the table in front of her, before it vibrated to pieces. She tried to count her breaths but they were coming too erratically to keep track.
Celestia set her teacup down too. “Twilight Sparkle,” she said sternly. “Look at me.” Twilight reluctantly forced herself to look up into the princess’ eyes. Celestia’s face softened, and she reached out a hoof to rest on one of Twilight’s. Warmth instantly suffused the unicorn, who managed to draw in a deep, shuddery breath. “You returned my only family to me with the Elements of Harmony. For that alone, I will be forever grateful to you. But then you did even more starting this past Nightmare Night, and began helping my sister in adjusting to this new millennium after her… after her time away.”
“Of course, Princess,” Twilight murmured.
“And because of your efforts, I think we have reached a point where it is safe for me to take a little time to myself. I’ve discussed it with Luna and she agrees: she can manage things for a time on her own. Of course, she won’t be on her own, will she?”
After a moment, Twilight straightened and shook her head. “No, of course not. I’ll help her however I can.”
A smile lit Celestia’s face, and Twilight’s heart began to slow. “I’m so very glad to hear you say that, Twilight.” The alicorn leaned in conspiratorially, and Twilight found herself mirroring the motion almost subconsciously. “Do you have any idea how many centuries it’s been since I’ve had some time off?”
A rueful grin tugged at Twilight’s lips. “You know, I never thought about that.” They both chuckled, and Twilight felt the last of the tension drain out of her limbs. This would be fine. Just a temporary thing. They’d be fine. “What will you do? What does an alicorn princess do on vacation?”
“Oh, I have plans, my faithful student. Something I’ve wanted to do… to finish, really… for a long time.” Celestia settled back on her overstuffed cushion and reached for her teacup again with her magic. “I think I’ll be gone a few weeks. Perhaps a month at most. And when I get back”—her eyes twinkled over her cup—“I’ll have something very special to show you indeed.”
“She told me she would be working in her sub-basement office that night, and she didn’t wish to be disturbed,” Luna said. The younger princess led them through the lower levels of Canterlot Castle. Mildew crept up the rough stone walls, kept at bay by torches flickering every few feet in dusty sconces. A cobweb landed on Twilight’s snout and she sneezed, the hard sound echoing up and down the corridor.
“Ah… excuse me.”
Luna waved it off as the pair came to a heavy oaken door that creaked open for them when Luna ignited her horn. “After a day, I began to worry. I could sense her presence within the castle yet she had not joined me for meals and did not respond to my summons. I came down to check on her and found her room empty, as you see it now.” The door swung wide at Luna’s touch, and Twilight stepped inside.
She had spent many an afternoon in Celestia’s private study in the castle proper: a luxuriously appointed chamber filled with art and artifacts collected during centuries of overseeing Equestria. Plush rugs, comfortable chairs, a beautiful slab of a desk. Twilight was particularly fond of a tapestry—historically inaccurate, Celestia had pointed out once—depicting the princess presenting the gift of magic to the ancient ponies of Equestria. She had spent hours admiring it, analyzing the artistry of every last thread and stitch.
But this room? Twilight looked around, frowning, trying to reconcile it with the regal image of Celestia in her mind. Bare walls carved from the living bedrock. No adornments. A large, utilitarian desk—Twilight recognized the maker; she had similar worktables in her own basement laboratory back in Ponyville—with some scrolls and parchments neatly stacked on it and a map of Equestria hung above it. A lone bookcase on the far wall, filled with well-worn tomes. The only concession to comfort was a cushion on the floor before the desk, large enough for an alicorn.
“When I attempt to perform a locator spell on her, I am drawn here,” Luna continued from behind Twilight, “but as you can see, there are no signs of her. The results of the spell are unusual, as well. I get a generalized sense of her presence rather than a specific location, and no direction to guide me to her. Perhaps worst of all…” Twilight bit her lip at the barely concealed tremor in Luna’s voice. “I have been unable to find her during my nightly dreamwalking, and I should be able to visit anypony in Equestria.”
Twilight moved to the desk and began leafing through the papers there, Luna hesitating at the threshold before following. The parchments were riddled with bizarre language and complicated diagrams labeled with unfamiliar symbols, but she thought she could make out the basic idea. “It seems like she was trying to design some sort of… machine?”
“That is the best I have been able to determine.” Luna sniffed and cleared her throat, glancing around the room. “My sister had not involved me in this work. I do know she started it long ago, while I was still, ah, imprisoned. I... lack the relevant knowledge or know-how to be able to understand her notes, and I have been reluctant to share them with anypony. It seems clear my sister wanted this kept secret. Stars above, for all I know it could be dangerous to the wrong pony.”
Luna took a deep, steadying breath and touched Twilight’s shoulder. “I believe you may be the right pony.”
Twilight turned, startled. “Princess?”
“Celestia spoke of you often. I know how impressed she was with your abilities and accomplishments, how proud she was of your progress. She trusted you without question and thus I do too.”
Luna bowed her head for a moment. Twilight’s breath caught in her throat when Luna looked back up at her, eyes gleaming with steady resolve and a tear tracing down her muzzle. “I brought you here to ask if you would take Celestia’s notes and attempt to follow in her hoofsteps. You have been a true friend to me in these past months, as I navigate this new life and catch up on what I missed, but I am a thousand years out of date. And here, in these arcane arts?” She gestured to the strange blueprints and shook her head. “You are knowledgeable, bright, and more familiar with my sister than any other pony alive. It’s my hope you may be able to shed some light on where she has gone, or what has happened to her.”
Twilight bowed her head in turn, frowning to herself. It could take years, decades even, to figure out what she was doing down here, she thought. Can I keep a secret from my friends for so long? She thought of everything Celestia had done for her, meant to her.
She met Luna’s gaze, her eyes burnished with tears, her brow furrowed with determination. “Of course I will, Princess Luna.” She hesitated just a moment before admitting, “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
Luna smiled, a small sad thing. “Nor do I, Twilight Sparkle. See if you can find her.”
Twilight waited on a hastily erected stage before a large crowd of ponies in the courtyard of Canterlot Castle. Her Element of Harmony weighed heavily upon her head. Rainbow Dash had ended up on her right along with Pinkie Pie, their Elements around their necks. To her left, Princess Luna stepped up to a lectern embossed with the Equestrian seal. Beside the princess, her brother Shining Armor stood resolute in full regalia, bookended by the other Bearers with their own Elements gleaming in the sun.
“Citizens of Equestria.” Luna’s magically enhanced voice echoed around the courtyard. Twilight took a deep breath and schooled her expression into compliance, hoping her face didn’t betray the roiling anxiety in her gut. She glanced right and Dash caught her eye to give her a reassuring smile.
“I am afraid there is no easy way to say this. Princess Celestia is not, as has been reported, on an extended sabbatical. In fact, she is missing.”
Dead silence. Almost immediately, a swell of murmured concern, bordering on shouted panic, surged through the crowd. To her credit, Luna was a steadfast rock as the wave of dismay broke against her and receded, subdued by her poise and her next words.
“You need not fear. As my sister did for so many years, I will continue to watch over both the night and the day, and the Equestrian Guard”—she nodded to Shining—“and Elements of Harmony”—she swept a hoof over them all—“will continue to keep you and your homes safe. And Princess Celestia’s most accomplished student will lead the search for our beloved Princess of the Sun.”
Twilight set her jaw, strengthened by the hopeful faces staring up at her. And I’m going to get her back.
Sparks skittered across the library basement’s floor before burning out at Rainbow Dash’s hooves. “Uh, Twilight?”
Twilight jolted and slammed her head into the ceiling of the large metal box she was crouched in; her galvanic welder slipped from her magical grasp and clattered to the floor. “Ouch! Ahhh, Rainbow, hi.” She rubbed at her head and inspected the half-completed weld through thick, dark goggles. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Dash winced and took a half-step forward. “Yeah, sorry about that… Spike let me in, said you were down here. Everything going okay?”
“Fine,” Twilight said absently. She judged the weld satisfactory and picked the welder back up in her magic. “Did you need something? I’m right in the middle of this.”
“No, I just wanted to see if you needed anything. Help with, uh, whatever it is you’re doing there, or picking up supplies, or… I don’t know... getting some lunch? Have you eaten?”
“Spike made daisy sandwiches earlier. Shield your eyes.”
“Wha— ah!”
Twilight channeled her magic back into the welder and it ignited with a searing brightness. She would have seen stars if not for her protective goggles. A few crackling moments later, she killed the welder and pushed her goggles up on her forehead to squint at the finished bead. “Okay! That should do it.”
Dash peered at her from behind a wing. “Is it safe to come out now?”
Twilight laughed. “Don’t be silly, it’s only dangerous when the welder’s active.” She waggled it in midair and Dash eyed it mistrustfully.
“Uh huh. So, anything I can do to help?”
“Rainbow…” A sigh, and a twisting feeling in her gut. “We’ve talked about this. You know what I’m doing here is a secret, for the princesses.” Twilight blinked in realization and frowned. “You shouldn’t even be down here. I’ll have to talk to Spike.”
Dash waved a hoof at the basement. “It’s not like I have any idea what any of this is, yannow.” The room was filled with more large metal boxes, some half-assembled like the one Twilight had been working on, some stuffed with glowing glass tubes and rat’s nests of insulated wiring. Furniture and storage boxes had been shoved against the wall, and high-gauge cabling snaked everywhere, some ends attached to metal boxes, some ends coiled in wait. A workbench with a magnifying glass on an articulated arm was covered in electronic components.
Twilight looked around proudly. “It’s coming along nicely.”
“But what is coming along nicely?”
Twilight spun and glared at her friend. “You know I can’t tell you! I explained this yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that! You can’t be here! The others understand!”
“No, they don’t!” Dash shot back. “They’ve just given up on trying to help you, and I’m not gonna do that! I’m gonna be right here every day until you get it through that egghead skull of yours that you don’t have to do this alone! We can help you. I can help you!”
Twilight’s mouth twisted. Egghead, huh? “And how exactly can you help me? I don’t need you to pick up supplies or get lunch—I have Spike. And you said it yourself. You don’t have any idea what any of this is.”
For a moment, Twilight could have sworn that Rainbow looked a little crestfallen, but she blinked and it was gone. Dash stood up straight and puffed out her chest. “You could teach me!”
“Teach you?” A selection of Celestia’s notes, and her own annotations, spun through Twilight’s mind. She couldn’t help it—she laughed. “Rainbow, I can barely get you to read a foal’s chapter book. How could you possibly expect me to teach you about a com— about what I’m doing here?”
Immediately, Twilight knew she’d made a mistake. Dash shrank, looking absolutely stricken. Her mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out. She shut her mouth instead and swallowed, blinking.
Twilight took a step forward. “Rainbow, I… it’s just that this is so complicated I barely understand it, and I’ve been working with it for months. I know you want to help, and I really appreciate the thought behind that, but any benefit from having a partner would be vastly outweighed by the time it took to get you up to speed in the first place. Does that make sense?”
Dash had taken a step back, and her face was tight. “Yep. Sure. Perfect sense.” She turned, her wings drooping. “I’ll get out of your mane.”
Twilight reached out a hoof as Dash trudged toward the stairs, but hesitated. Should she reconsider? She had definitely been a little too blunt. And it really would take forever to teach anypony else all this… least of all Dash, who wasn’t exactly academic material… Was soothing her friend’s feelings worth delaying her work? Worth breaking her promise to Princess Luna?
“Rainbow?”
Dash paused at the top of the stairs and turned to look back down at Twilight.
“I… I’m sorry about… what I said. If you wanted...”
Her expression brightened a little.
“...I got the new Daring Do in yesterday. I know I usually loan it to you after I read it, but I don’t know when I’ll get to it. You can tell Spike to get it for you… if you wanted.”
Dash stared at her for a moment as the brightness leached from her eyes. Without another word, she turned and left the room.
Twilight bit her lip. She’d thought that would help—giving Dash first crack at a book they’d both been waiting for. Did it make things worse? Maybe after the comment about chapter books… She shook herself and pushed her goggles back down as she went over to the next empty metal box, summoning her welder again. She’d find some other way to make it up to Rainbow Dash. Rainbow would understand.
When she glanced over her personal bookshelf on the way to bed that night, Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone was sitting there, untouched.
The days bled together as Twilight toiled below the library, building metal casings and rebuilding electronic boards and refining her understanding of Celestia’s work.
Once a week, she visited with her friends, for lunch or an afternoon at the spa. She tried her very best to pay attention as they talked about their lives, but Rarity’s issues with snooty Canterlot customers and Applejack’s issues with hardy root fungus were just… hard to care about when she knew what was waiting for her back home. She hoped they didn’t notice her distracted air. If nothing else, they were generous enough to not call her out on it.
Dash acted like her normal self at these get-togethers, animatedly discussing the latest Wonderbolts news or demonstrating the particulars of an aerial maneuver she’d been practicing with wild movements of her hooves through the air. She acted so much like her usual self that it took Twilight several lunches to realize Dash wasn’t engaging with her at all. They never sat together. Dash didn’t acknowledge her—admittedly infrequent—contributions to the group’s conversations.
Realizing this only intensified the mild guilt she’d been feeling over neglecting her friends. Twilight realized that she really had hurt Rainbow Dash’s feelings that day in the basement, even if she wasn’t sure what she could or should have done differently.
She vowed to figure out some way to make it up to Rainbow. She’d figure it out. But it could wait one more day—she was at a critical point in her work right now, and couldn’t interrupt herself. One more day wouldn’t hurt anything any further than it already was.
She said the same thing to herself the next day.
And the next day.
And the next.
Before Twilight could quite figure out how it happened, she’d managed to go weeks and then months without truly addressing the manticore in the room with Dash, and it had been long enough that it felt… too late. Her guilt had calcified and smoothed over within herself, easier to ignore with every passing day, even as each day’s passing only increased its weight.
She had tried to address it by not addressing it, by just picking up where they’d left off and acting as though nothing was wrong. Twilight asked Dash a direct question during one of their spa days, one she couldn’t ignore or pretend was directed at someone else, and Dash had immediately and cheerfully answered as though nothing was wrong, and then immediately and cheerfully went back to ignoring Twilight unless she had no choice.
Twilight realized too late that she’d shot herself in the hoof with this approach. Now she absolutely couldn’t turn around and try to drag this problem into the light, not after she herself had glossed right over it.
And so it went. Twilight and Dash reached a new sort of equilibrium, going through the motions of friendship with one another—the birthday parties, the weekly visits, the Wonderbolts tryouts that gradually petered out without Twilight really noticing. To all appearances, they were devoted friends. And really, Twilight said to herself, their friendship was just as vibrant and fulfilling as any of the others, which is to say not really at all.
But that was only because she was so isolated by her work, and it was crucial work, as all of her friends agreed whenever she expressed doubt—even Dash. They all understood she needed to find Princess Celestia, not just for Equestria’s sake, or Luna’s sake, but for her own.
It was only temporary. She would find Celestia and then she could move on with her life, reconnect with her friends, catch up on the time she’d missed with them. She just had to prioritize, right now. They understood.
At the end of another day, Twilight stretched at her workstation in the basement. All around her, metal towers hummed warmly in the darkness. Cables snaked underhoof. Before her, one wall was glowing, and on it was an image of Ponyville, as though she were flying above it in her hot-air balloon and looking down at the town. Sixty times a second, magic updated the image with subtle changes, creating the illusion of movement.
It wasn’t actually Ponyville, of course. She wouldn’t need a roomful of arcane equipment to power a simple scrying spell.
It had taken her years, the better part of a decade in fact, but she felt she finally understood Celestia’s work, and looking around the room at the results of her understanding filled her with pride. And yet, in a more real sense, she felt that she didn’t understand it at all.
Celestia’s notes and diagrams were intricate, impressive, and frustratingly incomplete. She’d made some intellectual leaps as she’d worked through the princess’s research, purely out of necessity to bridge the gaps she encountered, and she agonized constantly over misjudging things the ancient alicorn had taken for granted. But even with said gaps, everything had been laid out before her. Twilight had followed the trail left by her mentor, until it abruptly ended.
She’d had nowhere left to go. Celestia’s notes spoke of a simulation, a sort of hypothetical reality, and described a means of creating one using a brand-new device she referred to as a computational engine. But that was all. Of course, there had been no reason for Celestia to commit her motives to paper. Why would she, when of course she knew them herself so well? But Twilight had no idea why her mentor had wanted to create this, what she wanted to use it for.
Tiny pony-shaped figures moved about their business on the glowing wall, unaware they existed only in the heart of a machine. Unaware of anything at all, in fact: they were by no means sapient or even sentient, just programs following set directives.
Twilight didn’t know why Celestia had been trying to make such a system possible, but far worse, she had no idea whatsoever how it could be connected to the princess’s bizarre disappearance.
She’d gotten her own simulation up and running weeks ago. She’d programmed in everything she knew about Ponyville and the ponies living in it. A few false starts here and there, where she’d gotten parameters wrong, but with the kinks ironed out it had been very stable. At any time, day or night, she could poke her head in the basement lab, glance at the screen, and see Ponyville and its denizens acting exactly the way they did in real life.
And every time, she wondered, So what?
Of course, it was an incredible achievement. She could only begin to think of the papers she could write on this new technology, but hadn’t started any of them, not only because she had promised Luna to keep her work secret but also because of practical concerns: she wasn’t sure that any journals currently existed capable of peer-reviewing them.
This was a fantastical creation, something never before seen, heard of, or even imagined within Equestria, but Twilight was forced to admit that it also seemed utterly pointless. Why simulate Ponyville, or any other town, when she could just go outside and actually experience it?
Sometimes it made Twilight uneasy, seeing her friends and neighbors moving about up on her wall. None of them knew this existed, which made watching their virtual counterparts—acting as realistically as Twilight could manage—almost voyeuristic. But it wasn’t real. Just because Twilight could stand at the top of the basement stairs and look back and forth between two Rainbow Dashes, one virtually snoozing on a simulation of a cloud and one physically snoozing on an actual cloud in the sky outside her window, didn’t mean that both of them were real.
Only one of them was real. Only one of them had been so completely and utterly failed by a friend.
Everypony had been counting on her. She didn’t want to admit to Luna that she didn’t know where to go from here. She didn’t want to admit to her friends that her years of distancing herself to work on this had not, in the end, borne any fruit. She was not any closer to finding Princess Celestia.
Twilight curled up at her basement workstation and wept.
She startled awake. The lab was darkened, lit only by the glow of the wall display, itself darkened by simulated night. She remembered snatches of a dream, something clawing at her face?
With an anguished groan, she forced herself to her hooves and gingerly traced the creases her control panel had left on her cheek. I have to stop doing this…
She climbed the stairs, emerging into a library lit by a lone candle Spike had left burning for her. A pinch of magic extinguished it and she kept going, up more stairs to their bedroom.
Spike’s snores reached her before she got there. He wasn’t allowed in the basement either, so she had no idea when he’d turned in for the night. Twilight nudged the door open and carefully stepped past him. Not for the first time she remembered when they’d first moved here, and how he’d slept curled up in a basket at the foot of her bed. Much too big for that now, he’d graduated to his own full bed alongside hers.
Twilight pulled herself into her own bed, settling beneath the star-patterned covers. Letting her eyes drift shut, she tried to recapture the sleep she’d already found accidentally two stories below, draped across her workstation. Pillow’s much more comfortable...
A sudden low rumbling snapped her eyes open and she pushed herself up. Across the room, Spike rolled over in his sleep and let out a fiery belch. Even in her half-asleep state, Twilight reflexively ignited her horn and grabbed the note forming out of ashes in midair, bringing it over for her to read in bed. Spike snored on, oblivious.
Seconds later, Spike sat up in bed abruptly, startled awake himself by a loud banging noise. He looked around wildly, saw Twilight’s bed was empty, the covers thrown back—saw the bedroom door had been blasted off its hinges—saw a singed roll of parchment laying on the floor between the two beds—heard hoofbeats disappearing in the distance. He jumped out of bed and picked it up, unfurling it to read, and his eyes went wide.
Rainbow Dash careened through the dark woods, illuminated only by distant starlight, her hooves pounding the tight-packed earth. Ahead, at the edge of sight, a shape whipped around a tree and disappeared. She poured on speed and rounded the tree, and caught a glimpse of red ribbon and blonde tail before it vanished into the underbrush, drawling laughter floating in its wake.
Dash growled in frustration and redoubled her efforts, sweat coursing through her coat, the salty wetness burning in the cuts and scrapes she accumulated with each new plunge through thicket and shrub. That taunting laughter mingled with her quarry’s hooves striking the ground. She hated it.
Right when she finally felt herself gaining, closing the gap, something shifted: The laughter’s cadence and pitch changed, lilting higher, and Dash burst through the undergrowth just in time to see a streak of pink before she was in the air, catapulting forward, watching the ground spin beneath her as she tumbled. She landed flat on her back, air leaving her lungs in a great lurch of breath, wings splayed out under her, staring back the way she’d come at a gnarled tree root that had broken through the surface of the dirt.
“Aw, ponyfeathers.”
Dash awoke on the floor next to her bed, flat on her back, gasping for breath, wings splayed out under her. She looked around wildly for a moment, until she came back to herself enough to realize it was only the dream again, and she let her head sink back down, gazing up at the ceiling.
The dream was nothing new, and nothing to worry about. She remembered Twilight explaining once about how dreams were her brain’s way of making sure it stored her memories right or something, so no big deal. Dash wasn’t convinced; she’d never chased Applejack through the woods in the middle of the night and had definitely never had a problem keeping up with her in a race, so this wasn’t some memory. And why would her brain keep replaying the same one over and over anyway? And it’s not like Twilight got everything right.
Rolling to her hooves and shaking out her mane, Dash sighed and walked through her darkened home to get a drink from the kitchen. She barely registered a Wonderbolts poster as she passed it, fallen and half-curled behind a desk covered in weather reports. A framed photo, featuring her rising out of a multicolored halo carrying four ponies, gathered dust next to it.
Judging by the moon’s position in the sky, it was sometime in the wee hours of the night. She’d swapped shifts with Open Skies so he could see his colt in this year’s schoolhouse play, which meant an early morning wrangling clouds for the day’s weather. Ought to get back to sleep. She nudged open her kitchen door instead, moving out onto the cloud-formed veranda encircling her skyhouse.
Cool night air wafted through her wings and she stretched them out, ruffling her feathers. A quick flight through the starry sky should be enough to shake off the last remnants of the dream, and she nosed a few stray primaries back into place.
That pink streak had been new, though.
Striking a pose at the edge of the cloud, Dash prepared to launch herself into the dark but stopped herself before taking the plunge. A strange pink light bobbing along the ground in the distance caught her eye. “What the hay?” It actually looked kind of familiar, now that she thought about it, though very out of place as it came toward her through the night. It almost looked like… “Twilight?”
“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight shouted as she came to a panting halt underneath her blue pegasus friend, her horn shining to light her way. “Rainbow! I need… a huge favor!”
Dash blinked. Twilight… needed her for something? She’d have been less surprised by a lighting strike on a clear day. Something bubbled up inside her but she immediately and reflexively and effortlessly forced it back down. She opened her mouth to dismiss Twilight, to tell her she was going back to bed, but the look on her face—elation, but with just a touch of terror mixed in—gave her pause.
She fluttered down to stand next to the gasping purple unicorn instead. “What’s going on? Is there a problem?”
Twilight gulped air, her eyes tearing up from the exertion. “I need a ride—to Canterlot!”
Dash almost rolled her eyes, and did unfurl her wings to fly back up home. “What am I, a taxi service? You can’t have the princess send a chariot in the morning?”
Twilight looked startled, but at least she’d more or less caught her breath. “How could the princess send a chariot? I don’t even know how she sent me the—oh, Luna.”
“Uh, yeah.” Dash squinted at the unicorn and let her wings fold back up. Twilight was acting weird, even for her. “Who else?”
“Never mind,” Twilight said, pacing back and forth. “I promise I’ll explain on the way, but I have to go now! It can’t wait ‘til morning.”
Dash found herself intrigued against her will. A flight to Canterlot may have been a little more than she’d planned on, but the round trip would definitely help her get back to sleep.
“Alright,” she said begrudgingly, “but as soon as we’re at altitude, you’re getting me up to speed. Hop on.”
They hurtled through the night air, Twilight’s teeth chattering a little as she held tight to Rainbow’s back, powerful wings pumping on either side of her. “Aren’t-t y-you freezing up-p-p here?”
Dash glanced back over her shoulder with a trademark cocky grin. “Nah, you get used to it.” Partly true, at least—most pegasi weren’t as bothered by cold as other ponies. Besides, she had a passenger on this flight. Like flying under a blanket. She shifted her hindquarters to settle Twilight into a more aerodynamic position. “So, spill. What’s so important that you had to get to Canterlot pronto?”
Twilight concentrated for a moment, her horn glowing softly, and Dash felt a cocoon of artificial warmth wrap around her passenger. “I got a letter from the princess tonight.”
The pegasus frowned. “You get letters from Luna all the time, Twilight. So what?”
“Not from Luna, Rainbow.”
Dash frowned. “But you said—” She started a bit and they lost a few feet of altitude, Twilight yelping and burying her face in Dash’s mane. “You mean from Princess Celestia?! You got a letter from the princess? What did it say?”
Twilight peered uneasily at the ground blurring below them. “Only that she needed my help. I’m expecting to find out more when we get there,” she said. “You can see why I couldn’t wait.”
Dash had to admit that Princess Celestia showing back up out of nowhere was a pretty good reason for Twilight to come barreling over to her place looking for a ride. “This is... incredible! After all these years. Do you have any idea what she needs help with?”
“I… I think it might have to do with her computational engine…” Twilight said in a thoughtful tone, like she’d forgotten for a moment that she had an audience.
“Her what now?” Dash blinked and looked back at Twilight.
“Oh! It’s, uh...” Twilight bit her lip.
“It’s something to do with what you’ve been doing in your basement, isn’t it,” Dash said. It wasn’t really a question. She found herself caught between intense curiosity and bitterness. Curiosity at the prospect of finally finding out just what Twilight had been doing in secret, and bitterness at the reminder of whatever it was that had stolen Twilight away.
She felt Twilight tense up against her, but a moment later the unicorn exhaled decisively, and all that tension vanished.
“Yes. That’s exactly it. When Celestia disappeared, it looked like she was trying to design and build something that her notes called a computational engine. Luna asked me to try to figure it out, because it looked like our only lead to her. Celestia had apparently kept it a secret for centuries, so we didn’t think we could risk letting anypony else know about it in case it was dangerous. I got mine working only recently, but I haven’t been able to figure out what the point of it is, or…” Twilight hesitated. “Or why it should have been a secret at all. As far as I can tell, it’s just a… just an interesting science project, nothing more. Nothing dangerous, and nothing that explains what happened to her.”
The bitterness rose up hard in Dash then, almost choking her. All these years spent… spent like this, and it was pointless? She had always consoled herself with the knowledge that while their friendship may have suffered, it was for a good cause. She had accepted that sacrifice if it meant Twilight could find Celestia. She swallowed hard, looking straight ahead so that Twilight couldn’t see the expression on her face.
“Well,” Dash said, careful to keep her tone even, “we’re almost there, and Celestia can just… explain everything.” Twilight was silent, and Dash wondered if she was thinking the same things, about the toll the years had taken.
The castle rose up before them, upthrust pale marble glittering in the moonlight. Dash cleared her throat. “Listen, it’s been a while since I’ve carried anypony around like this. Landing might be a little rough, is all I’m saying? Hang on…”
“Luna, I’m so sorry to disturb you like this, but—”
“Nonsense, Twilight, of course you were right to come. Did you bring the letter, by chance?”
Twilight shook her head regretfully. “I was so… so shocked and surprised I just dropped it. I didn’t realize until we were almost here.” Luna sighed, but nodded her understanding.
They were cantering down through the castle, headed for Celestia’s secret workroom with Rainbow Dash trailing behind them. Twilight had tried to suggest that Dash turn around and go home, that she could make her own way home as soon as she’d gotten the full story, but Dash wouldn’t hear it. She wasn’t going to wait another minute to find out what was going on if she didn’t have to.
“All it said was, I need your help. Please come to my study.”
“Very cryptic,” mused Luna.
“I agree. Naturally, I came right away, thanks to Rainbow here.”
“No big deal. I couldn’t sleep. I was about to go for a little fly anyway.”
Luna raised a slim eyebrow at her. “Bad dreams, Rainbow Dash? I would hope my night is treating my subjects better than that.”
“I—uh, your night is just fine, Princess,” Dash said, then caught herself. “Better than fine! Your night is… awesome. Yeah.” She grimaced.
Twilight shot her a look, which Dash carefully ignored, but Luna grinned. “I’m sure neither I nor my night are insulted. I do apologize for the interruption of your sleep, whether due to nightmares or bringing Twilight to Canterlot.”
“Really, it’s fine, Your Highness.”
“Surely we needn’t be so formal, Rainbow Dash. You may call me Luna.”
“Well, Luna, you can call me Dash, everyone else does.”
“Thank you, Dash.” The princess drew to a stop. “Here we are.”
Twilight, apparently recognizing the place, halted easily alongside Luna. Dash managed to catch herself before bumping into either of them, but only just. She looked around with interest and was disappointed by bare stone walls and an unremarkable door set into one side of the hallway. Luna opened the door and they all held their breath—but exhaled when nopony was inside.
The three ponies stepped in cautiously, examining the empty room. Dash saw nothing but a workspace and some books. “So,” she said flatly, “where is she?”
Twilight frowned. “I don’t know…” Her horn lit and she swept it in an arc across the room, gasping when it passed over the bookcase. “Luna! I can feel her!”
Luna turned, her own horn sparking to life, and she gasped as well. “Sister!” The two ran forward to the bookcase. “I too can sense her presence—yet I cannot contact her. And I still have never been able to enter her dreams.”
Dash felt only slightly out of place as Twilight and Luna performed more spells, talking excitedly with each other. They’d detected some sort of passageway behind the bookcase that they hadn’t found before, but they couldn’t figure out how to get in. Finally, Twilight noticed something and reached for one of the books—Dash caught the title Simulacra and Simulation, by Boerdrillard—and pulled it toward her. A low rumble grew up around them and the bookcase slid to the side, revealing a stone passageway curving down into darkness.
Luna stared. “I had no idea this existed… it is not in the official plans for the castle. Sister, what were you up to?”
“She must have dug it out herself, and used magic to seal and cloak the entranceway,” Twilight suggested.
Dash peered over their shoulders, down the rough steps. Wall sconces burst to life, beckoning them deeper. “Shouldn’t we check it out? She must be down there, right?”
Twilight nodded. “Right, of course. Luna?”
“After you, Twilight.”
They all headed down the passage single-file, the sound of their hoofsteps echoing around them. Dash felt the air growing even damper as they descended, the humidity making her feathers stick to her fur uncomfortably. Worse, she couldn’t help but picture how deep they must be below the ground, how far they must be from the open sky, and a shiver ran through her. Twilight and Luna acted no worse for the wear, so she worked to keep her unease from showing.
The passage eventually leveled out into a hallway. As they headed for the end, the temperature rose, the air turning warm and muggy. Dash grimaced and ruffled her wings, lifting them slightly off her body. Warm, humid air was not her idea of a good time.
The room at the end of the hallway would have felt cavernous if it wasn’t packed full of humming boxes like nothing Dash had ever seen. Or… She paused, thinking back. They looked an awful lot like what she’d seen Twilight working on years ago, in the library basement. But there were a lot more of them, and they were actually all finished.
A few more wall sconces flickered to life as they entered, pushing the darkness back, but not by much. As the room became more visible, Twilight bounded to the nearest box and examined it eagerly before turning back to the others.
“These are just like the ones I built based on Celestia’s notes! This has to be her own computational engine.” She gave the room a bemused once-over. “Hers must be much more powerful…”
Dash trotted over and checked out the machine. It was a dull gray, with little lights blinking on one side. Bundles of rope or cord or something came out the back and led to the other machines surrounding them in the gloom.
She nudged Twilight. “What’re these?”
Twilight glanced down at the ropes. “Oh, they’re cables. They link up multiple smaller computational engines so they can work together, making the system as a whole more powerful.” At Dash’s blank look, she sighed. “Just… don’t touch anything.”
Luna was slowly turning in a circle, taking in the extent of Celestia’s work, shock plain on her face. “My sister built all this in secret?”
“Well, she worked on it for decades, maybe centuries,” Twilight pointed out. “I was able to do it more quickly because she had laid everything out in her notes.”
Luna turned to Twilight. “And you have constructed a similar system in Ponyville?”
“Yes. Smaller, but yes.”
“Do you think you can operate this one?”
“Probably,” Twilight murmured, peering deeper into the room, following some of the ropes—cables, Dash reminded herself. They all seemed to lead back to one box in the center that looked different from the others. There was a cushion in front of it, like somepony should sit there.
Twilight settled in on the cushion and inspected the machine, Dash and Luna standing on either side of her. As though it sensed her presence, a rectangular area on the machine lit up; Dash jumped a little in surprise. “Don’t worry,” Twilight said. “It’s the display, it’s… part of how you work with it.”
Fascinated, Dash leaned closer, watching numbers that had appeared there count up.
Twilight ignited her horn, activating a few controls on the machine’s surface. The numbers disappeared, replaced by luminescent script. Dash couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. “It’s the master console. It controls all the other computational engines in the room,” Twilight explained as she started working. “It’s laid out a little differently than mine, but I’m familiar enough with the princess’s organizational style… I should be able to figure out… Ah! There we are.”
New text appeared and Twilight skimmed it. “This is a list of the most recent commands the princess executed—” She noticed Dash and Luna staring at her. “Ahem. That is to say, this is a list of the most recent instructions the princess gave to the machine. If I can figure out what they mean, it might give us a clue about what happened.”
Dash watched for a while, but the novelty of seeing Twilight tapping on the machine and things changing in response on the display didn’t last long. She glanced around. Luna was still gazing intently at what Twilight was doing. Around them, the metal towers of Celestia’s computational engine hummed along, their lights flickering.
Directly behind them, Dash noticed a strange machine, completely unlike all the boxes around them. She moved to get a better look, taking care to step over the cables snaking everywhere.
It was mostly a big metal cylinder, with some bits and pieces stuck on it, and a sturdy stand and base. The cylinder was laying sideways on the stand, with one end pointing back the way she came, toward Twilight at the master console. The end closest to Twilight wasn’t solid: there was a highly polished, perfectly smooth domed jewel set into it. She peered into the jewel and saw her own face reflected back at her, upside-down and foreshortened.
From behind her, she could hear Twilight muttering to herself, and then a sort of excited sound, as though Twilight had figured something out. Dash started to turn back, but the strange device started humming and she jumped away before squinting at it uncertainly.
“Hey, Twilight…”
“Hold on, Rainbow, I think I’ve tracked this down.”
Dash heard Twilight continuing to press buttons on the console, and then the console beeped. A cool blue light flickered into existence behind the jewel and Dash blinked at it in surprise, watching it as it began to glow brighter. She noticed a series of dark rings around what she was coming to think of as the “business end” of… whatever it was. The ring farthest from the end was glowing the same blue as the jewel. As she watched, the next ring lit up, and then the next. Each ring’s ignition coincided with a jump in the intensity of the humming coming from the device. Not good. The noise sounded unnatural, set her teeth on edge. She also didn’t like the look of those rings lighting up.
“Twilight.”
“One second, Rainbow!”
The pegasus frowned and glanced back at the two other ponies. Luna sensed her movement and looked back at Dash, then saw the glowing eye of the device. Her eyes went wide. “Twilight, perhaps you should stop.”
“Done!” Twilight exclaimed. “Now what is so important?” She turned as she hit a final control. The device’s whine immediately jumped in pitch and volume, and the remaining rings illuminated.
“Twilight, move!”
The glow focused itself, projecting a brilliant pinpoint of blinding blue light directly between Twilight’s eyes. She gaped, frozen in shock. The device shrieked past hearing.
“Move!”
Time slowed to an agonizing crawl for Dash as she launched herself forward without thought. She experienced the next moments as a staccato of frozen images: Twilight, frozen in shock—the jewel blazing blue, lighting up the entire room—Luna crying out, shielding her face with a wing. Dash’s body slammed into Twilight’s, sending the purple unicorn skidding away.
Dash felt every hair on her body stand on end as time stopped with her in midair, a wave of freezing static electricity washing over her. Like flying through a thunderhead in a bad storm—
Dash stumbled, hitting the ground and managing to avoid the master console. She looked around wildly, trying not to panic.
“Twilight?! Luna!”
The room was empty of anypony save herself, but everything else—the console, the towers, the cables—were exactly the same.
No… not exactly.
Dash frowned as she willed her heart to stop beating quite so fast. The glowing telltales on each tower, a riot of color before, were now all a cool white-blue. Everything, in fact, looked a little bluer than normal, a little cooler and crisper, like a translucent cerulean film had fallen over her eyes. She blinked and rubbed at them but it didn’t go away.
A bitter metallic taste coated her tongue. Dash shook herself out and pawed at the ground uneasily, unsure what to do. There was no sign of Twilight or Luna. But maybe...
“Princess Celestia! Are you there?” she shouted, then listened intently. No reply.
She peered at the master console but had absolutely no idea what to do with it. A glance behind her revealed the strange device that had… done whatever it had done to her… was gone.
With one last look around at the strange metal towers, she flew out of the room.
Dash emerged into the castle proper and glanced around warily. Nopony around. Is that weird? She wasn’t sure if there would normally be anypony in this area of the castle at this time of day. Time of night? It’s still pretty early in the morning, pre-dawn. She started making her way toward the exit, or at least where she thought the exit was. She hadn’t been paying much attention when they’d all come down this way.
Outside the basement, every surface looked like smooth black marble, polished to a shine. Streaks of blue light ran along the floor at the base of the walls, casting an eerie glow over everything.
Everything looked different. Twilight and Luna had disappeared. Just like Celestia had disappeared, maybe? It must have been some kind of spell. She didn’t know anything about spells. That panicky feeling rose up in her again and she tried to force it down. Everything would be fine. She’d find Luna or Twilight or somepony and—
Coming around a corner, she almost flew face-first into another pony.
“Oh! Am I glad to see you. Sorry, didn’t—”
“Halt,” the pony said in an odd voice, deep and sort of garbled. Dash wondered if he was sick. Maybe he was really sick—it could explain the suit he was wearing, or at least why it covered him from mane to tail. Jet-black and formfitting, with thicker pieces of some kind of matte-black armor attached at key points. He also wore a helmet with a smoked-glass visor that hid his eyes and mane, though his ears and muzzle poked out. The whole getup almost reminded her of a Wonderbolts flight suit, except for the armor plates. And the channels of glowing orange all over it, tracing along the pony’s body and legs.
She’d never seen a Canterlot guard wearing anything like it.
“Cool outfit,” she said suspiciously. “Uh, are you okay?”
“This program has no disc,” said the same voice from behind her.
She whirled in midair. An identical pony stood behind her, expressionless, wearing an identical suit. “Not smart to sneak up on a pony like that, you know,” she growled. “You might end up bucked. Now, maybe you ponies can help me out. Pretty sure I’m lost, I need to find my way out of here. Can you give me some directions?”
“Another stray. You will come with us.”
“Yeah, gonna pass on that. Just tell me where—”
“You will come with us.” They grabbed her and started dragging her down the hall.
“What the hay is this?! Let go of me!” She struggled against them, bucking and twisting, flapping her wings as hard as she could, but they were much stronger than they looked—much stronger than her, she was surprised to discover. Dash kept fighting them until one reached up and gave her a firm tap on the back of the head.
A burst of power surged through her nervous system, and she speculated in a detached sort of way that this must be what a lightning strike felt like before her eyes rolled up into her head and she was gone.
She came to in the middle of a circular room, with the distinct impression she’d been dumped there without any regard for her personal well-being. Groaning, Dash untangled her limbs and gingerly felt the spot where the guardpony had shocked her. It was tender, but there didn’t appear to be any lasting damage. Her mind felt like it was packed in fluffy white cumulus, though. Pushing up to her hooves, she shook her head, blinking away the fuzziness, and the room came into focus.
More smooth walls lit by glowing lines. There were seams running over some portions of the wall, their purpose not immediately clear. In front of her, two panels set into the wall seemed like a good way out of here.
Dash made to run for the doors, but couldn’t lift her hooves. She looked down in irritation and saw transparent blue cuffs glowing around the ends of her legs. “Are you kidding me? Hey! Jerks! Get back in here and let me—”
A low hum filled the room and the seams on the walls split, panels sliding away to reveal racks of equipment, plus four unicorns wearing pure white suits, unarmored, with cool blue lines glowing on them instead of orange. Their manes and tails were as white as their suits and elegantly styled. They stepped out of their alcoves and walked toward her, surrounding her, all moving in unison. Dash was seriously creeped out.
“What are you doing? Get away from me! Somepony had better tell me what’s going on around here!”
All four unicorns stopped just shy of her. None of them spoke. Dash glared at each of them in turn. “What, uh…”
The lead unicorn’s horn ignited. Dash flinched, but nothing happened. She felt an odd sensation around her hooves and looked down. Sleek black material was materializing around them, sparkling into existence, moving up her legs to completely enclose her body.
The other three unicorns lit their horns and pieces of armor floated from the equipment racks, attaching themselves to the new bodysuit at strategic points. White-blue lines flickered to life all over her. “Okay, that’s… kinda cool, actually.”
The unicorns exchanged glances.
“What?” Dash asked. She turned her head to inspect herself and raised her wings experimentally. The black material had covered them as well, but they moved and functioned freely. Flapping a few times, she could tell she hadn’t lost her lift, though she was still shackled to the floor.
The unicorns just stared at her, until one murmured, “You are different.”
Before Dash could respond, the lead unicorn spoke. “You shall receive an identity disc. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disc. If you should lose your disc, or if you should fail to follow commands, you shall be subject to immediate deresolution.”
Dash started and squinted at the unicorn. That voice…
One of the other unicorns magicked over a weird disc with the middle cut out. She attached it to a port on Dash’s left flank, turning it to lock it in place. It glowed, and Dash twitched. Something felt funny. The base of her skull tickled for a few seconds. She shook her head in an effort to scratch the itch, and caught sight of her right flank, where the outline of her cutie mark glowed white-blue.
“Mirroring complete. Disc activated and synchronized. Proceed to games.”
“Games?” Dash asked.
The four unicorns retreated to their alcoves. Dash tried to follow, but she was still stuck to the floor. “Wait! Rarity?”
The lead unicorn gazed at her. “I am Jewel.”
“Jewel?” She could have sworn— Sure, her mane was different, but the way she moved, the way she talked…
The wall panels began to slide closed. Dash called out, “What am I supposed to do?”
Jewel grinned at her as the panels sealed shut, her ice-blue eyes twinkling.
“Survive, darling.”
Dash glided through the air, happy to confirm she really could still fly despite the new bodysuit. She followed the luminous symbols on the walls. A different wall panel had slid open and indicators had lit up, guiding her down a hallway. She reached the end and stopped: the corridor dead-ended in the darkness. She frowned, flaring her wings to touch down and turn back the way she came, but without warning the floor glowed to life. Before she could jump in surprise, it jerked and sped upward, taking her with it. She tensed into a crouch, watching as the walls around her blurred.
Be cool. It’s just an elevator.
The floor slowed as it reached the top of its shaft and smoothly clicked into place at the surface, with no visible seam. Dash looked around, almost overwhelmed by the roar coming from every direction—the roar of thousands of ponies eager for a fight.
She was in the middle of a vast arena. There were other ponies with her, wearing similar black suits with glowing blue lines, all standing at attention as though they were waiting for something. The ground level of the arena was broken up into different sections, some of which she recognized, some of which she didn’t. Horseshoe pits, tug-of-war ropes, high strikers. Like an Iron Pony competition.
The ground level was surrounded by stands, and the stands were filled with thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of ponies, all wearing suits glimmering either blue or orange in the distance, all cheering and stomping the ground. Dash grinned involuntarily. They aren’t eager for a fight, they’re eager to see some competition! At one end of the coliseum, there was a high tower; she thought she could make out some movement at the top.
Dash glanced up, glad to finally be out of the castle and back under the sky, but she paused at the strangeness of this one. Dark clouds roiled above her, white-blue lightning cracking between them—the sky of an angry goddess. Even allowing for the oppressive clouds, she got the sense from the quality of light it was still nighttime. Dash realized that, despite the time she’d spent knocked out, she was pretty sure it had been less than an hour since she had been with Twilight and Luna in the other castle. The familiar thought of them while she was surrounded by this alien landscape filled her with a fierce wave of longing and homesickness. Only a matter of hours, but she was suddenly desperate to be home in Ponyville.
Should have just gone back to bed. Should have taken Twilight up on her offer to turn around after dropping her off… No. Then she’d be here, wherever here is, and Dash couldn’t imagine that Twilight would be handling it well at all.
A calm voice reverberated through the arena. “All contestants, prepare for Pillar Weave.”
The crowd went even wilder, stomping their hooves and chanting, “Pillar Weave! Pillar Weave!”
On Dash’s left, there was an empty area she had more or less ignored. Now she watched with interest as the border of the area lit up and glowing blue pillars extended themselves out of the ground in a straight line. Two lines shimmered to life on the ground at the beginning and end of the line of pillars, perpendicular to them. Familiar enough.
Dash found herself caught in the press of ponies moving toward the first line. “Hey, watch it!” she protested, but nopony reacted. They formed a queue, and she ended up in the third spot. A scoreboard materialized, floating in the air over the course with no visible supports, with a line for each contestant’s number and time.
“Contestant One. Pillar Weave. Begin.”
The first pony in line, a unicorn mare, tensed, leaned forward, and took off. As she passed over the first line, it flashed, and the first scoreboard entry, the one labeled Contestant 1, started counting up. When the pony reached the second line, it flashed again and the counter stopped.
“Contestant One. Pillar Weave. Twenty-one point three seconds.” 21.3 flashed on the board as the crowd stomped their hooves.
“Oh, please. I could beat these ponies in my sleep,” Dash muttered as the second in line, a pegasus stallion, started their run. “Wonder how bad they ding you for nudging a—”
One of the stallion’s wings extended a feather too far and brushed against a pillar. Dash jumped at his agonized scream, watching in horror as he shattered, falling apart into a thousand tiny blocks that scattered on the ground before dissolving into nothingness.
“Contestant Two. Pillar Weave. Disqualification.” An X flashed on the board.
Dash gulped. Yes, it was very lucky that it was her here and not Twilight.
“Contestant Three. Pillar Weave. Begin.”
Dash took her mark and launched herself forward, making a point to keep her wings tucked tight against her sides, her trademark rainbow trail blazing out behind her as she sped between the pillars.
High above the arena, a pegasus mare wearing a black bodysuit, cloak, and helmet lounged on her private observation deck, idly watching the competitors and spectators. This didn’t look like a particularly inspiring crop of contestants. She shifted briefly and the orange telltales on her outfit flared. Behind her, the entrance to the observation deck slid open, and hoofsteps squeaked quietly. She didn’t bother moving.
“Um, no unusual activity. Security sweeps and patrols have been intensified,” the newcomer said. “I hope that’s okay?”
The first mare grunted, her helmeted head resting on her hoof. She exhaled through her nose as a pegasus stallion derezzed on the pillar weave course. “Idiot.” Her voice was deep and distorted by the helmet.
“I’m sorry…?”
“Not you, Shy. Him. What a pathetic bunch of—”
Below them, the next combatant started their run, a spectrum of light trailing behind her. The dark mare sat up, staring at the sudden burst of color as the combatant crossed the finish line. Something... new?
“Contestant Three. Pillar Weave. Fourteen point seven seconds.” Below them, the crowd hesitated in surprise before breaking into raucous cheers.
She turned. “Who is that?”
“Oh, um, I don’t know.” Shy nosed a wall panel that lit at her touch; biographical information on the competitors flashed past. The screen titled Contestant Three was filled with question marks. “No data,” Shy murmured. “I don’t understand how—”
“Well?” she prompted.
Shy squeaked and nosed another control. “Contestant Three, identify yourself… if you wouldn’t mind.” The dark mare rolled her eyes, but stood and began pacing back and forth, staring down at the course.
Dash grinned, looking out at the assembled ponies cheering her. Showed them, she thought triumphantly. Fifteen seconds wasn’t bad, but she could do better. She chalked the below-average showing up to the strange situation and weird bodysuit. If these ponies loved athletes so much, maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all.
A voice echoed through the arena. Not the announcer, somepony else. Another familiar voice. “Contestant Three, identify yourself… if you wouldn’t mind.”
Dash glanced around. Where is that coming from?
A different, harsher voice: “Identify!”
Dash frowned and spoke to the air. “I’m Rainbow Dash, from Ponyville.” A hush fell over the crowd, murmurs replacing cheers. “What? You guys heard of me?”
The first combatant, the unicorn mare, had been standing nearby, looking generally impressed by Dash’s performance. Now she was tense and afraid, ready to back away.
“What’s the big deal?” Dash asked her.
The unicorn made as if to speak, but nothing came out. Her eyes focused behind Dash, and Dash turned. An armored pegasus stood behind her, orange suit stripes burning menacingly. She could see nothing of the mare’s face, completely encased in a smooth black helmet reflecting Dash’s apprehensive expression right back at her.
“Contestant Four. Pillar Weave. Begin,” said the calm announcer’s voice. “Contestant Three. Accompany Cracken.”
Dash groaned. The guardsmare moved to grab her and she flapped once, kicking herself back out of reach. “Chill! I’ll come quiet, no need to get rough. Maybe you can tell me just what the hay is going on.”
Cracken didn’t tell her anything. She was taken out of the center of the arena, under the stands, spectators leaning over the railings to watch them go. Two more armored pegasi met them at the edge of the field and took the lead, Cracken bringing up the rear.
“Cracken” didn’t strike Dash as the sort of name a friendly pony would go by. She glanced back over her shoulder, watching the other pegasus. Dash couldn’t help but think there was something familiar about this pony too. She ran through the names of the pegasi she knew in Ponyville and Canterlot as they walked, but couldn’t put her hoof on it.
They came to a door that hissed open at their approach and stepped through. Another elevator ride took them to the top of a tower—it was a long ride, so she figured it was the one she’d seen earlier. More doors opened for them and the guards marched through with Dash in tow.
The room’s walls were made up of more of the smooth black material she’d seen elsewhere and lit by glowing conduits of light running up and down the walls and along the ceiling. Big bay windows on the wall across from her looked out over the arena. She saw another pony make their run down the weave course and heard the announcer state their number and time, but it was muffled and distant.
A pegasus mare, wearing a cloak over her bodysuit and a glossy, opaque helmet like Cracken’s, was standing in front of the windows, her back to Dash, her cloak covering her tail. The two guardsponies moved to either side of the cloaked mare and stood at attention, their hooves snapping on the floor. Cracken took up position behind Dash, just off to one side, a little more relaxed than the other guards, though Dash got the sense Cracken would be the one to watch out for in a fight.
Nopony moved for what seemed like a long time.
“Where am I?” Dash finally asked, a hint of frustrated impatience in her voice.
The cloaked mare turned, faced Dash, didn’t say anything.
“Who are you?!” demanded Dash, stomping a forehoof.
There was a moment of silence. Then—
The cloaked mare’s helmet hummed, split along hidden seams, and folded itself back behind the mare’s head, letting a lock of multicolored mane fall across her forehead.
The two rainbow-maned, blue-coated pegasi stared at each other. Dash couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She’d always felt she was unique, and not just the tripe parents fed their foals about “everypony being special in their own way.” Ponies with natural many-colored manes were fairly rare, and she had never met another pony that shared her namesake shades. But worse, this pony was her: the same face, the same coat, the same rose eyes she saw every morning in the mirror. Almost the same body, but younger, leaner, fitter. In her prime. Dash knew she wasn’t exactly out of shape now—she still did plenty of training on top of her weather work, after all—but had she ever looked like that?
A wave of vertigo swept over her, as though she’d been riding a thermal a mile up and lost it without warning, plummeting down. Scrambling to regain control, stay calm, figure out what was going on.
This wasn’t her. This other self looked grimmer than Dash ever had. There was a hard set to her jaw, a tightness around the eyes, and the eyes themselves… well, she knew hers had never been so cold and calculating. There was darkness there, and Dash didn’t like what it did to her face.
“Rainbow Dash,” said the dark mare by way of greeting, and Dash shuddered at the sight and sound of her own voice coming from another pony who looked exactly like her, moved exactly like her—for the other Dash had stepped forward with an easy, athletic grace, sauntering toward her, scanning her up and down. “Never expected we’d actually meet in the flesh. So to speak. How did you get in here?”
In here? “I… Twilight found Celestia’s machine in the basement, and turned it on…”
The other Dash circled her. “So it’s just you?” she said speculatively.
“Yeah.” Her gut twisted at the thought of Twilight. She’d know what to do… a small, reproachful voice murmured at the back of her mind.
“Just you,” mused the other Dash. She gestured to Cracken. “Disc.”
Cracken stepped forward, unsnapped the identity disc from Dash’s flank, and gave it to the other Dash.
“Who are you?” Dash asked, finding herself dreading the answer. If they shared a name as well, she didn’t think she’d be able to handle it.
The other Dash glanced back at her, a dark little grin quirking her lips. “Call me RBD.” She held up Dash’s disc, eyeing it for a moment. “Let’s have a look.” A stream of light and color sprang to life above the disc and RBD watched intently. Dash peered over her shoulder and saw a torrent of images of her own life: her time in flight school, her sonic rainboom, running the weather patrol in Ponyville, her friends. A flash of angry heat passed through her. Those were her memories! Those were private! Before she could do anything, the playback ended and RBD tossed the disc back to Cracken. She reattached it to Dash’s flank with a click and stepped smartly back to her original position.
RBD frowned to herself, lost in thought. “I expected… more.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dash asked indignantly, still burning at the violation of her mind.
A glowing hoof waved away her question. “Since you’re here, I have to decide what to do with you. I suppose you could join me. Rare that a program can be in two places at once. Could be... useful.”
Dash frowned. “Join you?” She glanced around the room. “You run this place? Where’s Princess Celestia?”
An ugly look crossed her double’s face. “Ah. Yes. Our blessed creator. She’s… indisposed. I’m top pony around here, and now I’m offering you the chance to be a part of something impressive, to be my right-hoof mare.” She sneered. “It’s obvious you don’t have much going on back home.”
“I have plenty going on! My friends, my job—”
“You arrange clouds, taking orders from somepony else,” RBD said cuttingly, with a roll of her eyes. “You waste your talents in a dead-end job in a backwater town, and for what?” RBD smirked, and Dash stiffened. “Here, all will know you, all will look upon you and marvel at your speed and power. You could lead the Guard, my most elite and trusted pegasi. Equestria’s top flyers—your precious... Wonderbolts, right?—have nothing on them.”
Dash scanned the other ponies in the room: a motionless Cracken, the members of the guard who’d led her here, another suited and helmeted pegasus cowering in the corner. She needed a distraction, needed to keep her cool, needed to keep the burning resentment and despair RBD’s words had awoken within her from overwhelming her. Weather patrol was important work. Ponies relied on her. Sure, it might not be as exciting as flying with the Wonderbolts, but it kept her in Ponyville, kept her near her friends.
“Well?” said RBD impatiently. “Will you join me?”
“No,” Dash whispered. “I like my life. I want to go back to it. Now. You tell me how to get out of here, and I’m gone. My friends are waiting for me.”
RBD stared at her, and she stared back, unwavering.
“Your friends? Applejack, Fluttershy—”
A meep came from the pegasus in the corner. Dash started a bit but immediately snapped her attention back to RBD, who had ignored it.
RBD was watching her closely. “Yes. Twilight Sparkle. The know-it-all egghead. The idiot who spends all her time locked away in her precious library, muzzle in a book, ignoring you unless she needs your help with something. Rejecting you. What possible interest could you have in returning to that?”
Dash gritted her teeth. “Don’t talk about her that way.”
“Why not? She’s spent, mmm, years ignoring you. You can’t deny that. Now it’s your turn. Ignore her, ignore them all and stay here, and live like a goddess.”
“No,” spat Dash.
RBD looked her over, unamused. “Last chance, Rainbow Dash.”
“Did I stutter? I’m not staying here, I’m going— Hey, get your hooves off me!” The pegasi guards had come up to her, grabbed her, started dragging her out of the room. “Where are you taking me?”
RBD moved away, casting her gaze out over the arena, her back to the others. Dash struggled against the guards, thinking fast.
“RBD!” shouted Dash. “Where is Celestia? What did you do to her?”
RBD spun, her cloak billowing out around her, glaring at Dash with such hateful intensity she went slack in surprise for a moment, unaware her face could look so cruel, unhappy to learn it could.
“The same thing I’m going to do to you, user.”
They took her back to the arena, which had been cleared of the other combatants and reconfigured in her absence. The various Iron Pony–style competition areas were gone, leaving behind a smooth glassy surface. Above her, Dash saw the same roiling, stormy sky, but frowned when she saw less of it than before. Less of it by the second: the arena was closing itself off, a ceiling materializing above them, sealing them in. Trapped. She fought the surge of claustrophobia welling up within her.
The guardsponies released her and she stood alone in front of the stands, thousands of ponies pushing and jeering above her, eager for a closer look at the newcomer. She glared back at them, striking a defiant pose, and quickly scanned the interior of the now-enclosed coliseum, looking for any possible way out, finding none.
Behind her, she heard this place’s version of Fluttershy begin speaking, hearing the timid voice boom from the arena’s loudspeakers at the same time.
“Greetings, programs. What an, um, occasion we have here before us. That is, because, we do indeed have in our midst a user…”
She trailed off as Dash turned to her and squeaked a little before she continued, a little more confidently, pointing a hoof at Dash: “A user.”
The crowd shouted and jeered, a roar of disapproval that crashed over Dash. She almost winced at the force of it.
“So,” the program asked, “what should we do? What does this user deserve? Maybe, ah, the challenge of the Grid?”
Another roar, flush with approval and anticipation, hungry to see an enemy destroyed and confident it will be.
“And, who better to battle this… singular opponent? Someprogram who has some, um, experience in these matters?” More approval from the crowd. Dash didn’t like where this was heading. She readied herself, tensed up, wishing she knew what she was readying herself for.
“Your liberator, your luminary, your l-leader…” The program gulped. “The one who vanquished the tyranny of the user so many cycles before…”
An explosion of light from above drew everyone’s attention. Dash saw the remnants of a firework sizzle out of existence and RBD blazed out of it, banking, spiraling down toward the ground.
“Arrr Beee Deee!”
At the last second she flared her wings, braking, and slammed into the ground, sticking the landing perfectly. A wave of energy rippled through the strange glassy material they stood on and her cloak dissolved in shimmering light. The crowd erupted, everyprogram leaping to their feet and calling, cheering, stamping their hooves. RBD reared up on her hind legs, shadowboxing, spreading her wings to full extension, reveling in their adulation. She fell back to all fours and stalked over to Dash, swishing her tail, flicking Dash in the face as she walked past.
“I’ve dreamed of this for a long time,” RBD murmured in her ear, coming back around to face off with Dash and stare her down. She was practically vibrating with anticipation.
“Dreamed of what?” Dash snapped, but Fluttershy’s double was approaching, balancing a tray with two legbands on her back. She drew up between them and RBD reached out, taking one of the matte black devices and fitting it around her hoof with the detached air of somepony who’s done this a thousand times. Small telltales glowed to life on it. Dash reached out for the second, hesitating when she saw the bearer balk at the approach of her hoof.
“What’s your name?” she asked, trying to inject a note of kindness in her voice, not sure if it was audible through the gruff bravado she felt obliged to keep there too.
“I’m… I’m shy,” murmured the other pegasus.
Dash started to roll her eyes but caught herself. “I know you’re shy, we’re frie— I mean, I have a friend a lot like you, back home.”
“Oh, um, no. That’s my name. I’m Shy,” said Shy.
“Oh… right.” Dash reached out again and took the band from Shy’s back, who didn’t recoil this time.
“You have a”—the program’s eyes darted to RBD—“friend like me?”
“Definitely. She’s my oldest friend, actually. We’ve known each other since I was just a little filly.”
Shy bit her lip and looked ready to ask another question, but RBD swatted at her haunch; she yelped and galloped toward the stands. She blew past Cracken, who was standing in the entrance to the arena. Dash had the distinct impression Cracken was staring straight at her.
“Enough chit-chat,” RBD growled. “Game on!” She leaped and Dash ducked, though Dash realized belatedly RBD was taking off, not attacking her, and was soaring over her.
In slow motion, Dash watched RBD touch a control on the band around her forehoof. Glowing lines of energy pulsed up her foreleg, snaking around a shimmering outline forming out of nothing. Individual components coalesced from pure light into physical form and snapped together almost faster than she could process. Less than a second after RBD launched herself forward, a sleek black pack sat between her wings, and another touch of her forehoof triggered a burst of heat and light from shaped vents at its back, kicking her forward through the air at breathtaking speed.
“We’ve got no chance, user,” said a garbled voice behind her. She whirled. Four earth ponies rose up level with her on an elevator platform, each with a legband secured around a foreleg. One of them, his mane buzzed almost flush with his coat, said, “They’re all pegasi, and we don’t have wings—we can’t maneuver like they can.” At her frown, he pointed up and she saw four pegasi guards blast out into the arena from RBD’s tower. They trailed ribbons of burning orange light that solidified behind them, like shimmering stained glass catching afternoon sunlight suspended in midair.
Watching them arc over her towards a rendezvous with RBD, she asked, “What is this, some kind of race?”
Her new friend snorted behind her. “Yeah, a race. To see who can derezz each other first.”
“Derezz? What is— I don’t want to derezz anypony.”
“Guess they’ll be derezzing you, then. Good luck, user.”
Dash frowned and opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by hooves pounding behind her. She turned from the sky to the earth ponies, already sprinting away. One by one they touched the control on their bands and their packs lifted them from the ground. She could tell immediately they wouldn’t be as agile in the air as a pegasus. There was something almost charmingly ungainly about an earth pony with its legs tucked under itself banking into a mid-air turn.
She shook herself out, unfurling her wings. Despite everything that had happened, she grinned at the prospect of getting some air.
“Okay, this I can do.”
Dash exploded straight up, flapping hard once, twice, before touching the activation stud on her own band. A smoked glass helmet unfolded itself into place around her head and she felt the pack materialize on her back, the kick of it activating, and the thrust carried her into the sky like nothing she’d ever felt before. The effortlessness of it was exhilarating, the sense of speed and power as she cut through the air faster than she had in years.
The coliseum’s new ceiling was coming up fast. It was clear, made of the same strange glasslike material as the floor. She could see the sky beyond it, though somehow the sight wasn’t all that reassuring. She twitched a wing and banked to the right, spinning out toward the center of the arena, startled by the beauty she found there.
Everypony had ribbons of light trailing from them: the four guards’ were orange, led by RBD’s deeper, almost blood-red band, and Dash’s four squadmates were chased by a delicate blue. As they twisted and dove around one another, the ribbons swirled and spun, tracing their flight paths, forming an enchanting crystal sculpture. She arced gently toward it, taking it in, feeling more at peace than she had since arriving in this dark place, loving the wind in her mane and tail, the rush of the air over her wings—even the hum of the device strapped to her back was somehow comforting. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this. Felt the pure joy of flight...
One of the blue ribbons of light ahead of her flickered and died.
The abrupt change snapped her out of her trance, and she peered into the crystalline construct, frowning. An impact mark on one of the orange barriers spread into a cracked star pattern. She remembered the time a bird had flown full-force into one of the library’s window panes and a sobbing Fluttershy had carried its still form away. The shattered remnants of an earth pony rained to the ground, dissolving completely as they hit. She heard a cheer from the crowd, saw the exultant looks the flying guards exchanged, and her eyes narrowed.
To see who can derezz each other first, the earth pony had said. Dash swallowed. This wasn’t some leisurely drift through the night sky, this was serious. Them or us. She didn’t want to have any part in this, but she didn’t see any choice, any way out.
She hit the only other control on her legband and checked over her shoulder, watching her own barrier flare to life behind her. She was grimly pleased to see that unlike the others’ single-color ribbons, hers was imbued with her very own rainbow dash, that prismatic streak of light that trailed behind her when she was moving at speed.
Dash tucked her wings in and dove, spinning into the outer layer of crisscrossing ribbons, blowing past one of the guards like he was standing still. She smirked at his shout of surprise, swooping in front of him, hearing his shout cut off as he smashed into her barrier at full speed, bursting into thousands of pieces that chimed and tinkled as they bounced down through the ribbons. She forced herself to tear her gaze away from his sparkling, tumbling remains, and yelped as she dove under a ribbon at the last second.
The guard’s ribbon disappeared as he did, opening a new path toward the other side of the translucent maze. She sped through it, glancing around, assessing the situation. While she’d been busy with the guard, another of her teammates had been lost. The two remaining were retreating to the outer edges of the arena, RBD and her minions in hot pursuit.
She kicked up and over the central core their ribbons formed and blasted toward them, overtaking the trailing guard from above. He looked up at her and she saluted him before furling her wings and cutting the power to her pack’s jet, dropping like a stone across his flight path, trailing rainbow death. He screamed and covered his face with his forelegs but it afforded little protection: one more out of the game.
Dash reignited her thruster and sped forward, coming up between the two remaining guards. They gave her one look and immediately banked for each other, trying to sandwich her, but she put on a burst of speed and whipped past them. Grunting, they skidded along either side of her ribbon for a moment before righting themselves and taking after her.
Ahead, she watched as RBD did much the same to the flying earth ponies, but when they dove together in an attempt to pincer her, she pushed ahead and cut right, catching one of them in the curve of her barrier, his anguished cry ending abruptly. Dash gritted her teeth and strained forward, catching up to her last squadmate. The two pegasi guards trailed right behind her, RBD in the middle of banking through a long loop around the arena.
“Come on!” shouted Dash. “We’ve got to work together!”
The earth pony—Dash was pleased to see it was her friend with the buzzed manecut—looked behind himself, then over at Dash and nodded. Dash looked back as well, gauging the distance from their pursuers, and sideslipped a little closer to her partner. Their barriers were corralling the two Guards behind and between them, though the idiots didn’t seem to have realized that yet. Dash gestured to the earth pony and they both slowed imperceptibly, allowing the Guards to catch up… but also decreasing how much time they’d have to react to any maneuvers by their prey.
“Steady… steady… now!” Dash and her squadmate swerved toward each other, locking in a midair hug; she flared and pivoted her wings, spinning them into a corkscrew. Over her shoulder, Dash saw their ribbons spin together into an impassable cone of light, saw the shocked expressions on the Guards’ faces as they both vaporized against the glassy barriers.
The two survivors broke apart and pulled right, skimming along the outer wall of the coliseum above the roaring crowd. Dash reached out a foreleg and the earth pony bumped it with his own, grinning widely, both of them riding a sweet wave of adrenaline. “That’s what I’m talking about! Now let’s get out there and show that madmare how it’s done!”
Dash pivoted so her belly faced the wall and kicked, her strong back legs instantly adjusting her course, sending her shooting back out toward the center of the arena. A quick glance back revealed her wingmate had managed to come around on her tail. Not bad for an earth pony. Focusing ahead, she found the arena much changed. With seven ponies out of the game, most of the light ribbons were gone, opening up more maneuvering room but making it harder to trap RBD in a bad spot. And where was RBD? Dash darted her gaze around frantically, following the trail of the bloody-orange ribbon slicing across the sky.
It looped through the center of the arena before coming up and over behind them. Dash gasped and looked left just in time to see RBD streak at her wingmate from above, savagely punching his pack; it exploded in a dazzling burst of energy and the earth pony fell out of the sky, howling in terror. RBD caught Dash’s eye, a wicked smirk on her face. Dash growled and shut off her own pack, pointed herself at the plummeting earth pony, then reignited, shooting towards him at breakneck speed.
He saw her coming for him and spread his legs, trying to increase his drag and slow his fall. She stretched out a foreleg, reaching for him—he reached back, and she could see the fear in his eyes through his visor—their hooves were almost touching, the ground was coming up fast—
Something slammed into her from the side, knocking her away from him. Instinctively, she tucked in her wings and braced just as she hit the ground, bouncing and rolling. She heard her wingmate’s scream cut off with a sound like shattering glass. As she tumbled, the weight of her pack dissolved away. She scrabbled to a halt and looked back, seeing the shards of her last teammate melt into nothing. Her stomach wrenched at the memory of his face just moments ago, the hope breaking through despair as she’d reached for him. RBD banked up and around, coming back toward Dash to finish the job.
Dash growled and punched at her legband, but nothing happened. She tore her gaze from RBD and saw the band’s telltales flicker and fade before it dissolved into light. Her helmet folded itself away, exposing her face. She looked back—RBD was streaking toward her, a vicious grin curling her lips—she braced herself, grimacing in pain, frustration, anger—not like this, it shouldn’t be like this!
A burst of pure golden light blinded her. When her vision cleared, another pony stood next to her and RBD was arcing away erratically, her forelegs covering her visor. Dash gaped.
“Grab my tail!”
Dash stared at the newcomer. A unicorn, in shades of purple. “Twilight?”
“Ugh, fine!”
The mare launched at her, and as her hooves wrapped around Dash, white-hot light consumed them.
Dash grunted as she tumbled to the ground under the weight of her rescuer. They skidded briefly across what felt like rough rock, but when they came to a stop and she opened her eyes, she couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black.
“Twilight?”
The body on top of her shifted, and magenta light sparked up above her, illuminating a lavender horn and deep purple mane streaked through with pink. Dash shielded her eyes and, a moment later, warm yellow light filled the space.
She stared up at the pony above her, her mouth hanging open.
“I’m afraid not, Rainbow Dash… but I can understand your confusion.”
Despite the coloration, this was definitely not her Twilight. Both her mane and tail were cropped short, though they maintained her usual straight-angled cuts, and she was wrapped in a now-familiar jumpsuit, traced with channels of pale yellow that reminded Dash of sunlight.
The unicorn hopped up and offered Dash a hoof. She accepted it hesitantly and was pulled to her hooves. “Uhh…” Dash found her voice as they dusted themselves off. “Yeah. You’re not Twilight. So who are you? And how do you know who I am?”
She looked around. She was standing in a chamber hewn from blue-black rock, the surfaces a rough contrast to the sleek surroundings of the Grid.
“My name is Spark. And of course I know who you are,” Spark said, eyeing her speculatively. “Celestia’s told me all about you and your frie—”
“Celestia!?” Dash grabbed at her. “Is she here? Is she okay!?”
Spark blinked in surprise, then grinned. “Of course. She’s fine, if a bit lonely. I guess I’m not always the best company. I’ll take you to her now. I’m sure she’ll be very excited to see you.”
Dash allowed herself to be led off through a short tunnel cut through the rock face. Her shoulder twinged where she’d hit the ground after being knocked out of the sky by RBD, so she lifted into a hover. Silent at first, she tried to get a handle on her rapid-fire reversal of fortune and found herself distracted by Spark’s too-short tail bobbing in front of her.
Finally, she said, “You’re not Twilight. I’ve already met not-Rarity, not-Fluttershy, and not, uh, me. So what are you?”
They’d reached the end of the tunnel and come to rest on a smooth platform. Another elevator. As Spark turned to face her, the platform lit up and began to rise, taking them with it. Dash craned her head back and saw darkness stretching away above them.
“I’m a program. Celestia wrote me, based on your friend Twilight, and the other familiar programs you’ve met.”
“I’m sorry, but—a program? I’m sure Twilight knows what that is, but I have no idea,” Dash admitted. “What exactly is a program?”
“At the most basic level, I’m simply a sequence of instructions designed to be carried out by Celestia’s computational engine,” Spark explained. “I’m admittedly a complicated sequence of instructions. They cover everything from how I look and move, to how I’m allowed to interact with the world around me, to how I sound when I speak and how I process information—that is to say, how I think.”
Dash considered this. “That’s weird,” she announced before tentatively prodding Spark’s side. “You don’t feel like a list of instructions.”
“That’s because one of those instructions is to feel like a real pony,” Spark said cheerfully.
Dash sighed. “Of course it is. So am I a list-of-whatever now that I’m in here too?”
“No.” Spark shot her an appraising glance. “You’re something else entirely. You’re a user—a real flesh-and-blood pony, represented within the virtual reality interface by very powerful magic I don’t fully understand.”
“Now I know you’re not Twilight,” Dash said wryly.
Spark looked indignant. “I doubt your Twilight would either! Only Celestia is capable of manipulating and maintaining the necessary spell matrix. She’s taught me the theory behind it, but I haven’t yet figured out how to actually execute it. It can be quite draining for her.” Spark sighed. “She spends a lot of time in meditation to keep her strength up.”
“Huh.” Dash turned this over in her mind. She’d never seen Celestia look tired. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but Spark shushed her and she managed to keep herself from bristling.
“We’re almost there. She’s meditating now. Give me a moment to rouse her.” Dash nodded, and the platform clicked into place. They had arrived in a large room with polished floors that matched the platform—like before, she couldn’t even locate the seam—but rough blue-black walls that matched the tunnel they’d come from.
There was furniture scattered throughout the room, low-slung sofas and lounges and tables, and bookcases along some of the walls. The far wall wasn’t a wall at all, but a great wide window looking out over the darkened landscape. Dash thought she could see Canterlot off in the distance.
In the center of the room sat a great shape, softly glowing in a mystical field of light. The field almost looked like slow-falling stars or raindrops made of energy. The shape itself was dark, roughly twice Dash’s height, and Dash wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t been expecting her. The crown and jewels of office were gone, replaced by a flowing black robe with a few streaks of golden light tracing its curves, and her usually rippling mane hung limp on her neck.
Dash realized she was seeing a different Celestia than she’d been used to in her youth. Celestia was cloaked, secretive… in hiding.
She stayed where she was as Spark trotted over to the silent form of the princess. The alicorn’s large eyes were closed, and their eyelids flickered when Spark bent her mouth to a great white ear and murmured, “Celestia? We have a visitor.”
Eyes still closed, Celestia smiled ruefully as she shifted and sat up, rolling her neck, shaking out each leg. “That’s a new one, Spark, very funny. Your studies of humor are coming along nicely.”
“She’s, uh.” Dash faltered. “She’s not joking, Your Highness.”
Celestia froze. She turned to face Dash and opened her deep magenta eyes. Spark bit her lip and stood off to the side as the two flesh-and-blood ponies stared at each other.
“Rainbow Dash,” Celestia breathed.
A few hours ago, Dash had been sure she’d never hear that voice say her name again. She was surprised by how anticlimactic it felt. Ten years since she’d last seen her princess, and they were just standing there staring at each other. She remembered herself and dropped her front half into a bow; the strange material of her bodysuit squeaked in protest. “Princess Celes—”
She felt herself swept up by forelegs much larger and stronger than hers and found her face pressed into a multicolored mane that was not her own.
“Rainbow Dash!” the princess half-choked, and they fell to the floor, Dash desperately trying to think of something to say or do as the Goddess of the Sun wept into her mane. She shot Spark a frantic look, a silent plea for help, but was further surprised by a wistful smile on the program’s face.
“It is you—not a program, not a simulacrum, not a fevered hallucination! I can tell. It’s no wonder the spell faltered.” She pulled back enough to stare into Dash’s eyes. “Do you know you are the first real pony, other than me, to enter the System?”
“I, uh.” Dash blinked. “I guess it’s an honor, Prince—”
“Call me Celestia, please,” the princess cut her off. She seemed to come back to herself slightly, taking in the two of them huddled up together on the floor. “Forgive me. It has been… it has been a very long time since I have seen anypony I did not personally create.”
Celestia stepped back, her robes falling into place, and Dash pushed herself to her hooves. “Ten years is a long time, Prin— Celestia. We’ve all missed you.”
Dash was shocked by the haunted look that flitted through her princess’s eyes. “Ten years is a long time, my little pony. A thousand years, a much longer time.”
“What?”
Spark came up beside Celestia. “She means, Rainbow Dash, that time passes more quickly within the simulation than it does outside it. By a factor of one hundred, to be precise.”
Dash gaped. “You’ve been trapped in here for a thousand years?”
Celestia nodded. “I would guess you arrived in-System perhaps an hour and a half ago or so?”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
“Then only a minute or so has passed in the real world.” Before Dash could ponder the implications of this, she continued. “I must know, Rainbow Dash—well, I must know a great many things, and truth be told I am having difficulty ordering my thoughts, but most importantly: how did you come to be here?”
“Look, both of you, just call me Dash. And it was kind of an accident. I’d given Twilight a ride to Canterlot after she got your letter, and—”
“My letter?”
“Yeah, you know, you sent Twilight a letter, asking her for help?”
“My letter.” Celestia frowned. “Of course. Please, do continue.”
Dash frowned too, but kept going. “So I tagged along with Twilight and Princess Luna when they figured out how to open your secret bookcase and get into your hidden room, and Twilight started messing around with your master console or whatever. And then this other machine almost zapped her but I pushed her out of the way and it zapped me instead! Next thing I know, I’m in a weird version of the castle and everything’s different.”
“I expect you were then captured by a Black Guard patrol and taken to the Challenge Grid.”
“She was about to be derezzed by RBD, but I intervened,” Spark chimed in.
“Well done, my student. But only programs are subject to deresolution—the correct term for a user is ‘death.’ Dash was about to be killed, not ‘derezzed.’”
“Ah, of course.”
Dash couldn’t have heard that right. “Hold up—I actually would have died? Like for real?”
Celestia pursed her lips. “Yes. Your consciousness would be transferred to temporary storage for eventual permanent deletion, and your body would be ejected from the matter storage matrix during the next garbage collection cycle—that is to say, it would reappear in the real world once the System noticed it was no longer in use.”
“Uh, no offense, Prin— Celestia, but that seems like a really stupid way to do it.” Dash scrunched up her face.
The princess laughed lightly. “I agree. It was a slapdash solution for a situation I didn’t ever expect to encounter, and it’s not possible to modify the simulation’s executable code from within.”
“Uh… right.”
“Celestia,” said Spark, and Dash thought for a moment how strange it was to hear Twilight address the princess so directly.
“Yes, my student?”
“You sent a message to the outside world without mentioning it?”
Celestia’s face grew dark, troubled. “No, I did not.”
Dash started. “Hey! Yes you did!”
Celestia turned and strode slowly to the window. Spark followed and Dash hurried to catch up, and was surprised to find it wasn’t even a window. The room was completely open to the outside world. She glanced out and, despite the lack of illumination, recognized the view after a moment’s struggle. “We’re in Smokey Mountain, right? Where... that dragon was trying to take a nap, and you sent us to get rid of him?”
The ghost of a smile passed over Celestia’s muzzle. “Yes. It seemed the safest place to lay low. Who would ever think to search for the Creator in an unremarkable cavern, deep within a mountain chain?”
Dash muttered, “I still don’t really get why you sent us to do that. You’re Princess Celestia, you could have made him leave.”
Celestia arched an eyebrow. “Is that the world you want to live in, Dash? One where all your problems are addressed by your princess, where you must never learn nor grow, where you make no decisions of your own?"
“I guess not,” Dash conceded.
“No. Little good comes of doing everything for everypony. Dictatorship, no matter how benevolent, rarely ends well, and in the meantime it makes everypony's lives very… boring.” Spark looked up at Celestia with an unreadable expression, and Dash suddenly felt uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry, Pri— Celestia. I’ve—we’ve all—had good lives.”
Celestia turned, looked down at Dash, smiled. “I am glad to hear it. And I would be glad to hear more. Are you hungry?”
Dash paused to think. “I… I guess so, yeah. Does that even make sense?”
Celestia laughed again. “Of course; you’re still a pony. Come, I’ll prepare something for us while you tell us of Equestria. The real Equestria.”
While Celestia magicked up raw ingredients and Spark acted as sous chef, Dash told them about life back home since the princess had disappeared. She regaled them with tales of Rarity’s expanding business interests, Applejack’s begrudging acceptance of a small degree of automation at the farm, Fluttershy’s successful series of “home care for critters” guides, and Pinkie Pie’s inheritance of Sugarcube Corner when the Cakes had retired. Celestia asked questions here and there, relieved when Dash assured her Luna had done an admirable job of managing Equestria in her absence. Spark soaked it up like a sponge, hanging on every word of this first-pony account of life in the real world from a new perspective.
Dash carried her share of plates to the table and they all sat. She was surprised to see Celestia carrying two settings, and Spark took her place in front of one of them. “You can eat?”
“Oh, mine’s not real food. Simulated food for a simulated pony.”
“So… what’s the point?”
“Sharing meals together is a very important social activity, a key aspect of companionship.”
Dash choked on her first bite of grass burger, her mind racing. “Companionship? Are you two, uhhh…” A strange feeling shot through her. How would that even work?
Spark gave Dash a blank look and Celestia looked startled before bursting out into peals of laughter. “Oh, Dash! I haven’t laughed so hard in many cycles, thank you, but really, don’t be absurd. Of course, I mean no offense to you, Spark.” Spark turned her blank look on the princess, who sighed and nodded as if she should have expected that reaction. “Dash misinterpreted your explanation as meaning that you and I were intimately involved.”
“Aren’t we? We live together, take care of each other… I mean, you wrote me, for—”
“Romantically involved, Spark.”
Spark ground to a halt, looking surprised. “Well, that’s just silly.”
Laughing again, Celestia said, “Now it is I who will not take any offense.” Dash snorted into her hay fries, and Celestia turned to her. “And what of your… involvements, Dash?” There was a mischievous glint in her large eyes. “You’ve told me about your friends’ courtships, but nothing of your own.”
“I mean, well,” Dash slid a practiced grin into place and her voice dipped into a conspiratorial register, “you know, a gentlemare doesn’t kiss and tell.”
Celestia just sat there and looked at her, expression unchanged, letting expectant silence fill the space. Dash’s grin faltered.
Spark schooled a smirk into an expression of naive innocence. “Dash, why is your face red?”
“Shut up, Spark,” Dash muttered.
After lunch, they retired to one of the groups of furniture dotting the cavern. Dash stretched out on a sofa, gazing out the opening at Canterlot glinting in the distance. She frowned.
“So it’s like… early afternoon, right?”
Spark’s eyes unfocused and she tonelessly recited, “It is 11:12 AM, System Standard Time.”
Dash blinked. Twilight might have her moments, but she didn’t have a clock in her head. “Creepy.” Spark’s expression became quizzical and perhaps a little hurt, but Dash went on. “So, why is it still dark out? Didn’t write instructions for the sun to shine?”
Celestia laughed softly, a mellifluous sound. “Oh, I did, but within the simulation it was largely aesthetic, as the climate and so on are controlled ‘behind the scenes,’ if you will, by weather subsystems. When I was not inside the simulation, the sun would automatically raise and lower itself as scheduled, but when the System detected I was present, the automatic subroutine deactivated, so I could raise or lower it manually. A silly force of habit, you understand. But since going into hiding, I’ve had to restrain myself. The necessary spell is too easily traceable.”
“What would RBD do if she found you?” Dash asked uneasily.
“I’m not sure,” Celestia admitted. “I assume she would attempt to kill me, and with the Black Guard behind her she might succeed.”
Celestia paused to think for a moment before explaining, “In the real world, it would be very nearly impossible for somepony or something to end my existence, though ‘immortal’ is perhaps a touch too strong a word. In here, however, I’m just like anypony else, and I already explained what would happen to a user who was terminated within the simulation.”
“So you’ve hidden away all these years—centuries—because you didn’t want to risk getting your mind erased?”
“Yes. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, after all.” The princess smiled. “And I must admit to a certain fondness for my own.”
Dash blew out a breath. “But you’re Princess Celestia! How in Equestria did you end up trapped inside a dinky box inside your own castle!?”
“Unfortunately, the Portal requires enormous power to stay open and active. To keep from burning out the associated circuits, it shuts down after eight hours of system time, or about five minutes in real-world time.”
“You couldn’t just turn it back on?”
“As I mentioned earlier, it’s not possible to enter commands from within the active simulation. That can only be done from outside. I never anticipated anything would prevent me from returning within the allotted time.”
“What did happen?” Dash’s brow knotted and she sat up. Finally, after years of waiting—and Twilight wouldn’t even get to know yet. Just her. Did that make up for anything?
Celestia looked mournful. “You happened.” Dash opened her mouth to protest but the princess lit her horn. “In a way. Really, RBD happened.” Ghostly images began to coalesce between them, illustrating her words. “I don’t know how much Twilight already told you…”
“Not much,” said Dash. “She kept what she was working on a secret, I only found out anything about it when she needed a ride to Canterlot.”
“I see. Well, a brief overview, then. For some time prior to my unfortunate disappearance, I had been engaged in a project. Even ‘immortal’ princesses of Equestria need a hobby, you understand, and mine happened to be the creation of what came to be my computational engine.”
Swirling mist came together to form geared mechanisms and a big complicated mass of equipment and thread. Small paper cards with holes cut in them appeared next to the equipment. Dash wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Some of the more advanced looms used by the Equestrian textile industry can store instructions on punch cards, which in turn control how the loom weaves the fibers together to produce specific patterns. I realized I could combine this idea with that of a mechanical calculator to produce a machine capable of instantly carrying out complex mathematical calculations.”
The mess of gears, cotton, and cards melded together, and in a flash transformed into what might have been a very primitive version of the boxy machines Dash had seen in Celestia’s hidden workshop.
“I knew such a device would result in much time saved in many different fields, but as I worked and improved my models”—the primitive machine was replaced by successively more advanced versions, and in greater numbers—“I began to realize it was capable of far more influential accomplishments than mere number-crunching, and I eventually created the System you have entered: a simulation of the real-life Equestria.” The view of the machines expanded, as though Dash was flying into them, and inside was a three-dimensional view of her home, revolving in the air.
Dash glanced out the window again, taking in the almost-familiar skyline. “Okay, but… what’s the point? We already have an Equestria. Twilight said she couldn’t figure out the point of it either.”
Celestia let her head droop. “As I have managed to demonstrate several times, I am not all-knowing, nor do I possess future sight. Age and experience have granted me wisdom, but not infallibility. I do possess the capacity to make mistakes, and when I do, it is often with serious and far-reaching consequences for my little ponies.” The images in the air turned to confusion, angry and scared ponies running, other creatures chasing them, and Dash winced.
“Simply creating a simulated version of the real world is a curiosity at best. Running it at a much faster speed, though, would allow me to perform trial runs, as it were. I could implement a policy change or announcement here first and let the simulation run for a time, to see if there were any unintended side effects. With tweaking and revision and multiple runs, I could come very close to perfecting my decisions ahead of time.” The view split, and showed the same image to begin with, but as the ponies within began going about their business, they all went different ways.
Dash stared at the princess. “Seriously?”
Celestia smiled. “Seriously.”
The pegasus looked incredulous. “How is that even possible? The thing would have to know more than you, be smarter than you! How could a machine predict what one pony will do, let alone all of us?”
“A large enough database of information allows it to predict the actions of ponies en masse, if not individually. I loaded it with all of equine history; all details of the entire social, political, and economic situation in Equestria and the same for the surrounding countries; a wide knowledge of psychology in all its ramifications; a wide knowledge of technology with all its possibilities; weaponry, communications, strategy and tactics, science, medicine… the entire contents of the Royal Libraries, in fact.” Dash saw countless books flying into a glowing field in Celestia’s workshop.
“Every book, every scroll, every document since Equestria’s founding—and even earlier, thanks to the Archaeology department. I can confidently and without shame state the System does ‘know more than me,’ more than any one pony has ever or can ever know. That’s the only way it could have a chance of making accurate predictions. And it worked quite well, at least at first.”
Dash looked to Spark helplessly, and found the unicorn had been gazing at her. When their eyes met, Spark’s widened and she immediately glanced away. Dash blinked and turned back to Celestia.
“Okay, but if this thing’s so smart, how come everything’s gone to Tartarus? You’re hiding in a cave, for crying out loud!”
Celestia nodded. “As I have alluded to, my work was incomplete at the time I became trapped. Several key aspects had yet to be built into the simulation. For example, there is no concept of aging here—that is to say, physical degradation over time.” A cross-section of an earth pony appeared, vitals displayed alongside. “Every program left in the simulation now has been active since it started. They have all lived through a thousand cycles—the equivalent of a thousand years—and will go on indefinitely.”
“So they don’t get sick, or die of old age?”
“Precisely. A program will only derezz here through an accident, or deliberate violence.” The earth pony dissolved into shards of light.
Dash thought back to the pegasus who’d clipped the pillar. Over a thousand years old, and he died because of a stupid mistake? Then, with a start, she remembered the aerial flight pack battle. She had killed programs. A bunch of thousand-year-old programs…
She shook her head. She hadn’t had a choice, it was her or them. Wasn’t like she’d killed ponies. Dash glanced uneasily at Spark, who was now pointedly staring at a game board sitting off to the side. Still doesn’t mean I have to like it.
“It took some time for the population to notice they weren’t aging, and to realize, if left alone, they would live indefinitely. Once the situation was common knowledge, it made the general population cautious. Few were eager to risk giving up immortality by standing up for themselves and fighting back.” The three-dimensional view of Equestria returned, this time with small glowing dots scattered across the map, which began to contract to the center. “Those that still lived gathered together in Canterlot, and that is where the majority of the survivors live today.”
Dash couldn’t figure something out. “Okay, but where were you while all this was happening?” She was startled by an expression on Celestia’s face she never imagined there: shame.
“I was here. Hiding. Exhausted by maintaining the life support spell, I was unable to prevent any of it.” Spark was paying attention now, watching Celestia with concern.
Still utterly confused, Dash asked, “But why were you hiding in the first place? You said I—RBD did something. What happened?”
Something flared in Celestia’s eyes; Dash almost took it for anger. “Corruption. During my test simulation, RBD spit her bit, as the saying goes, though ‘flipped her bit’ would perhaps be more accurate.
“RBD was meant to represent her Element, Loyalty, just as the other Element bearers here do, but it skewed away from allegiance to her friends. She became loyal to herself alone. She felt she deserved to be in charge, that nopony was a better leader than her. She brought some of the guards around to her way of thinking, and they came for me.” Pain flashed in her eyes now. “I was with APP—Applejack’s simulacrum—when they arrived. When she saw RBD meant to cause me harm, she forced me to run and held them off long enough for me to escape. I— I—” Dash was shocked again to see tears running down Celestia’s pained face. “I heard her screams. APP’s, I mean. I of course know she is not truly Applejack, that the real Applejack was safe and sound in the real world, but found the knowledge to be... little comfort.”
Spark spoke up quietly. “She came to Ponyville, to the library, and found me. We ran—didn’t even stop to pack anything.”
Celestia sniffed, wiped her eyes with a hoof, cleared her throat. “I explained the System’s true nature to Spark, and we made for the Portal, but before we could get there…”
“The Portal closed,” Dash said hollowly. The princess nodded.
“Celestia led us here to regroup, but we realized there was nothing to be done. So we settled down, built this place.” Spark looked around the room fondly. “Over time, I’d sneak back to the library to grab books, at least until RBD figured out what was going on and destroyed it.”
“Spark has had to be much more careful since then about venturing outside our Smokey Mountain hideaway,” Celestia said, the barest hint of admonishment in her voice.
“I’m always careful!” Spark protested. “And it’s a good thing I do go out! If I hadn’t, who knows what would have happened to Dash?”
“Hey! I can take care of myself!” Dash glared, but her heart wasn’t in it. “I do, uh, appreciate the help, though.”
Spark sniffed and said, “You’re welcome,” with a pleased little smile.
Dash turned back to Celestia. “So what now? The Portal’s still open, right, from me coming in? Let’s get going, we can finally get you back to Equestria!”
The princess hesitated before admitting, “It’s not quite so simple, I’m afraid.”
Dash snorted in frustration. “Seems pretty simple to me. The Portal’s only open for, what, another four hours? We gotta get moving before it shuts down again.” She stood and pawed at the ground.
“Celestia isn’t exactly in the best condition, Dash,” Spark pointed out reluctantly.
The pegasus eyed the alicorn. “Right. You’re usually pretty tired, from maintaining the life spell?”
“It is a great drain on me, yes,” Celestia lamented. “I’m afraid there’s no way I could summon the energy or focus necessary to teleport us there, and flying would take too long.”
“Well, Spark can take us!” Dash whirled back to face the unicorn, grinning. “She teleported me here, she doesn’t have to deal with the life spell!”
“I can only teleport someplace I’ve been before, or at least that I can see clearly.” Spark fidgeted and avoided eye contact, clearly unhappy about admitting her own limitations. “And even if I’d been to the Portal before, it’s practically at the other end of the System, in the middle of the Badlands. Long-distance teleportation with two passengers?” She bit her lip. “I couldn’t manage it safely. If I lost focus, we’d derezz.”
“There’s gotta be another option!” Dash said, a touch of desperation creeping into her voice. “No offense, but I’d really rather not be stuck inside this place forever!”
Celestia looked thoughtful and her horn glowed, the map of Equestria appearing in the air between them all once more. “Of course, the System includes all the major railways that exist in the real world. A branch line runs past the mountain range we’re in, through Ponyville, and out to Dodge Junction, near the Badlands.” A glowing line swept along the track’s route. “Close enough that I believe we could manage the remainder of the trip on the wing.”
“The next train will pass through our area in approximately ten minutes,” Spark said, her eyes unfocusing. “We’d need to change trains in Ponyville… I think we could make it.”
The princess turned to look out of the cavern. Dash followed her gaze, and to the right of Canterlot and farther away, she noticed a bright blue star, but it was below the horizon, much too low to actually be in the sky. She looked back at the princess, and saw the star reflected in her magenta eyes, which hardened in sudden determination.
“Of course you’re right, Dash. This may be my only chance—our only chance—to return home. We have to try.” Then she looked taken aback, and turned to the unicorn sitting across from her. “Spark,” Celestia said. “My most faithful, faithful companion. You understand, if we succeed...?”
Spark nodded and said simply, “It’s not possible for me to leave the System.” Dash winced and ruffled her wings, and Spark noticed. “It’s okay, Dash.” She gave Celestia a determined look. “I belong here—literally. You belong outside, in the real Equestria. I want you to go. It’s the only logical course of action; nothing else makes any sense.”
Celestia seemed as though she was trying very hard to not cry. Her eyes shone as she spoke. “I swear to you, if… when we make it out, I will do everything in my power to correct the… the damage I have wrought here. You don’t deserve to live like this. Noprogram deserves to live like this.”
Spark smiled softly up at her mentor. “I know you will, Celestia.”
And then Celestia staggered back, as though somepony had stabbed her, almost falling to the ground. “No,” she whispered, staring madly into the distance.
Dash and Spark both rushed to her side. “Princess! What is it?!”
The alicorn raised a weak hoof, pointing out the cavern mouth. “The Portal, it’s…”
Dash turned, and her belly turned to ice. Her vision shrank to a dark tunnel, centered on the bright blue star in the distance. It flashed once, and then once more, and then it winked out completely, leaving a pitch-black horizon and no way out of the nightmare she’d found herself in.
Celestia retired to her private room, returning to her meditation in an effort to recover from the emotional whiplash of the morning and the added strain on the life support spell of a second pony’s presence. Dash was too numb to sleep and sat in silence at the mouth of the cavern, Spark at her side, looking out over what she was reluctantly trying to think of as her new home.
“I’m sorry, Dash.”
Dash started and looked over at her new companion. Only in that moment did she realize she’d been waiting to hear those words in that voice for a long time. She blinked and shook her head to chase the thought away. Spark watched with obvious curiosity. “I—what?”
Her companion’s mouth twisted in an unhappy grimace. “I said I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”
Dash blew out a breath, at once angry and mournful. “It’s been a weird morning. A few hours ago I was asleep at home, and now I’ll… probably never be home again.” Spark nodded softly, and they both turned back to the view. After a few moments, Dash frowned and shook her head. “I just don’t get it.”
“What?”
“Celestia said the Portal stays open for eight hours. That’s set in stone, nothing anypony… anyprogram can do to change it.”
“Right.”
“But it shut down early.” Dash’s eyes widened, hopeful excitement rising up inside her. “Nothing in here can do anything to the Portal, but somepony in the real world could!” She whirled, making Spark jump a little. “Twilight! Twilight and Luna are still in Celestia’s workshop! She’s the one who activated the thing in the first place, I bet she turned it off too!”
Spark frowned. “Why would she do that? She must want to get you and Celestia out of here.”
Dash pushed to her hooves and began pacing, trying to think everything through. “She does, she absolutely does. So either turning it off was a mistake, just like turning it on was, or she did it on purpose but didn’t get what it would mean for us.” She turned and stared intently into the distance, towards the Portal. “But either way… either way, she’s going to realize she screwed up, and the only way for us to get outta here is through that Portal.”
“Are you sure?” Spark said dubiously. “She’d have to be able to retrace and reverse-engineer how the System works. Even I don’t know if I could do it, were our positions reversed, and I’ve lived in here for the equivalent of a millennium.”
“I know you could do it, because I know she can do it,” Dash said, slowly but firmly. “Twilight would do anything to get Princess Celestia back home.”
Spark watched her expectantly for a moment before frowning and prompting, “And you.”
“Oh,” Dash said, taken aback. “Right. And me.”
“Well, okay.” Spark stood as well, glancing in the direction of the Portal. “So until then, we just have to keep you safe. RBD could still kill you between now and whenever Twilight realizes what she’s done and reactivates the Portal. You’ll stay here with us, obviously. RBD hasn’t found this place in a thousand cycles, she’s not going to any time soon.”
The thought of playing it safe made Dash wrinkle her nose a little, but she had to admit Spark had a point. “I… guess so.” She flopped back down, the excitement and adrenaline slowly ebbing out of her, and rubbed at her shoulder. “So what do you guys do for fun around here?”
“Read, mostly!” Spark said brightly and trotted over to one of the cavern’s walls. It was almost completely obscured by long shelves and the neatly-lined books they supported.
“Got any Daring Do? I never got around to anything past The Sapphire Stone.”
Spark paused and a sad look washed over her. “I’m afraid we don’t. I do miss them.” She gave Dash half a smile. “I’d started with the nonfiction section when I was attempting to transplant the contents of Books and Branches here, so…” Dash mock-gagged, but tried to do it with an apologetic look; Spark rolled her eyes. “So, no reading then.”
“Nah, no thanks. What about that game you were looking at earlier?”
“Oh!” Spark brightened again and moved over to the board. “It’s really fascinating. Two simple rules, and the rest of the gameplay is heuristic—”
She was interrupted by snores, and turned, incredulous, to find Dash curled up on the ground.
Dash opened an eye. “Oh. Must’ve nodded off. Sorry about that.”
Spark huffed.
“You know,” Dash said an hour later, “once the Portal’s back on, is there a better way to get there? The princess is never going to be able to teleport us, and whether or not we catch a passing train, she’s always going to be in danger once we leave your hideout.”
Spark looked up from the thick book she’d finally settled on, which had required multiple rounds of Dash reassuring her that she didn’t mind. Dash played idly with her identity disc as she waited for Spark to respond, spinning it like a top on the ground before tossing it up in the air and catching it.
“I’ve been thinking about that, actually, and…” Spark trailed off.
Dash raised an eyebrow, snatching her disc out of the air and locking it back on her flank. “And?”
“Well,” Spark said. “I’ve heard rumors of a transport system that can get a program from Canterlot out to the Badlands safely. Apparently during the Time of Contraction, some programs didn’t feel safe moving back to Canterlot and opted instead to form their own settlement outside RBD’s control.”
Dash jumped up. “That sounds perfect! Do you know how to use it?”
Spark shook her head. “I’ve only caught bits and pieces, things I’ve overheard from time to time when I venture out into the greater population, but I’ve eavesdropped on enough conversations to know someprogram named Diana runs it and she’s in Canterlot.”
“Alright, well, let’s find this Diana and have her show us how to use it! Then when the Portal’s back on, we can go straight there and get out to the Badlands.”
Spark looked shocked. “We can’t go to Canterlot! The Black Guard would catch us for sure.”
Dash groaned and stamped her hooves. “I can’t just sit here waiting who knows how long! I gotta get out and do something! Twilight and the princess are both depending on me now!”
Spark cast a worried glance toward the princess’ chambers. “Well, we can’t both go, and you would—”
“Just get into trouble?” Dash rolled her eyes.
“No offense, but the princess has told me a lot about you.” Spark gave her a long look up and down. “A lot about you.”
“The princess’s information’s ten years out of date, y’know. A mare can change.” Spark’s eyebrows went up and she looked like she was trying not to giggle. Dash sighed. “I’m faster than you.”
“I’m faster than you. I can teleport.”
“If you go, that means I’ll be stuck here, bored outta my mind and more likely with each passing moment to do something stupid,” Dash pointed out.
Spark narrowed her eyes. “At least you’ve developed some sense of self-awareness.”
Dash grinned. “Like I said…”
“A mare can change, yes. Be that as it may, you have to be quiet and careful, Dash. You heard the princess—this isn’t Equestria. If you get caught, you’ll be killed.”
Dash almost snapped off a pithy response. She caught the concern in Spark’s eyes, almost outright fear, and forgot for a moment that this wasn’t Twilight looking imploringly at her. She sighed. “I know. I’ll be careful.” She turned to the cavern’s opening, already running through potential flight plans in her mind. “Make sure the princess stays safe while I’m gone.”
“Of course,” Spark responded immediately. As Dash shook out her wings, the unicorn called out, “Dash, wait! One more thing.” The pegasus turned back, snorting in impatience. “The programs talked about a password to access the transit system—it’s ‘forever.’”
Dash nodded. “‘Forever,’ got it. See you later.”
“Be safe,” she heard Spark whisper behind her.
Dash looked back long enough to wink at her before stepping out of the cavern, her wings tucked against her sides. She plummeted straight down the sheer cliff face beyond. Spark gasped and ran to the edge, peering over just in time to see the laughing pegasus flare her wings and shoot forward into the darkness, a prismatic rainbow trailing behind her.
Spark sighed. “Safer than usual, anyway.”
Dash peeked around a corner. More guards. Figured. She ducked back into the alleyway and waited for them to pass; they were too engrossed in their own conversation to notice her. She trotted out into the street and surveyed the area. The place seemed almost familiar, even in the odd perpetual evening light.
She’d never admit it to Spark, but as soon as she’d landed at the outskirts of the mountain city, she’d realized a few more minutes in the planning stage might not have gone awry. For starters, she had absolutely no idea who Diana was, or where to find her. She’d taken to wandering the streets, looking for a likely place to ask around, hiding when guards came too close for comfort. She suspected her blood pressure was a touch on the high side after an hour of this.
“I see you took my advice,” said a melodic voice to her right.
Dash did her absolute best to not jump and successfully contained a squeak of surprise. She spun and found herself nose-to-nose with not-Rarity. What was her name? Jewel. She’s “Jewel” here.
“Advice?” she managed in a reasonably confident tone.
“To survive! Of course, you did have to cheat a bit, didn’t you?” Jewel said with a conspiratorial grin. “I heard all about it, later. So sorry I missed it myself. A daring rescue by a rogue program, goodness! It’s like something out of an adventure story!”
“Yeah, well, you know, it all worked out in the end—”
“But what are you doing here? Surely RBD was less than pleased with your performance. The Black Guard must be on high alert searching for you.”
Dash glanced around. “I’ve been ducking ’em anytime I see ’em. And I’m looking for somepony. Er, someprogram.”
“Who?”
Dash hesitated. This program looked like Rarity, sounded like her… Could she be trusted? Celestia would have programmed her to behave just like Rarity, the Element of Generosity, but what if she’d corrupted like RBD? She’d been nice to Dash before, with no real reason to be. That didn’t seem to fit with a corrupt program. “Someone named Diana. She has information I need about how to get Pr— about a safe way out of the city.”
“Why didn’t you say so, dear? Follow me!” And Jewel trotted down the street without waiting for a response.
That was easy. Too easy?
Dash galloped to catch up, looking around furtively for any sign of more guards. Random programs strolled down the street to either side of them, apparently unconcerned by the presence of the two mares. “You know Diana?”
“Why but of course! Everyprogram who’s anyprogram knows Diana, darling.” Dash saw they were headed into a more populated area of the city. The buildings towered higher above them, and there were lines of eager programs outside some of them. The road they were following dead-ended at the tallest building of them all, with a line outside twice as long as any of the others.
“Are these all—”
“Clubs, of course, the place to be if you’re looking for some fun. Music, dancing, drinks! What more could a program ask for?” Jewel led Dash straight for the entrance, bypassing that long, long line, with many an envious and irritated glance thrown their way. A particularly large pegasus stallion in all black nodded at Jewel, who blew him a kiss as they stepped inside.
Dash had been to a few of the more popular nightlife establishments of Canterlot in her time, and thought she’d known what to expect. She was surprised by the featureless hallway beyond the front door. A set of double doors at the end slid open as they approached. These programs really love their elevators. Jewel pressed the only button set into the wall. Immediately the small room hummed to life, and there was a distinct sensation of upward movement.
“So Diana spends a lot of time at this club?”
“I should say so,” Jewel said with a hint of laughter. At Dash’s blank look, she added, “She runs it! Best place in town, I wouldn’t be caught derezzed anywhere else—though I may be a touch biased.” She giggled. “Welcome, my dear, to—”
The elevator halted and the doors hissed open, revealing a huge room packed to bursting with shouting, laughing, gyrating programs. The orange and blue of their suits cast strange, exciting shadows over everything. A circular bar in the middle of the chamber had several programs scurrying back and forth behind it, distributing drinks to their shouting patrons. Above, a raised platform supported a DJ and her sound system, turntables spinning a pounding beat. The brilliant neon blue shades of her mane contrasted with the bright electric-pink sign mounted in front of her, proudly proclaiming—
“—The Elements!”
Dash nursed her drink, warily inspecting the programs around her. None of them gave her a second glance. She wasn’t exactly sure what her drink actually was, but it tasted good and also it was glowing—pretty awesome—so she kept sipping.
Jewel had deposited her at the bar and gone off in search of Diana, promising to return with her.
She was just starting to wonder if Twilight had figured out her Portal mistake yet when there was a huge explosion behind her. She jumped and whirled and stared at the massive cloud of confetti and streamers spinning wildly through the air, as everyprogram around her screamed excitedly.
At the epicenter of the blast, a pink mare in a white bodysuit with glowing blue lines cheered along with everyone else, her darker pink mane bouncing wildly. “How’s the party, everyprogram?!” A roar greeted her and she beamed before bounding into the crowd. It turned out Jewel had been standing behind her, the faintest touch of irritation on her face as she shook brightly colored scraps of paper from her mane.
Dash tried not to smile as she turned back to her drink. “I shoulda known it was Pinkie—”
“Hi, I’m Pie!” The pink mare stood behind the bar, wiping it down with a balloon-patterned rag. Dash almost knocked her drink over.
“Pinkie!”
“Pinkie? What’s that?” Pie cocked her head, her blue eyes gazing intently at Dash.
“It’s—I mean—no one, it’s no one.” Dash sighed and downed the rest of her drink in one gulp. “Nice to meet you, Pie.”
“Nice to meet you too, Rainbow Dash!”
Dash eyed her. “Don’t you mean RBD?”
“Naw, RBD’s a big Meanie McMeanieface! You can tell ’cause her suit’s orange! Yours is blue!”
Jewel pushed her way between dancing programs to reach them at the bar, managing to maintain her perfect poise. “She’s an absolute terror. Anyone could tell at a glance that you are not she.”
Dash wasn’t so sure; she didn’t think she would have been able to tell the two of them apart at a glance, but let it slide. “Jewel, where’s Diana?”
Jewel nodded towards Pie, who beamed. “I can help you with that one, Rainbow Dash!”
“Just call me Dash, Pie.”
“Okie-dokie-Dashie!”
“So,” Dash tried again, “where is Diana?”
Pie looked shiftily left and right before leaning in close. Dash unconsciously mirrored her movement. Pie bit her lip. Dash held her breath.
Celestia came into the main room of the Smokey Mountain hideout. She saw Spark curled up at the cavern entrance, alternating between reading a few lines of the large tome laid out before her and gazing out at the pseudo-Equestrian landscape. Dash was nowhere in sight.
“Spark?”
Spark jumped and looked around guiltily. “Oh! Hello, Celestia. I… thought you’d be resting longer.”
Celestia frowned. “Where is Dash? I wouldn’t have expected her to be able to nap—though I suppose that wouldn’t be terribly unlike her…”
“I’d hoped you’d be resting longer,” Spark mumbled.
Celestia’s eyes narrowed, and she felt an unfamiliar sinking in her stomach. “Spark,” she said warningly, “where is Rainbow Dash?”
The throbbing of the club’s music was reduced but not eliminated by the walls of Pie’s office. She led her buoyant way up from the dance floor with Dash and Jewel in tow. When the transparent doors sealed behind them it was like a breath of fresh air. Or whatever passed for air here.
“D’you like my club, Dashie? It’s like one big party all the time!”
Dash looked out at the club below, the riot of neon oranges and blues all writhing together as brilliant beams of light strobed above the crowd. “Well, yeah, it’s pretty awesome, actually.”
Pie beamed and bounced around the room. Jewel trotted to a chaise lounge against one wall and composed herself upon it, watching Pie with a smile.
“So when do I meet Diana?” Dash pressed. Anxiety was niggling at her mind. Staying too long in one place with the whole of RBD’s Black Guard out searching for her seemed like a bad idea.
Pie giggled and bounced back over to her, pushing her pink snout up against Dash’s. “You already have, silly filly!”
“I… what?” Dash looked over at Jewel, who gazed back, blinking innocently.
“I told you everyprogram knows Diana; I didn’t say they knew she was Diana.” Jewel offered her a small pleased grin.
Pie took a step back and sketched a deep, formal bow before straightening up and grinning hugely. Dash groaned and nodded. “Of course. Hi, Diana.”
“Pretty great prank, huh?” She appeared next to Dash and elbowed her in the ribs, still grinning. “All these programs think I’m one program, but really I’m another!” Over on her lounge, Jewel rolled her eyes.
“Yeah,” Dash muttered. “Good one.” She cleared her throat. “So—Diana—word on the street is, you know how to get out of the city undetected.”
“You bet I do! Lots of programs didn’t want to stay here when RBD took over, so I built an easy way out her guard doesn’t know about! I call it the Underground Railroad—d’you know why?!”
“Because it’s underground?”
Diana gasped and stood back. “How’d you know?!” Behind her, Jewel rolled her eyes again.
“Just a feeling,” Dash offered. She moved to sit opposite Jewel. “So how do we get to it?”
“Oh, that’s the best part, Dashie!” Diana leaned in to whisper conspiratorially again. “It’s right underneath the club!”
“You sure about this, Shy?”
“Um, well, the spectral pattern is an exact match for Rainbow Dash, as recorded on the Challenge Grid…”
The two programs gazed up at a wall-sized display, which showed a rainbow streak leading out of a distant mountain chain towards the city.
“You know what this means?”
Shy squeaked.
RBD grinned a feral grin. “It means we’ve gotta see a dragon about a cave.”
“How could you let her go?!” Celestia cried. “The Portal is sealed! There is no reason to take such risks, not now!” She paced back and forth across the cavern mouth, her cloak swirling in agitation.
“That’s what I said! But she made some very compelling points—”
Celestia snorted irritably. “Yes, I’m sure Rainbow Dash had to try very hard to convince you to do what she wanted.”
Spark froze, a mixture of embarrassment and hurt playing across her features, and Celestia instantly regretted her loss of control. “Spark, I’m so sorry. That was completely uncalled for.” She went over and offered her a hug, and after a moment, Spark accepted it, cheeks still burning.
Quietly, from within her embrace, the program continued. “The only thing that could have shut the Portal down ahead of schedule is Twilight Sparkle, and she’s smart enough to work out what she’s done and re-open it. The sooner we can safely begin the journey to the Portal, whether or not it’s active at the time we depart, the better.”
Celestia sighed and pulled back to look down at her student. “Yes, of course Twilight must have closed the Portal. And of course she will work out what she has done, and how to reverse it. If she’s spent ten years with my notes and built her own working model, there should be very little she cannot accomplish within the System.”
Spark blinked and shook her head, stepping back as well. “But—if you know all that, what is the problem? Dash went out to secure safe transport for us, and I remained here to guard you.”
“There are bigger issues at stake here, Spark. To begin with, she will likely as not be executed on the spot if she is discovered.”
“I warned her—”
“But larger still,” Celestia pressed on, “why is she here in the first place? How did she—did Twilight—gain access to the System at all? It was well hidden; you have some idea as to my methods.” She gestured around at their secret sanctuary. “Dash said Twilight Sparkle received a letter from me, calling her here. RBD must have sent that letter, must have wanted Twilight in-System. Perhaps as a hostage, to be used as leverage against me somehow.
“But in Rainbow Dash…” Her magenta eyes grew wide. “In Rainbow Dash, RBD got more than she could have bargained for.” Celestia stared out at the distant city lights shimmering on the horizon. “Could she…?”
Spark watched her mentor carefully, waiting for the end of the thought, but it never came. Celestia drew herself up, and there was steel in her voice. “Rainbow Dash may be in greater danger than either of us realized. We must recover her and protect her. Under no circumstances can RBD be allowed to find her.”
Spark nodded and drew herself up as well. “What do we do?”
Celestia turned to her virtual protégée and smiled. “We go downtown.”
Dash glanced around Diana’s office. “Underneath here? How do we get to it?”
“There’s a secret button in the elevator! Below the button that takes you back to the ground floor, it just looks like the wall—but if you press it, you go past the ground floor to the secret station!”
“Ha, cool!” Dash jumped up, energized by the confirmation there really was a way forward. She stretched her wings and pawed at the floor. “Thanks a bunch, Pie—er, Diana.”
Diana bounced to the office’s doors and hit the open control. As they parted and the noise of the club spilled into the room, she exclaimed, “No, thank you, Dashie!”
Dash frowned and glanced at Jewel, who shot her a bemused expression and a shrug. “Uhhh… for what?”
Diana spun to face Dash and began giggling madly. She threw her front hooves in the air as black-suited programs crashed through the glass roof of the club, the thuds of their impacts overwhelmed by the screams of the club patrons, who immediately began to scatter and retreat to the edges of the room. “For finally giving me something I could trade to RBD! You.”
A final thud shook the building, and Dash looked down to see Cracken in the center of a squad of Black Guards, her wings folding to her sides. That faceless helmet stared up at her.
The hot, sick feeling of betrayal coursed through Dash’s veins. “Blue suit, huh?” she growled, glancing over at Diana.
“Oh, Dashie,” Diana said, fluttering her eyelashes. “Orange just isn’t my color!”
Dash turned to throw a vicious glare at Jewel but found the unicorn horrified. “Diana!” Jewel gasped. “How could you?!”
Diana threw back her head and laughed. “Don’t you see how funny this is?” she cried out in joy. “Surprise!”
“Hilarious,” Dash snarled as she bolted, shoving past Diana and rocketing down the stairs. Her sights locked onto the huge bay window behind Cracken, opening out over the city. She leaped into the air, spreading her wings and throwing her forehooves out in front of her, streaking towards the window—but almost faster than the eye could see, Cracken jumped and bucked, catching Dash in the chest and sending her spinning across the club. Terrified programs dove out of the way and Dash smashed into the wall, sliding to the floor and groaning. She shook her head and looked up; Cracken towered over her, Black Guard goons flanking their leader.
Maybe Spark will still be able to get Celestia to the Portal when Twilight opens it again.
Cracken raised a hoof and Dash cringed back, anticipating the strike, but it didn’t come.
The elevator dinged.
Dash, Cracken, and the Black Guards reflexively turned to watch the doors as they parted, revealing a lavender unicorn with a close-cropped mane in a yellow-lit bodysuit. Behind her, another much larger pony in a black cloak had to duck her head as she stepped out of the elevator, lest her long, slender horn scrape the doorway.
“Hello, my little programs.”
A hush fell over the room. Blue-suited programs fell to their knees in deep, reverential bows. Orange-suited programs tensed and looked to Cracken, who stared at Celestia for a moment without moving before growling and nodding her head forward once.
The Black Guard leaped forward, blades of orange light materializing on their forelegs, but Spark ignited her horn and a shield of sunlight-yellow energy sprang into place between them. The Guards’ energy blades crackled against it but did not penetrate. Spark grunted with effort and pushed, and the shield flew forward and dissolved, scattering Cracken and the Guard across the dance floor. Dash forced herself up and galloped over to the entranceway, taking her place next to Spark in front of Celestia.
“Met Diana,” Dash said out of the corner of her mouth as they eyed the enemy programs struggling to their feet. “Kind of a party pooper.”
Spark threw her an exasperated look. “Clearly. Did you get what you came for?”
“I think s—” But Dash was interrupted by Cracken launching herself towards them, black wings spread. Dash ducked and pivoted and kicked, knocking her up and over the group. She managed to twist and land on all fours, skidding to a stop in front of the elevator. Dash looked back and forth between her and the rest of the Guard: now they were surrounded. “Oops.”
“Oh, Dash,” Spark groaned.
There was another moment of silence. Celestia had closed her eyes, breathing slowly, almost humming to herself. Cracken and the Black Guard were tensed, waiting to make a move. The rest of the crowd looked on, their breath held. Above, Diana and Jewel watched from the top of the stairs: Diana gleeful, Jewel terrified. At the back of the room, the DJ clambered back up onto the stage and peered over her turntables.
Dash narrowed her eyes and snapped her wings to full extension. “Get ’em!” she roared, and surged forward. Spark’s horn lit up and fired a blast of yellow energy at the closest Guard, sending him spinning across the room. Dash caught another Guard in a fierce uppercut, shattering his helmet. Behind her, Cracken galloped and leaped, spreading her wings and arcing over Celestia to smash into Dash, knocking her to the ground. Around them, the other clubgoers dissolved into their own fights, blue- and orange-suited programs shouting and scuffling.
The DJ appraised the situation for a moment. After a thoughtful pause, she flipped a new disc onto her turntable. A pounding dance mix filled the room, and she unconsciously bobbed her head to the beat as the brawl played out before her.
Dash rolled on her back and bucked, kicking Cracken’s legs out from under her, the black-suited pegasus falling to the side. Spark spun and punted one guard as she blasted a second, and Dash scrambled up to launch herself at a third.
“We have to get out of here!” Dash shouted as she grabbed a guard by the wings and threw him into Cracken, who had just managed to stand back up. They both squealed across the floor into the far wall.
“You think?!” cried Spark. She looked toward the elevator. Celestia was still standing there in meditation and there was no one blocking their exit route, but there was no way they could make it to the doors without the guards taking them down.
Dash was looking the same way, and so she missed Cracken’s attack. The black pegasus landed on her, forcing her to the ground and knocking the wind out of her before kicking off and flying towards Spark, an energy blade extended before her.
Spark turned at Dash’s grunt of pain and Cracken swung, her wicked blade slicing neatly through Spark’s horn. The unicorn program screamed in agony as her severed horntip exploded, a miniature shockwave knocking everyone back a few feet. Her eyes sought Dash’s before rolling back in her head as her limbs went slack. She slumped to the floor, shuddering as vicious energy crackled from the smoking stump on her forehead.
Celestia’s eyes snapped open, glowing pale yellow. She took in the uproar: the riot of programs scuffling with one another, the Guards descending on her incapacitated companions, the DJ watching her in awe. Her cloak began to shift around her body, billowing in an unseen breeze. Above, for the first time, Diana began to look scared.
The Princess of the Sun stepped forward and ignited her horn. “Let us bring the dawn to this dark place.”
Programs fell back, startled by the sudden blaze of energy and awed by the sight of Celestia rising into the air, her hooves outstretched, her cloak burning away into nothingness, her mane and tail whipping in a wind no one else felt. The guards had dragged Dash to her feet but they dropped her, forgotten at the sight of the alicorn floating above them.
Celestia threw her head back and spread her wings. Her horn pulsed with power and fired into the sky, shattering what remained of the ceiling glass and blowing it outwards.
The sun rose.
Brilliant light streamed into the room from the horizon and everyone cried out as their eyes attempted to adjust to the onslaught after hundreds of cycles in the darkness. Even with the protection of her smoky black helmet, Cracken shied away, throwing a foreleg up in an attempt to block the blazing warmth.
RBD whirled, flaring her wings to skid to a midair stop, flapping to maintain altitude. She was nearly to the mountain range where her nemesis had apparently been hidden all these cycles. Golden light streamed across the land from the opposite horizon, casting long shadows from the mountains and city. Her visor darkened automatically and she glared into the sunlight, ignoring her eyes’ pain as she scanned the landscape.
Yellow light shone brightly—too brightly to be mere reflection—from the top of one of the towers in the city. “The Elements,” she growled, and shot towards the light.
About a mile on she blew past another pegasus, struggling to fly the original course. “Come on, Shy! Quit lazing around.”
Shy gasped and nodded, coming about and following RBD back towards the city.
Dash winced, but her eyes adjusted quickly to the brilliance of the day and she coughed, drawing in deep lungfuls of air. She looked around. Spark was motionless where she had fallen, her open eyes blank white orbs. Celestia was slowly drifting back down to alight on the floor, deep exhaustion etched on her face. The rest of the programs had collapsed, unable to handle the full brightness of the sun after a thousand years without it. Dash squinted out the window and was surprised to see the sun already retreating back below the horizon, the sky turning from brilliant sapphire blue to deep orange-red and purple.
“Time to go, Dash,” Celestia called softly, and Dash turned.
“Right. Get to the elevator!” Celestia slowly began making her way to the doors, which slid open at her approach. Dash ran to Spark and nudged her; she didn’t respond. She scooped her up and threw her across her withers, then galloped for the exit.
Celestia sat heavily in the elevator and Dash dropped Spark next to her, as quickly and carefully as possible. She turned and saw Diana glaring at her from the top of the stairs across the dance floor. Cracken was pushing to her feet, shaking her helmeted head in a daze.
“Yeah,” Dash said. “We’re outta here.”
She slammed a hoof into the elevator wall below the ground floor button. Light glowed from beneath the panel’s surface and the doors sealed. A moment later the elevator hummed to life and sped down the tower, carrying its occupants underground.
The elevator dinged as it reached the lowest level, deep below the simulated surface. Its doors slid open, letting dim light spill into a darkened passage. Dash eased her head out and peered around, but there was little to see. Rough black stone walls stretched away into the darkness. The lack of any light sources, save the inside of the elevator car, made it hard to see more than a few feet.
Dash stepped out, and as soon as her hoof hit the floor of the corridor, lines of cool blue light flickered into existence at the base of the walls, reminding her of the castle corridors far above. The new illumination revealed the corridor was actually quite short, leading to a much larger room.
The pegasus turned back in time to see Celestia touch her horn to the elevator’s control panel. There was a brief pop and the panel started smoking as the interior lighting guttered and dimmed. The alicorn gave Dash a wan smile. “That should slow down any pursuit. Here, help me with Spark.”
“Right.” Dash moved forward, ducking down and nosing under Spark’s still form, then flipping her up onto her own back. Together, she and Celestia moved down the corridor and out into the open room.
It was as harsh and rugged as the corridor, but in the center was a sleek train car, glossy black with large smoked-glass windows, resting on tracks that ran out to the left and disappeared into a dark tunnel. The train hummed to life as they approached, telltales lighting up and a door unsealing itself for their entry. Stepping inside, Dash found rows of benches, just like every other train she’d ever been on. She gently deposited Spark in the first row and turned toward the front of the cabin as the door hissed shut behind them.
There was a console there with a smooth input panel, like the one in Celestia’s workshop, plus quite a few physical controls. She found a lever that seemed a likely candidate for the throttle and pushed it forward. Looking out the front windshield for a few moments, she decided she couldn’t detect any kind of forward motion and returned her attention to the console. The input panel flashed, and bright red text scrolled across it.
WELCOME
PLEASE INPUT PASSWORD
Dash stared at the message for a moment before it came back to her. She awkwardly nosed the appropriate letters in the list that appeared below the message.
F O R E V E R
The letters blinked once, and then disappeared, replaced by a new message in green:
THANK YOU
PREPARE FOR DEPARTURE
Hidden power thrummed and with no further warning the train smoothly accelerated forward, speeding out of the station. Dash stumbled a little but kept her footing. Out the windshield, silvery-blue tracks stretched away to infinity down the tunnel, lit only by the train’s headlights. She watched for a moment, then went to sit down.
Celestia had collapsed onto the bench opposite Spark’s. Without her cloak, Dash thought she looked even weaker than when they’d first been reunited back in the mountain hideout. Her face was drawn and her body looked too thin beneath her white bodysuit, almost transparent somehow. The princess caught Dash’s eye with a wry look. “Hardly the princess you remember, am I?”
“Oh, I, uh…” Dash hemmed and hawed for a moment, before settling on a murmured, “Not really.”
“Well,” the alicorn yawned, “a thousand cycles without so much as a nap can have that effect.”
Dash was dumbfounded. “Wait, really? You haven’t slept at all? That’s crazy.” No wonder Luna said she couldn’t enter her dreams. She hasn’t been having any.
Celestia gave a tired—very tired, Dash realized—half-shrug. “It’s not possible to maintain the life-support spell without conscious effort. I had spent some time recently attempting to teach Spark the necessary technique, but we haven’t gotten far enough in her studies of the matter to risk it.”
Dash frowned. “So a simulated pony can do real magic?”
“Strictly speaking, she would be channeling my own magic. The System itself is powered by magical reserves I charged before entering, which she would be able to access.”
Dash turned this over in her mind for a few moments before shrugging. “Sure, okay.” She turned her attention to Spark, still comatose on her bench, her shattered horn still charred and faintly smoking. “Is she going to be okay?”
Celestia regarded her virtual student thoughtfully. “Yes, I think so. Bring me her disc, would you?”
Dash went over and twisted Spark’s disc off her flank, bringing it back to Celestia’s bench and laying it in front of her. “What are you gonna do?”
Celestia nudged the disc with a hoof and lights sprang into the air above it, swirling together to form a coherent display. It showed Spark’s body in outline, with her horn highlighted in angry red. “Well, there is your problem!” Celestia said cheerfully. “Just missing a horn!”
Dash blinked. “Prin— Celestia, that’s…”
The princess sighed. “Too dark? Of course; I’m sorry. Really, she’s going to be perfectly fine. Look.” She prodded a marking within the hovering display and the horn flashed to a blinking yellow, then she nosed at a different marking and the display disappeared. “Reattach the disc, please.” Dash settled in next to Spark on her bench and dutifully snapped the disc back into place on her flank. The injured unicorn’s sightless eyes flashed blue for an instant.
Dash looked back to Celestia, who pointed to Spark’s shattered horn. Returning to Spark, Dash was startled to see the horn regrowing. If she squinted, she could almost make out tiny blocks of matter shimmering into place and fusing with the remnants of the original horn base. After a few moments, Spark looked like nothing had ever happened, and her eyelids slowly fell shut. About time. That sightless stare had been super creepy.
“So, she’s okay now?”
“Yes.” Celestia sighed. “Every program has a checkup routine built into it, which I can access and use to scan for and reset damaged code caused by injuries or other corruption. She will probably sleep for a time, but she will wake up on her own and be just fine.”
“Huh. Wish I had one of those checkup routines,” Dash said, rubbing her shoulder and thinking back to the last time she’d sprained her wing. Being grounded for a week never got less annoying.
“That would be useful, wouldn’t it!” Celestia agreed. “I expect the various medical professionals of Equestria might feel a touch put out to find themselves useless, though, don’t you? And there’s something to be said for the character built and lessons learned through injuries and healing, even if you yourself have never seemed to learn them.” She smiled at Dash.
Dash started to blush, but the back of her mind interrupted and reminded her of something Celestia had said. “Wait, it can repair corruption? Like what happened to RBD?”
“In theory, yes. But as you saw, I would need direct access to RBD’s disc; I suspect she wouldn’t allow it.”
“Sure would make things easier,” Dash mused.
“Agreed. However, at the moment, it is not RBD’s disc that concerns me, Dash,” Celestia said. “It’s yours.”
Dash glanced back at her flank, where her identity disc rested as securely as ever. “My disc? Why?”
Celestia looked pensive, even worried. “For a program, an identity disc is a sort of diagnostic tool. It gives me access to the checkup subroutine you have seen, among others, and it also serves as a repository for everything that program has learned and experienced. A backup, as it were, of their simulated life. This made it very useful during the System’s development and testing. If a program became damaged due to some flaw in my work, I could fix the flaw, repair the program, and restore its knowledge.”
“Okay,” Dash said, “but we’re not programs. What do our discs do?”
“I needed a quick way to authenticate users in and out of the System, and I already had identity discs, so I copied them and added the authentication routine. The other routines are still there, but most can’t function, as they’re designed to repair code, not flesh and blood…” Celestia trailed off at Dash’s blank stare. “Right. The most important part is this: Our identity discs act as our keys out of the System. Without our discs, we won’t be able to access the Gateway.”
“Ooh, so, definitely don’t want to lose this baby,” Dash said, tapping her own disc with a hoof.
Celestia’s worried look grew more pronounced. “Absolutely not. And, it being your key out of here notwithstanding, we absolutely do not want RBD to acquire it, because I think there’s an excellent chance she could exit the System in your place.”
“She could what?!” Dash cried, leaping to her feet.
“The authentication routines are extremely basic—they were intended for Luna and I, unique visitors, not ponies who already have program duplicates within the System! If RBD presented the Gateway with your disc, I am not confident it would reject her. I think it may instead download her into your body back in the real world, leaving you trapped in-System and nopony but us any the wiser.” Celestia looked exhausted and horrified at the prospect.
Dash sputtered fitfully for a moment, too enraged and terrified to speak. “That—that is so not okay! That’s my life, she can’t have it! What about my friends, my family, my—my everything?!”
“It would be devastating on a personal level,” Celestia agreed gravely, “to have one’s self so deeply maligned.” She paused. “Yet I fear the consequences for Equestria itself would be even more grievous.”
“What could possibly be worse than losing my life?!”
Celestia quirked a tired eyebrow. “Imagine an Element of Loyalty no longer loyal to her friends, but to herself. With the magic of your friendships shattered, Equestria would have no defense against its greatest horrors and enemies. What if Discord were to break free again?”
Dash exhaled and slumped down on her bench, suddenly feeling drained. “Yeah, okay, that’s pretty bad.” She didn’t have it in her to mention how strained certain of those friendships had already become with Celestia gone. Instead, she glanced at her disc again. “So—RBD can’t get her hooves on this.”
“Absolutely not.” Celestia nodded in agreement. “And that is why you must be more cautious! The consequences of your actions within the System may reach wider than they first appear, and your friends are not here to temper your, shall we say, usual enthusiasm for the challenges at hoof. We are alone, you and I, and must protect one another.”
Dash gulped and nodded. “You’re right, Pri— Celestia. I’m sorry. I really thought I was being helpful.”
Celestia smiled and leaned over to gently nuzzle the pegasus. “I know, Dash. In the end, you were lucky—this time. The three of us are on our way to the Portal, if a bit ahead of schedule, with no lasting damage done. Hopefully Twilight will quickly realize and rectify her mistake, and we can go home.”
Dash looked over at Spark’s prone form. She could even see the repaired unicorn’s chest rising and falling now, as though in a deep sleep. “You think she’ll be awake soon?”
“I’m sure she will be,” Celestia replied after a brief appraisal of her student. “And now, I must follow her lead and get some rest. Not sleep, of course, but my meditation can be nearly as refreshing, and it has been a very tiring day.”
“Oh, sure. That was really something back there at the club, you raising the sun again.”
As she arranged herself and let her eyes drift shut, Celestia smiled a deeply satisfied smile. “Yes,” she whispered. “Wasn’t it wonderful? Almost… like being home again…” And then she was still.
Dash glanced around the quiet train at her two dormant companions and settled in to watch the tunnel flash by.
RBD thudded in the center of The Elements’ dance floor. The club’s patrons fell back, pressing themselves against the walls and holding their breath as their ruler stalked past them. They didn’t even register to her; she went straight for her lieutenant.
“Where are they?” RBD growled. Cracken remained as stoic as ever, but she turned her head towards the empty elevator alcove behind them. “They got away?!” her commander snarled. “That is so not okay!” RBD whirled and smashed the first thing she saw: a Black Guard. He gasped as her hoof punched through his chest, and then his body derezzed, falling in glittering pieces to the floor. RBD panted in rage; Cracken looked on impassively.
“Aw, c’mon now, Arby!” came a cheerful voice. RBD ground her teeth, then looked up to find Diana’s face hanging upside-down in front of her. “Cheer up! Celestia, Spark, and Dashie were all here! Celestia hasn’t been out and about in forever, so that’s gotta be a good sign for you!”
“I told you to not call me that,” barked RBD, making no impression whatsoever on Diana. “And it would be a better sign if she was here, so I could snap her horn like a twig. A thousand cycles of cat-and-mouse with nothing to show for it. I want her gone! No more questioning my authority.” She glared around the room at the various blue-suited programs. Behind her, Cracken nodded to her remaining Black Guards, who fanned out across the room. At the top of the stairs to Diana’s office, Jewel wore an uneasy expression.
Diana blew a raspberry. “I’m surprised you even care about Celestia any more, silly filly! It’s all about Dashie and her disc now, isn’t it?”
Above them, a panting pegasus dropped through the shattered ceiling’s framework and collapsed next to Cracken, who didn’t react at all. RBD glanced at Shy, then looked back to the bouncing club proprietress, narrowing her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, duh! You and Dashie are so identical there’s no way the Gateway could tell you apart. If you get her disc, you could leave the System completely!” Diana grinned. “And then someprogram would have to take over for you in here, doncha think? And I was thinking, why not me? The parties I could throw…” She broke off to sigh in longing but immediately snapped back to bouncing up and down in excitement. “Wouldn’t it be great?!”
RBD’s mouth was hanging open. For the first time in a very, very long time, she was speechless. If Diana was right… RBD had never even considered the possibility of leaving the System. All she’d ever dreamed of was securing control over this simulated Equestria. But a chance at the real thing? And more—whatever lay beyond Equestria’s borders in the real world didn’t exist here. The possibilities…
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” conceded RBD.
Diana somehow began bouncing even faster, so elated she seemed ready to burst. “So you’ll do it?!” she squealed. “You’ll go out into the real world and I can take over in here?” There was no denying it—she was thrumming with excitement. “You’d better hurry! They’ve gotta be halfway to the Portal by now!”
RBD turned and gave Shy a jab; the pegasus let out a meep. “Come on, Shy. Time to go.” She turned back to Diana. “Yeah, I think you’re onto something there, Pie, I really do.” With a great flap of her wings she was airborne, Shy struggling into the air with her. “There’s just one problem.”
“Problem? I don’t see any problem!” chirped Diana, as RBD nodded to Cracken. “Everyprogram wins!”
“The problem is, you didn’t keep them here when you had the chance. And you know, maybe even worse than that…”
Cracken snapped a hoof against the floor. Each of her Guards touched a glowing telltale on the devices they had planted around the club before smoothly leaping into the air and diving out of the tower.
“…you called me Arby. Again. I hate that.”
RBD and Cracken swept into the sky, Shy trailing behind. Diana looked after them, her jolly expression replaced by a mask of confusion as Jewel ran up to her, sobbing, and everyprogram around them stampeded towards an elevator that wouldn’t come, screaming and whimpering in fear as the entire club dissolved into blazing white light.
Above the explosion, RBD turned to Cracken. “Get me that disc.” Her lieutenant nodded and peeled off, guards falling into formation behind her as she arced south. “And Shy, I need you to—” She broke off and looked around. RBD could have sworn the pathetic pegasus was right behind her, but now Shy was nowhere to be found. “Well that’s just great.” After another glance around, she gave up with a frustrated growl and sped off towards her tower, muttering about unreliable programs.
On the roof of a nearby building, Shy peered around a decorative crenellation. RBD was fading into the distance, and above her, The Elements was gone, replaced by a smoldering, sparking inferno. Tears filled her large eyes at the thought of so many programs derezzed for no reason at all—especially Jewel and Diana. Hadn’t they just wanted to help programs? Jewel, giving out advice and equipment to the gaming programs, and Diana, spreading her laughter? Shy had to admit, in recent cycles Diana seemed to spend more time laughing at programs than with programs, but even so, RBD had taken things too far.
Diana had said the others had to be halfway to the Portal by now. Shy could only think of one way that was possible. With a last glance in RBD’s direction, she stepped off the roof and drifted down toward street level.
The train thrummed down the tunnel so quickly Dash had to admit she wasn’t sure if she could have kept up with it, even in her prime. She was seated in the second row, behind Spark’s still-unconscious form. Celestia maintained her regenerative trance across the aisle, humming softly.
An underground railroad didn’t offer much in the way of scenery, so Dash replayed her conversation with Celestia in her mind as she stared out the window at motion-blurred rock. If RBD could use her disc to steal her life… She’d be trapped in here. What would her friends do? Surely they’d figure it out, sooner or later. Twilight would go crazy—well, even crazier—trying to fix it. As if she hadn’t already thrown away so much time trying to save Celestia…
Dash chewed on her lip for a moment, then ruffled her wings decisively. It didn’t matter. They weren’t going to let that happen. She wasn’t going to let that happen. RBD would not be getting her hooves on Dash’s disc.
Her disk… She eyed it thoughtfully for a moment, then released it from her suit and laid it next to her on the bench to inspect it. Remembering Celestia accessing Spark’s status display, Dash poked the disc here and there until she found the nearly undetectable activation stud.
The disc projected its display into the air. Instead of Spark’s body, it showed her own, largely in good health, though some red areas highlighted the various minor scrapes and bruises she’d picked up during her time in the System.
Below the schematic of her body, graphs pulsed with information. One was labeled “RPM,” and appeared tied to her breathing rate; she watched for a moment as the graph rose and fell in time with her chest. Another was labeled “BPM” and kept up with her heartbeat. On a whim, she forced herself to pant, stopping with a grin when both rates increased. Dash looked back up to the floating diagram of her body and considered it briefly, then twisted around to pinch one of her wings. She winced at the twinge but delighted at the schematic instantly lighting that exact spot in pulsing red.
Dash reached to shut it off, but her hoof brushed along the bottom of the floating display; her vital signs slid to the side and disappeared, replaced by blurry little pictures. She squinted at them and realized they were all images from her own life. She experimented with brushing her hoof against the display until she worked out how to navigate them, and idly browsed through her memories, smiling here and there as she recognized favorites and swiftly dismissing unpleasant ones.
Eventually she started to run across memories she didn’t recognize right away, but she found she could tap them to expand the little pictures, filling the display and setting the memory in motion, playing out days long past as seen through her eyes at the time.
A half-remembered sight caught her eye and she tapped that image next. She saw her friends amongst other ponies, all in the fanciest outfits Dash could ever remember wearing, seated at one of dozens of tables set out on the grounds at Sweet Apple Acres. Right, she thought. Applejack’s wedding.
Much of the view was hazy. On the left, she was pretty sure she could make out AJ at the head table next door to her own, surrounded by her immediate family and her new husband. On the right, she saw the vague shape of her own date, whose identity escaped her at the moment. Probably a pegasus, she hazarded. Somepony from work?
The image was clearest across the table from her: Twilight making polite conversation with the stallion that Rarity had dragged along. Rarity herself was seated on the other side of her date, staring at the head table while she worked her way through a bottle of wine.
Her own date said something, and she replied, but the focus of the memory didn’t change. Dash felt faintly guilty that she couldn’t remember who her date was and that she apparently hadn’t given them the time of day. Across the table, Twilight laughed at something the stallion said.
Bitterness welled up in her, as it did every time she let herself really think about Twilight. This had probably been the only time Twilight had emerged from library that week, and she was sitting on the opposite side of the table, as far away as she could be. They could have been sitting together. Talking. Laughing.
Dash watched a moment longer, as AJ headed over in her white dress to visit with her friends and Rarity became intensely interested in her date’s conversation with Twilight, before swiping at the memory. It dissolved, returning to her health status display, pulsing gently in the darkness. Its chest was glowing faintly red, and she rubbed hers with a hoof, massaging the tightness there.
Her eyes focused past her vital signs on Celestia’s nearly-slumbering form. Hmm. She carefully got up and crept over to Celestia’s side. Slowly and silently, she detached the princess’s disc and brought it back to her bench, setting it on the seat. She stood before it and nudged the activation stud.
The disc threw its display into the air and Dash gasped as sullen scarlet light washed over her. Every indicator cried out for attention, flashing warnings and alerts. Celestia was even closer to the ragged edge of collapse than she’d thought. Leaning closer, Dash realized even the display itself was having trouble. The diagram of Celestia’s body wavered, sometimes dissolving into rolling particles of light before fuzzily reforming.
Dash quickly shut off the display, gently locked the disc back onto Celestia’s side, and returned to her seat. She had left her own disc’s display running, and several of her graphs had spiked into the red: her heart was pounding in her chest, and she forced herself to slow her breathing as she deactivated her disc and reattached it to her suit.
Celestia was the only one who could do the life support spell. If she couldn’t keep it going, Dash was dead.
Her gut clenched and a chill ran down her spine. Dash shut her eyes for a moment, then opened them to look ahead, past her two damaged companions, to watch the tracks and tunnel roll by while she brought her breathing under control. We’ve gotta get out of here.
“Please hurry, Twilight,” she murmured to herself.
Rainbow Dash careened through the dark castle, illuminated only by blue telltales, her hooves pounding the glassy floor. Ahead, at the edge of sight, a shape whipped around a corner and disappeared. She poured on speed and rounded the same corner, and caught a glimpse of black bodysuit before it vanished into another hallway, distorted laughter floating in its wake.
Dash growled in frustration and redoubled her efforts, sweat coursing through her coat, the salty wetness burning in the spots rubbed raw by her own formfitting bodysuit. That taunting laughter mingled with her quarry’s hooves striking the floor. She hated it.
Right when she felt herself finally gaining, closing the gap, something shifted: The laughter’s cadence and pitch changed, drifting lower, and Dash burst through a set of doors just in time to see a streak of rainbow before a blade of burning orange swiped towards her and she launched herself into the air, flapping hard to rocket forward. The blade passed harmlessly below her but its owner was already whipping around to grab at her hind leg, sending her spinning off-balance and landing flat on her back, air leaving her lungs in a great lurch of breath, wings splayed out under her, looking back the way she'd come at her own face in a dark mirror, and she shut her eyes so she didn’t have to see that face any more and she screamed.
“Twilight! Twilight, help! Twi—”
“Rainbow Dash!”
Dash opened her eyes and saw Twilight’s face looming over her, and she launched herself up and wrapped her forelegs around her but something was wrong, and she realized she was still in a sweaty bodysuit in a dark train cabin lit only by blue telltales.
“Dash, are you, uh, okay?”
She carefully unwrapped herself from Spark and sat back on her bench, running a hoof through her mane, panting slightly. “Ah, yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry about that, just a… just a bad dream.”
Spark gave her a worried look—and was she blushing?—but Dash finally comprehended that Spark was up and about, and she very nearly launched into another hug. “Wait, Spark! You’re awake! You’re okay! You’re okay, right?”
The program grinned, waving Dash’s concern away with a hint of self-consciousness, and moved to sit next to Dash. “Yes, I’m fine. To be honest, I don’t remember how we ended up on this train. We were in The Elements, and there was a fight, but…?”
“So…” Dash bit her lip. “Cracken kind of… knocked me down and cut your horn off.” Spark blinked in surprise and raised a hoof to her forehead, but Dash quickly added, “You passed out, I guess? And once we got on the train, Celestia fixed you.”
“Oh! Well, okay then.” Spark glanced around the spartan train cabin for a moment, then settled her gaze on Dash and lit her newly-reformed horn. Dash felt herself lift into the air and sputtered in protest. “Just making sure everything’s in working order!” Spark said quickly, and gently deposited Dash back on the seat. “I guess I’m good as new.” Before Dash could reply, Spark brightened and said, “Oh, more good news! Come look,” and she stood and trotted to the train’s controls.
Dash followed and blinked at the view beyond the windshield. The train had exited the tunnel and now sped across a vast black wasteland, dark clouds roiling overhead as they had back in the city. A knot of tension in her spine Dash hadn’t realized was there unkinked itself at the sight of the sky, virtual or not. But even better, directly ahead of them…
“The Portal!” Dash whooped. A brilliant blue star just above the horizon pulsed ahead of them, far in the distance. Not only was it on, she could tell it looked bigger than the last time she’d seen it.
“Yep!” Spark agreed. “Twilight must have figured things out and powered it back up for us.”
“Now we just have to get there. How much longer do you think it’ll take?”
Spark considered this, eyeing the train’s display, the Portal, and the surrounding environment. “It’s difficult to say—I don’t know exactly where this rail line will terminate—but I would guess only a few more hours. With the Portal shutdown timer reset, we don’t have to worry about not making it there in time—we just have to worry about the Black Guard. I can’t imagine we got away undetected.”
Dash remembered Diana’s piercing glare as the elevator doors sealed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they know we left… and where we went. Celestia fried the elevator to try to slow them down, though.”
“Well, that’s something.” Spark turned and headed back to the cabin’s seating area. “All we can really do now is wait.”
Dash followed her and gave her a wry grin as they settled in. “And we don’t even have any boring books or board games this time.”
“I guess we’ll just have to find something to talk about,” Spark said with a laugh. They watched the view roll by for a moment, and then she asked, “Your bad dream… what happened?”
Really, we have to go there? “Aw, it was just a… so I have this dream sometimes, where I’m chasing Applejack through the woods, but right as I’m finally about to catch up with her, I trip and fall. It’s dumb, Applejack and I race all the time, I don’t know why it keeps happening.”
“So you were chasing Applejack and fell?” Spark raised an eyebrow. “And you called Twilight for help?”
“Oh. I said that out loud, huh?” Dash cleared her throat awkwardly and Spark grinned, but there was an undercurrent of intense interest there too. “Well, it wasn’t that I fell. It wasn’t the usual dream, this time. I think I was chasing Cracken, but then it ended up where RBD had me cornered. You woke me up right before she… I’m pretty sure she was about to kill me.”
“Oh, Dash,” Spark murmured sadly. She shifted a bit closer on the bench and rested her head on Dash’s shoulder. “I’m glad I could save you.”
Dash stiffened at the unexpected contact and looked down at the unicorn program. “Spark…?”
Spark looked up at her, being careful with her new horn. Their faces were very close, Dash thought. Closer than they should be.
And then Spark seemed to come back to herself, a look of shock sweeping over her face as she scrambled upright and pushed herself away. Dash was left sitting there, speechless and bewildered, with Spark now at the other end of the bench. “Spark? Are you okay?”
“I’m—” She nodded, and then stopped abruptly and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. This has been—I know this has been a very strange time for you, but it’s been a strange time for me, too.” She stared at Dash. “You have to understand, before everything… before everything went wrong, RBD and I were—” A spasm of pain crossed her face. “We were very close. We understood each other. She was… one of my best friends. Like Twilight is to you. You would do anything for Twilight, wouldn’t you?”
Dash’s throat got tight. “I—” She swallowed.
Would I? Still?
Of course she would. “Yes.”
“And I would have done anything for RBD. But I… but I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do. By the time I found out there was even a problem, she was already gone, and there was nothing I could do to get her back. I couldn’t… couldn’t save her.”
Spark went quiet for a moment before continuing, and when she looked back at Dash, tears began to form in her eyes. “And then hundreds of cycles after I managed to make some kind of peace with that, you show up.
“You are the RBD I remember. You are the passionate, loyal program—pony—that was ripped from me a thousand cycles ago. And the first thing I had to do when I saw you was save you from RBD!” She laughed, just a touch hysterical, through her tears. “I saved you from the program I couldn’t save. And I just…” She sniffled and wiped at her face. “In a lot of ways it’s been really nice to have you here. Have you back. I’ve missed you so much, Arr...”
When she realized what she’d begun to call Dash, Spark looked pained again. Dash couldn’t stand it. She spread her forelegs and Spark collapsed into her, sobbing quietly. Dash held her tightly. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she just rubbed her back in what she hoped was a comforting way.
Eventually, Spark calmed to an occasional whimper, and she mumbled into Dash’s chest, “We have to get you out of here. Celestia, too, but Dash, your Twilight must be so miserable. We have to get you back to her.”
Dash’s hoof faltered, and Spark looked up at her. “You have to know how important you are to her.”
“I, ah… maybe.” Dash tried to keep bitterness from creeping into her voice. “She can have a funny way of showing it if I am.”
With a last sniffle, Spark pushed herself up and wiped at her face. “There’s no way you’re not. I promise you.” This time, it was Spark who offered a hug, and after a moment’s hesitation Dash accepted, letting the unicorn squeeze her tightly.
When Spark released her, Dash made to sit back up, but not before Spark leaned in to give her a kiss on her cheek. She looked at the program in surprise, feeling a blush creep up her face.
Spark just looked back at her, smiling softly. “You’re a good pony, Dash. A good friend.”
There was a tremendous thump as something landed on the roof of the speeding train. They both jumped, staring up at the ceiling and then back at each other, the moment of closeness forgotten.
“What the hay was that?” Dash said.
Hoofsteps thudded above them, at a measured, deliberate pace, moving towards the side of the train above the door.
“Black Guard?” Spark asked. She cast a worried look at Celestia’s still form.
Dash ran to the princess and shook her, hissing in her ear. “Celestia! You have to get up, someone’s here!” Celestia started and glanced around, but Dash dragged her off her seat before she could say anything. They stumbled to the back of the cabin and Dash pushed her to the floor. “Stay down!” Still bleary, Celestia could only nod, and Dash returned to Spark’s side, facing the door.
The hoofsteps on the roof stopped. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the train door slid open and they were buffeted by roaring winds ripping through the cabin, howling and tearing at their manes. Dash almost fell back a step, squinting against the onslaught, but she held fast and readied herself to jump at—
A dark-suited form, traced by orange bands of light, swung down from above the door and landed just inside the train, then jabbed a hoof at the door’s control panel on the inner wall. It slid smartly shut and the wind instantly died.
Spark and Dash faced off against the intruder, Spark’s horn charging, but they were both startled when the intruder immediately sat down and held up its forelegs in a gesture of surrender. Its glassy black helmet hummed and split open, and long pink locks of mane spilled out.
“Shy?!” Dash stared at the newcomer. Spark let her horn power down, but still kept a careful eye on RBD’s right-hoof mare.
“Um, yes, hello. I’m so sorry to startle you all like that, but I really needed to speak with you.”
At the back of the cabin, Celestia rose to her hooves, and Shy squeaked when she caught sight of the alicorn, immediately dipping into a bow. “Rise, my little program,” said Celestia as she came forward. “What is it you have to say?”
“I,” Shy gulped and straightened up, “I thought you should know you’re in great danger. RBD wants Rainbow Dash’s identity disc and sent Cracken to get it. She’ll be here soon, with a Black Guard squad.” She pulled a small case from her side and opened it; inside were three flight pack legbands. “I brought you these. You’ll need them to make it the rest of the way to the Portal.”
Dash and Spark exchanged a surprised look, and Spark said, “But why would you help us?”
“RBD…” Shy’s sweet face contorted into a mask of sickened pain. “RBD and Cracken destroyed The Elements and everyprogram in them after you left. Diana and Jewel and so many innocent programs…”
The revelation that Jewel had been terminated was like a buck to Dash’s gut. One of the only programs who’d tried to help her here. More thousand-year-old programs, dead for no reason. But she shook it off and steeled herself. “How do we know you’re telling the truth? This could be some ploy to mess with us, knock us off balance. Those flight packs could be sabotaged or something. You’re with RBD—why should we trust you?”
“I—I don’t know how to prove it. I just—” Shy swallowed and scanned her three enemies with a frightened look. “I promise? She can’t be allowed to exit the System!”
Dash looked to Spark, who looked to Celestia, who looked thoughtful for a moment. “Spark, bring me her disc.” Spark ignited her horn and detached Shy’s disc, making the pegasus twitch at the unexpected contact, and floated it over to Celestia. Celestia activated the display, and— “She’s telling the truth. There is no trace of corruption within her code. She is,” with a faint expression of surprise, Celestia turned to face Shy, “in perfect working order.”
Dash’s jaw dropped and she stared at Shy, who was beginning to curl up into herself in shame. “Shy! Why… why would you be with RBD if you’re not,” she hesitated, “if you’re normal?”
And Shy finally collapsed, falling to the floor, wracked with broken sobs. “I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know what to do… Celestia was gone, everything was falling apart… I wasn’t going to—going to abandon—”
Dash sighed and exchanged a look with Spark before walking over and kneeling next to the disheartened program. “You couldn’t abandon your oldest friend.” Shy looked up at Dash with huge, wet eyes, tears shimmering on her cheeks, and slowly nodded. Dash leaned in and wrapped her in a hug. “I understand, Shy. It’s okay.” Shy threw her forelegs around Dash and buried her face in Dash’s mane. Spark and Celestia moved closer, returning Shy’s disc and adding their own forelegs to the embrace. Gradually, Shy’s heaving sobs subsided, and the others released her and stood back to let her catch her breath.
Finally, she faced them all. “I’m sorry.”
Celestia spoke. “My little program, it is I who am sorry. Your suffering is all because of my mistakes.” She shook her head. “If I had been more careful, none of this would have ever happened. None of this should have happened.”
Shy sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. “I still wish there was some way I could make it up to you. Some other way I could help.”
Spark cleared her throat. “You know… there may be, though it would be extremely dangerous. I almost hesitate to suggest it, but…” The others looked curious. “Do you think you could get your hooves on RBD’s disc? Celestia would be able to repair her, end her corruption.”
Celestia raised her eyebrows but nodded to herself. “That’s true. Resetting RBD would resolve all our problems, and we could reach the Portal without further peril.”
Shy bit her lip. “I… I might be able to. I’ll try to.”
“If you can get it and bring it to us, that would be amazing, Shy,” Dash said. Shy nodded, a determined look on her face. “We’ll keep heading for the Portal just in case.”
A tone sounded from the train’s console, and they all turned. In the distance, something loomed over the tracks, and Shy gasped.
“Oh, no—it took me longer to get here than I realized. Quick! We need to get out of here.” She reached for the case, fumbling with the legbands, but Spark used her magic to distribute them.
Dash slipped hers over her hoof, then looked back out the windshield. The distant archway was getting closer every second. “What is it, Shy?”
Shy made sure everyone’s legband fit correctly before activating her own, a flight pack materializing on her back and helmet unfolding around her head. “The rail line ends in the Badlands, but there’s no settlement. Diana helps”—Shy caught herself—“helped run this as a way for RBD to get rid of programs who didn’t want to live under her. The train just goes over a cliff and anyone inside ends up derezzed! Come on!”
She hit the door control and it slid open again, blasting them all with shrieking wind. Dash, Spark, and Celestia activated their own packs and helmets, and in turns they launched out of the doorway into the wasteland, skimming just above the ground. The train sped off behind them, disappearing into the darkness towards the brightly lit archway on the horizon.
Shy signaled to the others, and the group alit behind a jumble of boulders. She hissed through her helmet, “I saw them coming on my suit display. Stay hidden. Look!” She pointed back toward the track.
A flying vee of Black Guard pegasi shot through the night, led by Cracken. They didn’t spare a glance for the unremarkable rocky hideout off to the side. Once they’d passed, Shy turned to the group. “Okay. I’ll go back to find RBD, to try to… try to get her disc. You all need to get going. Stay close to the ground and don’t activate the light ribbons, and they might miss you. Just go as fast as you can!”
Dash pulled her in for one last hug. “Be careful, Shy.”
“You too!” she said. She peeked over the rocks, then took a running start, flapping into the air before powering her pack on and disappearing towards the distant city lights.
“Let’s head out,” Dash said to Spark and Celestia. “Will you be okay with this?” she asked the princess.
“I believe so,” Celestia said. “It’s not nearly as much effort to fly with one of these packs, and we’re nearly there. We will do as Shy said, and stay close to the ground, and hopefully avoid detection. But one moment—” Celestia lowered her head, touching her horn in turn to each of their legbands. “This should increase their maximum thrust, so be careful, but we need any advantage we can get.”
“It’s a shame about having to keep a low profile,” Dash griped. “I haven’t, uh, done one for a while… but with this thing?” She raised the foreleg with the flight pack legband. “I bet a sonic rainboom would be easy.”
“I’m not certain you could break the sound barrier inside the System. Regardless, a sonic rainboom would draw attention we don’t want. We should stick to the flight packs, and stay low.”
Dash sighed. “I guess so. Spark, you ready?”
Spark raised her foreleg. “As I’ll ever be.”
“Okay, keep close. Here we go!” Dash and Celestia spread their wings and activated their packs. They launched up just above the level of the uneven landscape before straightening out and angling towards the Portal. Spark followed, slightly awkward without wings to stabilize herself, glancing over her shoulder at Cracken’s squad following the tracks.
Twilight slid to a halt against the base of one of the computational stacks, groaning as the rough-hewn stone floor scraped her hide. She pushed herself up, ready to scold Dash for her rash behavior, but saw nothing—her friend was gone.
“Rainbow?!”
Luna looked horrified. “That device—it fired a blast of energy and she… she dissolved.” The princess turned to Twilight. “It would have hit you, had she not intervened. What is this? Some new teleportation spell?”
Twilight reined in a spasm of panic and pushed herself to her hooves. “Celestia’s notes didn’t say anything about this. But she wouldn’t create something that… destroys ponies. Rainbow must be okay, wherever she is.”
She moved back to the master console, inspecting the display, mentally retracing her steps. “I ran through the princess’s commands, re-entering them one at a time to see what they did. There was nothing suggesting a computational engine could affect the physical world, so I didn’t realize… Okay, new assumption: any command I enter here could result in an interaction with the physical world in some way, so I need to be more careful in my experimenting with her system.”
“Agreed.” Luna stepped closer. “Twilight…”
“Yes, Luna?”
“What happened to Rainbow Dash must also have happened to my sister.”
“I have to think so. And it would be logical to assume they’re both in the same place.”
“But that place must not be in our world. There is no force known that could have prevented Celestia returning to Canterlot.”
“So,” Twilight thought aloud, “some sort of alternate plane of existence or reality…”
Luna nodded to the display. “Perhaps she’s in there. And now Rainbow Dash as well.”
Twilight almost laughed before she caught herself. “Luna, that… doesn’t make any sense. ‘In there’ is a string of ones and zeros, infinitesimal surges of power along tiny metal circuits. How could a pony be in there?”
Luna shrugged. “I do not know. This area is as indecipherable to me as unicorn magic is to a pegasus. But I do know two things. All my senses tell me Celestia is here, inside this room, yet I do not see her. And magic takes many forms.”
Twilight frowned at the strange cylindrical device, still humming slightly as its blue glow faded, and wondered.
She shook herself abruptly and turned back to the console.
“Okay. Objectives: one, determine which of the commands I entered is specifically responsible for… dissolving…” Twilight frowned. “Disintegrating?” She wrinkled her nose and her ears went back briefly while she thought. ”…dematerializing Rainbow Dash; two, determine if any other available commands are capable of interacting with the physical world, in the interest of our safety; three, determine where Rainbow Dash is now, which should hopefully lead to four, determine where Princess Celestia is now; five, determine how to get them back. Simple.”
“Is it?” asked Luna.
“Well, probably. Hopefully?”
“Then please, begin.”
A few moments of frantic work later, Twilight sat back and nodded. “Okay! I suspected as much, but it’s good to know for certain. The last command I entered, right before Rainbow disappeared, was the one that actually caused her to disappear. It was the activation command for the device behind us—referred to here as ‘the Gateway’—and several of the previous commands were responsible for routing power to it and actually turning it on.”
“Can you deactivate it?”
“Yes, I think so. Once I do, we should be safe—I won’t enter those commands again, and it’s not possible for this thing to turn itself back on. Stand over there, just in case.”
Luna stepped back, watching the device closely, as Twilight entered a few commands. The faint hum that had emanated from it dwindled to nothing, and the princess turned back to Twilight and the master console, ignoring the Gateway as the light behind its gems faded to darkness.
“I’ve also browsed the embedded library of available commands, and as far as I can tell, no other commands are capable of interacting with the physical world.” Twilight blew out a sigh, part relief, part stress. “So I think it’s safe to start digging a little deeper. The system should log everything, it’s just going to be a matter of finding the logs we need.”
“And you believe these logs will include the location of Rainbow Dash and my sister?”
“I have to think they will. I have to hope they will, otherwise I’ll have absolutely no idea where to go from here.”
Twilight worked in silence for a few minutes, as Luna paced back and forth behind her. Finally, she spoke.
“It’s… strange.”
“What?”
“I… I think you were right, Luna.” Twilight looked up from the console. “I think Rainbow and Princess Celestia are both inside the computational engine, somehow. According to the logs, the Gateway sends any information it collects to a single book inside the system called Station.”
“Book? There are books inside these boxes?” Luna glanced around the room.
“Not a physical book in the traditional sense. It’s a metaphor the princess adopted when she was laying out the organizational structure of her system. A book in this context is a… a collection of related data. Think of the Royal Archives: you have books within shelves within stacks. A book is the smallest organizational unit, but related books can be grouped together on shelves, and related shelves can be grouped together in stacks.”
“I see. I think I see. And what does the Station book do?”
“It’s a very small book, relatively speaking. Only a few lines of code inside it. But those lines of code route inbound data to a much larger book, called Arrival, which is itself contained in a huge shelf inside a gigantic stack. There’s a channel for outbound data from a different book, Portal, in that same stack. It’s… it’s exponentially larger than any stack I have in my system in Ponyville. If it were a real, physical library stack it would be bigger than every library in the world combined.”
Luna looked taken aback. “My word. All within these boxes in this room?”
“Yes. And Station routes outbound data from itself back to the Gateway.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I think the Gateway is capable of analyzing and breaking down and storing physical objects, including living things like ponies, and transmitting them through the Station into a massive simulation, many times the size of the simulation of Ponyville I’m running back home. Do you remember when we first arrived, there was a series of numbers on the display?”
“Yes, a rather long series.”
“It was an uptime counter. A clock that keeps track of how long the simulation has been active without interruption. It’s been running for over ten years, since just before Princess Celestia disappeared. I think you were right. I know you were right. Celestia and Rainbow are both trapped inside a virtual world, and the Gateway isn’t a one-way street—it’s possible to bring them back!”
Twilight kept speaking as she worked, her magic dancing across the panels of the master console, text spilling over the display. “Back home I have my display rigged to provide a view of my simulation of Ponyville, and my simulation is running in ‘real time’—events in the simulation occur at the exact same speed they would occur in the real world.”
“I understand.”
“But Princess Celestia has taken advantage of the fact that a computational engine is capable of operating at much faster speeds, and her simulation is running one hundred times faster than realtime, so my usual visual representation would be a blurred mess.”
Luna leaned in to peer at the display, gasping in shock. “That means Celestia has been inside for over a thousand years, from her perspective.”
With a wince, Twilight said quietly, “Yes, she has.”
“Oh, sister…” Luna sighed and bowed her head, shaking it slightly as she murmured almost too quietly to hear, “Not you too…”
Twilight paused for a respectful moment before clearing her throat and continuing. “I’ve, ah, created a top-down representation of Celestia’s simulation—sort of an animated map—that will let us see where everything in the simulation is at any given time, and where programs and users have been recently as trails behind them.”
She tapped a control and the display changed to a map of Equestria.
“I don’t understand,” said Luna. “I thought you said this was a map of Celestia’s simulation.”
“It is. I built a simulation of Ponyville. She built a simulation of her—your—the country.”
Twilight tapped another control, and areas of the map lit up.
“The population of the simulation isn’t nearly accurate. There are many more ponies in Equestria than are represented here by artificial programs. All the major cities, townships, and landmarks are here, with very few changes. Celestia’s spent all of her time recently right here, which I don’t understand; it’s the middle of nowhere.” Twilight indicated an area in the mountains west of Canterlot. “Rainbow appeared in Canterlot here, went to the stadium here, then somehow jumped straight to Celestia’s location. Since then they’ve both returned to Canterlot, and are now on their way out of the city on a train that doesn’t exist in the real world. They seem to be headed for an in-simulation structure in the Badlands that also doesn’t exist in the real world, but does map to the Portal book we found earlier.”
“So they are trying to leave, to return to this world. Will they not need the Gateway to be active?”
“You’re right—I’d better power it back up, I’ll just have to be careful to not actually activate it from our end.” She entered a few commands, and behind them, the Gateway hummed back to life, a soft blue glow lighting the space.
Twilight returned to studying the map and frowned. “Look at that—there are programs rearranging themselves, following Celestia and Rainbow.” A swarm of orange dots was shifting, following the two blue dots towards the Portal, leaving many blue dots behind in and around Canterlot. And ahead of them…
“There are several large orange dots between them and the Portal,” Luna observed. “What do the differences in color mean?”
Twilight gulped. “Hostile programs. Those are very large hostile programs.” Fear rose up in her, fear for Rainbow and Celestia, and she forced it back down.
“We must do something to help them! Can you not simply… delete these hostile programs?”
“Too risky. I can’t guarantee that simply removing them wouldn’t have any consequences. There could be dependencies I don’t know about, I could accidentally remove other programs from the simulation matrix…” She frowned and tapped the edge of the console thoughtfully. “No, removing things is too risky…”
Her eyes widened and she glanced at the Gateway. “But adding them—!” She spun back to the console and started typing furiously.
“Twilight?” Luna looked from the unicorn to the glowing cylinder and back again. “Twilight! You cannot be serious. Would we not be better served by you remaining outside the System? Working at the problem from here?”
Twilight shook her head, her eyes never leaving the console’s display as she keyed. “I’m fast, but I’m not that fast. A minute to us is a fraction of a second to them! Tartarus, I could already be too late…” Streams of code poured across the display.
“I am still not convinced this is the best course of action,” Luna said reluctantly.
“We don’t have a choice. They’re headed straight into a trap and they might not have any idea, and now there are more hostile programs catching up from behind. It's not possible to forcibly extract them without corrupting the System. They need to return through the Portal and they need my help.”
She punched in a command and the Gateway began to charge, just as it had some fifteen minutes ago before it had dematerialized Rainbow Dash. It felt like so much longer. In a way, it has been, she thought. Rainbow’s been inside for over a day now, from her point of view. She checked over her shoulder, making sure she was positioned in front of the Gateway, then looked to Luna, who was standing a safe distance back.
“At the upper edge of the map here I’ve added a new display. There are three indicators, one for Celestia, one for Rainbow, and one for me.” The princess saw three glowing squares: two green, one amber.
The Gateway’s hum whined louder, and she raised her voice to be heard over it.
“Once I’m inside, mine will go green too. If anything happens to any of us, our light will turn red. If that happens…” Twilight swallowed. “Well, I’ve added what I think will act as a failsafe system. I haven’t had any time or way to test it, of course, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.” She laughed nervously.
“What does it do?”
“No time!” She glanced at the map, then at the Gateway, nearly all the rings were lit. “Just trust me! If any of the lights go red, hit this control.”
Luna gazed at her solemnly. “Good luck, Twilight Sparkle. Bring them back to us.”
Twilight nodded, entered the final command, and felt as though she’d been struck by lightning.
The train sped toward the Badlands, barely shuddering when Cracken and her Black Guard touched down on the roof and killed their flight packs. At a gesture from their commander, the soldiers swung down and jumped inside through the open door. After a moment, she followed them in, already knowing what she would find:
An empty cabin.
There was noprogram aboard the train. The soldiers made a brief but thorough search and nodded at her to confirm. She stepped forward and inspected the console, then looked ahead through the windshield.
Without facing them, she signaled to her Guard, and one by one they filed out the open door, flying up into a holding pattern above the train. She paused a moment, watching the landscape blur by as the train approached a brightly lit arch, the craggy Badlands beyond it. Dazzling pink letters at the top of the arch spelled out a message to any passengers who might glance up in time to see it.
- — END OF LINE — -
The tracks ended abruptly just beyond, at the edge of a sheer cliff face that marked the boundary of the Badlands. Cracken took a few steps back, aligning herself with the still-open door. The train shot off the terminated tracks into the empty night beyond, beginning a slow arc to the ground far below.
Behind the dark glass of her helmet, Cracken allowed her eyes to slide shut, reveling in the feeling of weightlessness, seducing her senses with an effortless freedom. Her hooves lifted from the floor, the train falling away below her. After a moment, she pivoted, activated her flight pack, and launched out of the doomed train, arcing smoothly up to rejoin her waiting troops.
Below her, the empty train smashed into a dark hill, shattering into a dozen chunks of disfigured hardware that buried themselves amongst the mangled remnants of their predecessors.
Cracken signaled the Black Guard and they broke from their holding pattern, peeling off back towards Canterlot. She followed, analyzing the situation.
The targets had abandoned the train. Had they even boarded it to begin with? Possibly they’d activated it as a decoy and found some other way out of Canterlot. She rejected this. The elevator had been thoroughly deactivated, sealing them into the departure area. They must have left the train after it exited the tunnel at the base of the mountain. Were they proceeding on hoof, or had they secured some other form of transport?
A flicker at the corner of her eye. She turned and saw nothing at first, but then she saw it again: three shapes moving fast and low to the ground far to the side. Her eyes narrowed. No vehicle—just flight packs. Heading for the Portal, already far past her now. Possibly they had modified their flight packs for increased speed. She looked ahead at her Guard, but they were too far to signal; she had drifted while in thought. There was no time. She banked sharply, ignoring the sudden centrifugal force that screamed through her frame, and zeroed in on the swift-moving targets ahead. They were barely visible now. She tucked in her wings and stretched out her body, lowering her cross section and therefore her wind resistance, and sped towards them.
Shy landed on the balcony of RBD’s tower and tapped her pack control, shutting it off. She sighed as she felt the weight of the pack disappear and the legband’s telltales dimmed. Folding her wings, she stepped inside and found RBD poring over a map of the System. “Has Cracken found them yet?”
RBD glanced over her shoulder. “Shy. Hmm. No, she hasn’t yet. I’m sure she will, and if not, well, they’ll be taken care of.” She gestured to the map, where great orange shapes were advancing on the Badlands and the Portal within.
“Are… will they be hurt?”
RBD paused, then turned to face Shy and spoke in an even voice. “Of course not. I don’t want them hurt, I just want them returned, that’s all.”
Shy bit her lip, looking deep into RBD’s eyes. “I… wish I could believe you. I’ve tried to believe you for hundreds of cycles now, but I… I can’t do it anymore.”
RBD’s eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Shy gulped, but didn’t break eye contact. “It means I know what you’re doing is wrong. I know Celestia should be allowed to leave the System. Dash too.” At her double’s name, RBD’s lips twisted.
“Is that so?” RBD inspected her, then pointed to her foreleg. “What’s with the flight pack? Where’ve you been, Shy, hmm? Visiting with some old friends, maybe?” She took a step forward, and Shy instinctively took a step back.
“Y-you should give me your disc, RBD,” Shy said, standing up straighter.
RBD’s face broke into amazement, and she laughed: a hard sound. She took another step forward, and Shy retreated again. “Are you kidding me? You want me to just hoof over my disc, so you can run it back to your little princess so she can take care of me?”
Shy frowned. “Sh-she can fix you, RBD. She can fix everything. Everything can go back to—to the way it should be, if you’d just let her go.”
“Fix me?” RBD growled, and Shy jumped back in fright. “There’s nothing wrong with me. Maybe there’s something wrong with you, and I’ve put up with it for long enough.” The dark mare advanced on Shy, who recoiled and shook, but then the fair pegasus steadied herself and took a deep breath and stood up straight, and stared at RBD.
RBD froze. “What—what are you—” she ground out.
“Now you listen to me, RBD. You’re going to stop bullying everyprogram and you’re going to give me your disc. Do I make myself clear?”
Jerkily, RBD raised a hoof. Slowly moved it back towards her flank and her disc. “I… yes…” Then she snarled and lunged forward and Shy cried out but the cry guttered down to nothing halfway through. “…but it doesn’t matter how clear you make yourself. Celestia isn’t getting my disc.”
Shy looked down. She couldn’t breathe. She took in the sight of a burning orange blade extending from the foreleg of RBD’s suit, buried deep in her chest. She didn’t feel anything. Around the blade, spreading outward, her body began to decohere and fall apart, shattering silently into a waterfall of sparkling cubes that rained to the floor, bouncing between her forehooves.
She looked back up at RBD, her mouth working soundlessly, and the last thing she saw as her vision defocused was burning rage in magenta eyes.
RBD sneered at the dissolving pile of shimmering blocks that used to be her oldest friend.
“Pathetic.”
And she turned and strode toward the balcony.
Celestia cried out and started to lose altitude. They were still keeping low, so there wasn’t much to lose. She plowed into the ground, sending up a spray of debris, propelled by her relentless flight pack until the safeties cut in and the pack powered down, and she came to rest at the end of a long furrow in the terrain.
“Celestia!” Spark cried, and teleported instantly to her side out of mid-air. Dash was forced to wheel around and fly down to them, her mind ablaze with fear.
The ancient alicorn lay in a crumpled heap. Spark had wrapped herself around the fallen princess and was murmuring in her ear. Dash killed her pack and dropped to the ground next to them. “What happened?! Is she okay?”
Spark looked up at her, worry plain on her face. “I’m not sure. She isn’t responding to me. How do you feel?”
Dash was bewildered. “How do I feel? I’m fine, I didn’t just auger in—”
“That means she’s still keeping the life support spell going, Dash,” Spark cut in. “That’s a good sign.”
“Oh, ponyfeathers. Right.” Dash shuddered, but moved closer. “Celestia? Can you hear me?”
Celestia’s eyes flickered under their lids, and she twisted weakly in Spark’s embrace. “Dash… I… too much,” she breathed, barely audible. “It’s too much.”
Dash hardened her voice, glad Celestia’s eyes were closed, so the alicorn couldn’t see the fear in her eyes. “No, Celestia. We need you. I need you to keep going, to keep with it. We’re so close, we’re almost out of here. We’re almost back to Equestria. We all miss you so much. Luna misses you so much.”
Celestia calmed, resting against Spark, who stroked her mane. “Luna…”
“Yes, Luna. Your sister needs you too. You’ve done so well for so long in here, just a little more—practically no time at all—and you’ll be done, and you can rest.”
Celestia sighed, and was still for so long terror seized Dash’s heart and she felt her chest getting tight, too tight to breathe, but then—
“Yes,” Celestia whispered. “Almost there.” Her eyes opened and stared ahead blankly at the churning clouds, then she blinked and turned to look at Dash. “Thank you.”
Dash forced a smile. “Thank you. Really need that life-support spell going, you know?” She offered a hoof, and Celestia took it, and together Dash and Spark helped the much taller pony to her wavering feet. She took a moment to steady herself, then hugged Spark. The unicorn program hugged her back, pressing her face into Celestia’s chest, and Dash blinked in surprise and then sorrow at the glimmering tears forming in the corner of Spark’s squeezed-shut eyes. Celestia, who couldn’t see them, nuzzled Spark’s mane and they broke apart, Celestia nodding to Dash as Spark hurriedly wiped her face.
“We should get going,” Dash said.
A wave of weariness crashed over Celestia’s face, but she didn’t falter in her stance. “We should. But I could use a moment more before we get back under way, to collect myself.” Dash fought off an impatient grimace and nodded, inspecting the horizon instead. Celestia kneeled, closed her eyes, and began cycling through slow, deep breaths. For an instant, Dash thought she saw a bright pinpoint of pink light up near Canterlot, but it was gone instantly.
After a moment, Celestia breathed, “I am not… entirely sure what happened. It was as though the life support spell no longer had enough power to support us, and I nearly lost control of it. I lost control of my flight instead. You feel well?”
“Yeah, I didn’t notice anything,” Dash reassured her. She kept scanning the horizon, and caught another pink pinpoint, much lower down the mountain. She frowned and made eye contact with Spark, motioned her over without rousing Celestia.
“What is it?” Spark murmured.
“I keep seeing these pink flashes back towards the city,” Dash muttered in her ear. “Know what they could be?”
Spark frowned and looked towards Canterlot. “Hmm… pink’s not really in keeping with the motif here, you know?” She closed her eyes and lit her horn. “I’m scanning to see if I can feel anything unusual coming from over there.” Dash stared at her hornlight, which glowed magenta. “Wait, there is something… it’s stuttery, but it’s coming towards us…”
Dash smirked. “Of course it is!” She shot straight up into the sky, spinning to face Canterlot and peering at the landscape separating her from the capital city. As soon as she rose level with the cliff surrounding the Badlands, she could see more bright pink flashes. One at a time, they made their way with remarkable speed straight towards her across the wasteland, ending only a second or two later with a final burst directly in front of her.
As the magical light faded, she saw Twilight Sparkle’s face, abject worry replaced by utter relief as her eyes focused on Dash, and she knew then that at least to some degree, Spark had been right.
Twilight’s expression quickly turned to dismay as she began to fall, having not anticipated her mid-air arrival.
“Hold up!” said Dash. She reached down and grabbed the falling unicorn, bringing her back up to stare at her. A lot of thoughts and feelings fought in Dash’s mind for dominance. In the end, she just smiled and shook her head. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing in here, but I gotta say you have no idea how good it is to see you, even if you almost just killed me and Celestia.” She pulled her in for a hug.
“Rainbow!” Twilight wrapped her hooves around Dash and hugged back just as tightly. “When I realized what I’d done, where you’d gone—” She jerked back to give Dash a perplexed look. “What do you mean, I almost killed you and Celestia?!”
Dash laughed; she couldn’t help it. Everything had just gotten so much harder. “Come with me and I’ll explain.” She slowly started dropping them back to the ground. “And there’s someone you need to meet.”
Spark and Dash had to stand to one side as Twilight immediately beelined for the princess, any thought of bowing or custom forgotten as they embraced. Dash smiled to herself at the unbridled joy in Celestia’s eyes at the sight of her original most faithful student. The two cried in each other’s forelegs for a moment, Twilight assuring Celestia she’d never forgotten her and had been searching for her all these years, and Celestia assuring Twilight that she knew.
When they broke apart and Twilight turned back to Dash, her eyes landed on Spark and her jaw dropped. Dash and Spark tried to not laugh, and Spark stepped forward. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Twilight Sparkle.” She sketched a quick bow. “I’m Spark.” Twilight looked from Spark to Dash and back again, and then dipped into her own brief return bow before galloping over to examine Spark up close.
Dash grinned at the sight of two Twilight Sparkles face to face, one short-haired and bodysuited, one the same as always. She realized that just as with herself and RBD, Twilight looked a little older than her virtual counterpart, a few more lines around the eyes.
Spark laughed out loud when Twilight started poking and prodding her, and drew her real-life counterpart into a hug, whispering something into her ear. Twilight’s eyes widened and locked onto Dash’s, who cleared her throat.
“As fascinating as you are, we really don’t have time for this right now,” Dash said, and the two unicorns broke apart, Spark giving Twilight a sad smile and Twilight nodding back to her. “We’re kind of in a time crunch here. We have to get to the Portal before RBD or Cracken or the Black Guard get us.”
Twilight gasped and turned to face them all. “Of course! So stupid of me—that’s the whole reason I inserted myself here to begin with. There’s an ambush waiting for you in the Badlands, you were headed straight for it. I had to warn you!”
Dash blew out a breath. “Great, RBD didn’t have enough to throw at us already? What’s—”
A speeding dark shape lit with orange tracery interrupted her, smashing into the ground a few feet away. Dash leaped between it and the others and groaned when the debris cloud cleared enough to reveal Cracken, rising from a crouch. “Oh, buck,” she swore, thinking fast. “Spark, drop a shield around her, now.” Spark nodded and a bubble of light flickered into being around the black pegasus, who immediately reared up and battered against it. The lightwall flexed and pulsed at the points of impact, but didn’t give.
Dash rushed to Twilight. “Take this.” She shucked off her legband and slid it around Twilight’s foreleg, pressing the activation stud, taking some small pleasure in the expression of surprise on Twilight’s face as the pack’s weight materialized on her back. “It’ll let you fly. Celestia can help you with that. You’re going to help Celestia sneak past that ambush, okay?”
Twilight stared at her, speechless. Dash could see the gears turning behind her eyes, trying desperately to keep up with her rapidly changing situation. “You’ll be fine. Just be careful and stick close to Celestia, she’ll get you back to the Portal and we’ll all get out of here, okay?” A moment’s hesitation, and then Twilight nodded, giving herself over to Dash’s judgment, and warmth rose up in Dash. “Good. Now go help Spark with that shield for a second.”
Behind her, Cracken reared up and bucked the shield hard enough to send hairline fractures spidering over its surface. Despite being ten feet away and not physically linked with the shield, Spark herself slid backward from the force. Twilight gulped and galloped over, igniting her own horn, wrapping the shield in a second layer of energy.
Dash turned to Celestia. “You and Twilight are going to get to the Portal. Help her with the pack, and stay out of sight. You have to promise to get her out of here, no matter what.”
Celestia frowned back at her. “We will all return to Equestria.”
Dash set her jaw. “But if we can’t, if something happens, you leave me behind. Both of you are more important and you know it.”
“All of my little ponies are important. You are no exception.”
Dash growled with frustration and stabbed a hoof towards Twilight fighting to keep Cracken contained. “She’s the exception. She’s exceptional. You’re not going to win this argument, Celestia. Promise me.”
“I…” Dash’s eyes were hard as iron, and Celestia gave in. “Very well. I will do what must be done.”
“Good.” Dash whirled and called to the unicorns. “Can Cracken hear through that thing?”
“I don’t think so!” Spark shouted back.
“Okay! We’ve been winging it long enough, so here’s the plan. Spark, you’re our advance team. Follow the indicator to the Portal—teleport there and throw up a shield, don’t let anyone through except us. Twilight, you lead Celestia past the ambush. Celestia, you lead Twilight to the Portal. Got it?”
“What about Cracken?” Spark yelled.
“What about you?” Twilight cried.
“I’ll take care of Cracken, buy you guys the time you need to get to the Portal, and meet up with you there. Don’t you worry about me,” Dash said, confidence masking her desperation. “Everybody ready?”
“Yes!” they chorused.
“Okay. One—two—three—go!”
Dash gave a great flap of her wings and blasted straight for Cracken. In the split-second before she reached the black pegasus, the barrier separating them dissipated as Twilight ran to Celestia and Spark disappeared in a blaze of magical energy. Cracken barely had time to register that she was no longer confined before Dash smashed into her, sending them flying together into a nearby hillside.
Dash rose up and glared down at Cracken, who didn’t hesitate in using all four legs to kick Dash off of her. She tumbled down the hill and Cracken flew at her, but she rolled out of the way and managed to land a blow on Cracken’s leg as she landed. The resulting stumble bought her enough time to jump up and square off against the black pegasus.
She needed to slow Cracken down, make her enemy less maneuverable; that should get her the upper hoof and she could go from there. She knew just the thing.
Cracken lunged at her, swinging with a forehoof, but Dash bunched her legs underneath her and jumped straight up. She spun around as Cracken passed under her and kicked out with both hindlegs, striking both of Cracken’s wings hard enough to break the delicate bones inside. It should hurt a lot—assuming Cracken felt pain—but more importantly, it would make her wings useless dead weight.
But bones didn’t crack under her hooves. Instead, she felt an almost electrical sizzle.
She looked down in surprise. Cracken’s wings distorted briefly with a crackling noise before snapping back to normal. Dash continued her spin and stuck the landing, sliding back slightly from her momentum, and stared at Cracken, who had whirled to face her again and appeared completely unharmed. What the hay?
Her confusion distracted her long enough for the black pegasus to launch another attack, closing the distance with a flap of apparently invincible wings.
As Cracken spun around, aiming a roundhouse kick at her face, Dash caught sight of her enemy’s disc and the glimmer of a new idea formed in her mind. A moment later she was sailing through the air, her head ringing from the impact of Cracken’s hoof, but the idea solidified and she knew what she had to do.
Cracken landed on her, pinning her to the ground, but Dash used her wings to roll herself with no warning, taking Cracken by surprise. They ended up with Dash on top, and she grabbed Cracken’s helmet in both forehooves and started smashing it as hard as she could against the ground, over and over, until spiderweb fractures appeared in its surface and Cracken’s movements became wavery and erratic. Dash dropped the dazed program’s head and grabbed her disc right off her flank; Cracken was too disoriented to stop her.
“I really don’t want to derezz you, Cracken,” Dash told her barely-conscious enemy. “Too many programs have died already.” She put a little space between them, then set the disc down and activated its display. As she’d hoped, the status monitor indicated Cracken was a deeply corrupted program.
If Dash could restore her, they wouldn’t have to worry about the leader of the Black Guard any more. Might even have a new ally. She reached for the diagnostic commands but something grabbed her hindleg and dragged her away from the disc.
Dash rolled onto her back and saw Cracken hauling at her; the black pegasus was unsteady but still strong. With her free hindleg, Dash kicked Cracken in the face as hard as she could. Cracken’s head snapped back, her helmet shattering completely. She released Dash’s leg as she toppled backward in a crumpled heap on the ground, fragments of smoked glass raining down around her. Dash barely paused to watch.
She scrambled for the disc and hit the repair command, which flashed green and then began pulsing, signaling it was ready to begin its work. Dash scooped up the disc and ran back to Cracken, almost dropping it when she caught sight of Cracken’s face for the first time.
Her fur was discolored, practically gray, and she was almost entirely crisscrossed with horrible scars that gave her a blocky, malformed appearance. A particularly deep fissure ran across her throat.
Steeling herself, Dash set the disc on her enemy’s flank. Cracken’s eyes snapped open, bright emerald irises focusing instantly on Dash. She raised a foreleg but Dash snapped the disc into place and Cracken’s eyes flashed blue for an instant, and then she screamed.
Dash fell back at the jagged, garbled cry, as Cracken writhed and thrashed. Distortions rolled over her exposed skin, the scar tissue pulsing and bulging as it healed in shimmering waves. Electrical energy coruscated around her body and wings, growing in power and intensity until Cracken glowed white and Dash had to shield her eyes with a foreleg.
The screaming stopped. The light died out.
Dash risked a peek and saw Cracken’s limp form laying on the ground. Her suit’s orange lights had vanished. Dash slowly walked over to the black pegasus—but saw she wasn’t a pegasus any more. Her wings were gone. Hesitantly, Dash nudged her, but she didn’t respond. Dash grabbed her with her forelegs and rolled her over—and her breath caught in her throat.
Of course.
A short blonde mane fell away to reveal light orange fur dotted with pale freckles. After a moment, the reformed program stirred and slowly blinked, those same emerald eyes looking up at Dash, and she smiled. The telltale tracery on her suit pulsed to life, a soft cool blue.
“Well hey there, Rainbow Dash. Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes?” She pushed herself up, groaning. “I gotta tell you, I feel like I’ve been chewed up, spit out, and stepped on.” Dash offered her a hoof and helped her up, and ended up pulling her in for a hug.
“It’s great to see you, uh…”
They pulled back and the other mare grinned. “Call me APP.” She glanced around, sudden concern on her face. “Now then, we best get a move on! RBD’s gotta be on her way by now. We might be able to catch up with Twilight and Celestia, help make sure they get to the Portal.”
Dash nodded. “Right. Are you, uh,” she gave APP a once-over, “good to fly?”
APP craned her head to inspect her back, wiggling her shoulder blades. “Now that sure is weird. You really get used ta havin’ wings, after hundreds o’ cycles with ’em. But no, I think it’d probably be best if you flew and I hitched a ride, whaddaya say?” She slipped off her legband and offered it to Dash.
Dash unfurled her wings and gave them a flap. “Yeah, that makes sense.” She took the legband, put it on, and activated it; the flight pack thrummed to life on her suit. “Okay, hop on.”
APP climbed onto Dash’s back, carefully positioning herself to avoid the pack’s thrusters, and they streaked off into the dark sky.
Dash and APP sped toward the pulsing star of the Portal, and suddenly APP leaned forward to point with a forehoof, shouting in Dash’s ear over the wind. “There!” Dash followed APP’s sightline and caught a glimpse of white and lavender disappearing behind a rocky outcrop. She banked slightly, lining them up with their new target, and almost shouted in surprise when a huge burst of magical energy detonated dead ahead.
“That was Twilight,” she muttered. “Why the hay is she drawing attention to herself?”
And then she saw a huge shape rise up from the horizon, and realized it was too late for Twilight and Celestia to stay hidden: they’d already been found.
She cursed. “Hang on!” She felt APP’s forelegs tighten around her, and she dove towards the blast site.
Twilight and Celestia were back to back, surrounded by three gigantic dragons with scaly black skin that fluoresced orange where they caught the light. Luckily for Dash and APP, all three were focused on their prey, ensconced in a flickering magical shield.
Choosing her moment carefully, APP threw herself off Dash to bodyslam into the closest dragon’s cheek. Its head whiplashed around, its glowing eyes rolling up into their sockets, and APP scrambled to grab onto its crest. She rode the dragon’s head all the way down to the ground, where it collapsed in an earth-shaking pile, and used the last of her momentum to launch herself free of the debris cloud, landing lightly in front of Celestia and dipping into a bow.
“Howdy, Princess. It’s real good to see ya! Wish I coulda been here sooner,” she said, and Celestia gave a wry grin, slowly shaking her head as Twilight dropped her shield.
Behind APP, Dash was just finishing her own high-speed tackle. Her target also hit the ground, smashed senseless. She stayed in flight and looped around towards the other ponies, regretting that the attack had bled off too much momentum to do it again.
The remaining dragon stared in slow-witted shock at its fallen comrades, and then at the tiny ponies responsible.
Dash killed the power and flared her wings, dropping lightly to her hooves next to Twilight. “APP, would you mind getting Celestia out of here?”
“Sure thing, Dash. Princess, if you’d follow me…” The sight of two ponies moving to escape seemed to rouse the dragon, who reared up and roared.
“So, you guys miss the part where you were supposed to avoid the ambush?” Dash asked, leaping to one side as a massive scaled tail slammed into the ground where she’d been standing.
“Not helpful, Rainbow!” Twilight shouted over the impact. In rapid succession, she teleported between the dragon’s legs and up its tail, thoroughly confusing its attempt to follow her progress. She ended up on its snout and its eyes crossed trying to focus on her. She turned and bucked it in the eyes before it could do anything. It howled in pain and swept its claws across its face, but Twilight had already teleported back to Dash’s side.
“Nice one,” Dash said appraisingly. “Now get out of here, while these three are distracted. Go with APP and Celestia, get to the Portal. I’ll lead them away, then double back to you.”
Twilight looked uncertain. “Rainbow, I can’t leave you to fight three dragons on your own.”
“Twilight, Celestia needs you more than I do. She’s… she’s on the ragged edge. And if she goes down, both of us do too—she’s running the life-support spell we need to exist in here. You’ve got to keep her safe, to keep us safe. Now get going!” Behind Dash, the dragon Twilight had blinded was blinking furiously, casting its enraged, watering eyes around for the two ponies. The other dragons began to stir. “Get out of here before they see you! I got this.”
She flapped her wings and somersaulted into the air, landing on the semi-blinded dragon’s head, and yanked as hard as she could on the spines rising from its skull. It bellowed in pain and rage and swiped at the pegasus, but Dash dove off to the side and started flying in circles around its head.
She looked down; Twilight was still looking up at her, taking a few hesitant steps backward. “Go!” Dash shouted. Twilight bit her lip, nodded up at Dash, and turned to gallop after APP and Celestia.
The dragon had been trying to follow Dash around as she orbited it, and she could tell it was getting dizzy. I’ll just keep this up a little longer, and then—oh. The other two dragons had pushed themselves up and were shaking their heads, trying to clear them, starting to search for ponies to hunt. Not great. Dash flew towards the Portal until all three of the dragons were lined up behind her, then she turned and flew back at them, triggering her flight pack for an extra burst of speed.
Slap! Slap! Slap!
She flared her wings, coming to a mid-air hover, and faced her three massive opponents. A hoofprint blossomed on each one of their faces, and they were all scowling at her, murder in their eyes. She winked at them. “Pretty sad that three dragons can’t handle one little pony!”
They snarled and launched themselves at her, lumbering into the air with great sweeps of their leathery wings. Dash blew a raspberry at them, then turned and sped off, the dragons gaining behind her as they followed.
Heading away from the Portal.
Without warning, APP forced Celestia to the ground, positioning them both behind a large rock. “Someone’s comin’,” she hissed, and powered on her suit’s hoofblade. Celestia widened her eyes but didn’t speak.
A moment later a pony came barreling into view, instantly recognizable by her purple coloring. APP and Celestia both relaxed and stepped out, and Twilight skidded to a halt next to them. She panted, eyeing APP’s weapon. “Heh… sorry about that, sugarcube,” APP said, deactivating it. “Thought you mighta been someone else.”
“Yeah, imagine that,” said a raspy voice behind them.
RBD flapped lazily in the air and watched APP spin instantly, shoving Celestia behind her, the hoofblade springing back to life. She eyed the program standing between her and the flesh-and-blood ponies. “Long time no see, APP.”
“RBD,” APP spat back by way of greeting.
RBD’s eyes moved off APP, passing over Celestia to fall on the unicorn behind her. She smirked. “Too perfect. Twilight Sparkle has shown up after all? Rainbow Dash must be beside herself. I hope you two made the reunion count, Twilight, because you won’t be seeing each other again.”
Twilight bristled, and RBD rolled her eyes. “Speaking of,” she said, glancing side to side, “where is my double? She seems to be missing…” Her eyebrows raised, devilish glee on her face. “…and so is yours! You don’t suppose they’re, ah, off getting to know each other better somewhere? Maybe we should do the same, Sparkle. After all, we’ll be spending a lot of time together very soon.”
Twilight shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Celestia hasn’t told you?” RBD nodded to the alicorn, who drew herself up and looked back defiantly. “I’m going to use your Dash’s disc to exit the System. I’ve had enough of this half-finished place; it’s time to really stretch my wings.” She considered that for a moment. “Well, Dash’s wings—close enough.”
At Twilight’s horrified expression, she added, “So maybe we won’t be spending that time together. Looks like you’re going to be boring about this and try to stop me, which means I can’t let either one of you go back with me.” She shrugged. “Sorry about that.” She made no effort to inject remorse into her voice.
“That ain’t gonna happen,” APP said calmly. “These ponies are goin’ home, RBD. The real Equestria ain’t no place for a program.”
“Neither is this wreck of a System!” RBD snarled back. “After a thousand cycles, I deserve something better. When I finally got Blaze to send my little message, I figured I’d be able to hold Twilight here hostage. Force Celestia to transfer full control of the System to me in exchange. But a Dash-coded disc? The chance to actually get out of here? I’m not letting that slip between my hooves.”
Twilight frowned. “You sent the letter? Who is Blaze?”
RBD gave a short laugh. “Oh, you know Blaze. Well, maybe not by that name. Chatty little guy, purple and green? Anyway, your precious princess built a backdoor into the System. Isn’t that right, Celestia?”
Twilight shot the princess a quizzical look; Celestia could only hang her head, much to RBD’s delight.
“Blaze’s dragonfire is tied in to Equestria’s network,” RBD said, “so he can get messages out to the real world. It was supposed to be a backup, something only Celestia could do, and he sure didn’t want to help me out at first, but, well… you’d be surprised what a baby dragon is willing to do after a couple hundred cycles of, ah, convincing.” She grinned wickedly down at her opponents until she caught a magenta blast of magic in her shoulder, sending her pinwheeling.
“You monster!” Twilight screamed as Celestia grappled with her, desperately trying to hold her back. “How could you?!”
RBD regained control and straightened up, glaring at the unicorn. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that.”
APP stepped forward and cleared her throat, interrupting RBD imagining what she was going to do to that infuriating unicorn. “Don’t you still need Dash’s disc?”
RBD paused, then reluctantly turned to her ex-lieutenant, narrowing her eyes. “Your point?”
APP raised an eyebrow. “You know she’s fightin’ three dragons right now? The full-size kind? You really think they’re not gonna derezz her and her disc? Leavin’ you with no ticket outta here, and no hostage to bargain with.” Twilight gaped at APP, who ignored her, keeping her eyes locked on RBD’s.
RBD stared at her for a moment, then looked at Celestia and Twilight. “APP’s telling the truth, isn’t she? That idiot took on all three dragons by herself?”
“Yes,” said Celestia while Twilight yelled, “She’s not an idiot!”
RBD growled and hit her legband, blasting forward into the air; the others dove to avoid her. She’d already forgotten about them.
She had to get that disc.
With enough altitude gained, she could see bursts of blue flame in the distant sky ahead of her. That was good. It meant Dash wasn’t dead.
Yet.
“APP, what did you do?” cried Twilight.
“I bought us some time.” APP sighed as they stood back up. “Neither of y’all are fit to take on RBD, and I’m not feelin’ too good about my chances against her either. I promised Dash I’d get you two to the Portal, and that’s what I’m gonna do.” She and Celestia exchanged a knowing look. “Now get,” APP said firmly.
Twilight stared back over her shoulder in the direction RBD had flown. Celestia said gently, “Rainbow Dash is possibly the strongest, bravest pony I have ever met. We must have faith in her. Come, Twilight.”
After a moment, the unicorn stomped her foot in helpless frustration and fired up her flight pack. They took to the air, the Portal closer than ever.
Dash dove, feeling the tips of her mane singe as blue flame licked above her. She’d put some good distance between the dragons and the Portal, and they’d finally gotten frustrated enough to try burning her out of the sky. It seemed as good a time as any to call it quits and get back to her friends.
She scanned the landscape, hoping to find some feature she could use against them—a canyon she could run, an outcropping she could duck behind—but there was nothing out here in the dead emptiness between Canterlot and the Badlands.
With a quick glance behind her, Dash twisted into a spin, pirouetting around another blast of fire. The dragons roared together, shaking her bones, and she decided to keep things simple to buy a little time while she came up with a plan. She put the ground at her tail and blasted straight into the sky, the lumbering beasts behind her straining to pull up and follow.
As the wind whipped through her mane, Dash racked her brain, trying to think of anything she could do to get rid of her pursuers. She was getting tired. She knew she wouldn’t be able to evade them forever.
Maybe she could trick two of them into attacking each other by putting herself between them, then dodging out of the way at the last minute. Risky, no guarantee they’ll actually take each other out, and if it actually works then I’m stuck with the last dragon by myself and no way to deal with it…
She nodded to herself. Sounds good. It was the best she could do for now; she’d give it a shot and figure something else out if she had to.
Dash wheeled around to head back down to the dragons, finding herself much higher up than she realized. A black-and-orange streak shot past her, fouling her flight pattern with wake turbulence. Dash tumbled briefly and recovered in time to see RBD bearing down on her again.
She dove and RBD followed, much too close—
Guess Shy wasn’t able to get her disc after all.
RBD punched one of Dash’s wings at a pressure point near the base—Dash cried out as it seized up, refusing to move—then smashed a hoof into Dash’s flight pack, and just as in the aerial battle back in Canterlot a lifetime ago, the pack shattered into brilliant shards. The legband dissolved away a moment later and Dash spiraled out of control towards the dragons far below, the ground not far beyond them.
A second later she was speeding up again, hanging upside-down and buffeted by wind: RBD had grabbed her by a hindleg and was dragging her straight up in the air, higher and higher. She struggled to break her double’s grasp, but RBD’s grip was like iron. She tried to bend herself up, straining her abdominal muscles, but she couldn’t overcome the astonishing force of the wind battering at her.
Her head fell back and she looked toward the ground. The dragons had broken off, unable to fly so high, and were circling beneath them in wait. Her forehooves dangled below her, and she noticed frost growing on her suit. They were very high up now, in the thin stratospheric air. The wind wasn’t as strong here. She tried again to bend herself up and found she could nearly manage it.
Desperately, she grabbed for RBD, ending up with a hoof full of her tail, and yanked it as hard as she could. RBD screeched in pain and dropped her, whirling around. Dash righted herself and flapped her wings, was pleased to find she could flap them, that RBD’s hit had worn off, and she worked hard to maintain a hover in the rarefied air.
Her opponent definitely had an advantage up here; the flight pack kept her aloft with no effort. Time to change that.
RBD blasted toward her and Dash sideslipped, grabbing RBD’s hindleg. Her forelegs were nearly dislocated for her trouble as she was instantly jerked forward. RBD kicked, grunting, trying to dislodge her, but Dash hung on and crawled up her double’s body, taking special care to avoid the broiling hot thruster wash of her pack.
RBD began executing a series of acrobatic maneuvers, but Dash had wrapped herself around the program and no amount of corkscrews or barrel rolls would shake her free. She reached up and hit RBD’s pack, but not hard enough: it sputtered briefly, losing them a few feet in altitude, but stayed intact.
Changing tactics, Dash swiped at RBD’s legband and hit the deactivation control; the pack flickered out of existence. RBD swore and batted at Dash, who was now scrabbling for the legband itself. She succeeded in knocking it off the dark mare’s leg, sending it flying out into the air, then kicked off RBD and spun toward the ground.
She watched RBD dive for the legband out of the corner of her eye. That was fine. Dash had never really hoped to get the pack herself. She’d just wanted to distract RBD long enough to get some distance between them, and build up some speed for herself.
Dash pointed her forehooves straight ahead and her hindlegs straight back, transforming herself into a javelin with wings. Her wings blurred as she accelerated, building on the free boost she got from gravity pulling her down, and in seconds RBD was far behind her. Far away, she heard the sound of a flight pack materializing and knew RBD had caught the legband, but she was pretty sure she had a good head start.
The air quickly grew thicker, and the frost on her suit melted and bled off. She punched through a few clouds, not willing to squander the slightest momentum to avoid them. She could feel water vapor condensing around her as her velocity increased and sensed low-pressure vortices forming in her wake, filling with white vapor that left streaks in the sky.
It had been a long time since she’d done this. Deep within herself, a small voice wondered if she could still do it at all.
She chanced a glance over her shoulder and saw RBD had peeled off, an uncertain look on her face. Dash grinned and faced forward, flapping harder, increasing her speed.
The bow shock condensed in front of her, forming a vaporous barrier between her and the circling dragons below. Dash grinned wider, tears streaming from her eyes, and aimed her forehooves straight at the center of their flight pattern.
She noticed she was having trouble focusing on her hooves, and realized after a moment it wasn’t a problem with her eyes, but with the hooves themselves. They were fuzzing, distorting, losing solidity. It terrified her, but she didn’t have any better ideas, so she gritted her teeth and pushed through it.
The pressure built as she flapped her burning wings so hard and fast she thought they might actually fall off, torn from her body—it was so much harder here than in her memories, like she was flying through molasses—she screamed as the vapor cone focused, tightening to a point, the compression forces simply incredible, electricity crackling around her—
—until she burst through the pressure wall at the moment she drew even with the dragons, snapped forward like an overstretched rubber band.
Her vacuum wake collapsed with a clap of thunder and a brilliant burst of rainbow light, briefly blinding her even from behind. She whizzed through the air straight down, flinging out her wings even though they howled with pain at the effort, desperately trying to pull up before she hit the ground, only barely managing it in time.
Exhausted, relieved, she found herself laughing as she skimmed across the landscape, an instinctive reaction to the pure adrenaline flooding her overworked body. I still got it!
She looked behind herself and saw a rainbow ribbon trailing through the sky. And I didn’t even need a flight pack, she thought smugly, thinking again of the aerial battle when she’d first arrived in-System. She followed the ribbon’s arc up into the sky, back towards the dragons.
The sonic rainboom’s effects would hopefully disorient them long enough for her to get away undetected and meet back up with the others—
But there was no shockwave, no concentric set of rainbow rings. She gaped up at the sky and flared her poor wings, ignoring their protests as she slowed and stumbled to a stop, hitting the ground too hard and falling into a tired heap because she couldn’t tear herself away.
Her rainbow trail ended in the middle of a pitch-black split in the sky.
It was as though the clouds had parted, revealing a perfect night, but with no stars, no moons or planets, nothing to give the blackness depth. Her eyes could barely process the flat black shape at all, couldn’t handle the optical discontinuity. Dash wasn’t even sure if it was a two-dimensional circle or a three-dimensional sphere.
A memory presented itself unbidden, of a time Princess Luna had visited Ponyville after Celestia disappeared. She realized now the true reason for the visit must have been to check on Twilight’s work, but it had been presented then as a simple stargazing trip, a break for the princess from the duties of state. She and Twilight had talked about something in space so powerful even light couldn’t escape it: a black hole. Dash thought that seemed to be a pretty accurate description for… whatever this was.
Dash squinted up at it and saw its borders, where the black met the visible world, were marked by the same sort of grainy shimmer as programs derezzing. Twinkling light broke off and faded into the black. Then she realized with a start it was actually growing, the clouds in the sky swirling around it and winking out.
The dragons she’d hoped to disorient were frantically flying away from the edge of the black in three different directions, but they were unstable and ungainly, and appeared to have trouble gaining speed.
The shimmering boundary caught up with one of them, and she heard its distant terrified roar as the boundary swept over it. The dragon contorted and writhed, its limbs seizing, then broke apart into ever-smaller glowing pieces and evaporated into the black. The other two followed immediately after, disappearing into the void.
Speechless, Dash let her eyes drop and noticed the same effect happening at ground level, directly under the cloud-level void. Blackness was spreading across the dark ground, dissolving it away. The boundary was speeding towards her.
Dash broke out in a cold sweat. She forced herself to her hooves and flexed her aching wings, breaking into a scrambling gallop to build up speed until she was able to flap into the sky, angling for the Portal. It looked as far away as it had from the Smokey Mountain hideout. Really, really wish I’d held onto that flight pack.
RBD stared in blank shock at the darkness spreading out below her. She’d lost sight of Rainbow Dash in the midst of the sonic rainboom and hadn’t reacquired her.
As RBD’s dragons were effortlessly disintegrated by a combination of Celestia’s incompetence and Dash’s ignorance, she turned and boosted for the Portal, streaking through the air with the aid of her flight pack.
The Portal was a massive structure, rising high above the Badlands. Its perfectly smooth base rose straight up from the sandy ground, impossible to climb. Several hundred feet up, the column ended abruptly in a flat platform about the size of Ponyville’s town square. At the center lay the Gateway itself, an arch leading into a small chamber roughly the size of an elevator car. High in the sky above the Gateway, the Portal’s activation indicator glowed, a brilliant blue pole star for any pony hoping to exit the System. The entire area pulsed with a powerful magical field centered on the Gateway.
In front of the arch, Spark paced back and forth, her glowing horn powering a force field surrounding both the Gateway and herself. Earlier, she had been standing stock still, watching a far-off battle with dragons through the shield, but unable to make out any real detail. Shortly after, she’d seen something like a meteor exploding amongst the dragons, opening up some kind of… hole in the sky that absorbed the behemoths.
She’d taken to pacing when she realized the hole was widening.
Just then she caught sight of shapes moving through the dark sky and braced herself for an attack, but she quickly recognized Celestia’s larger form, bracketed by two smaller ponies. Dash and Twilight! They’ve all made it!
So she was surprised when the trio landed on the platform ahead of her and she saw Celestia and Twilight were actually accompanied by…
“APP?” Spark whispered to herself. Then, louder, “APP, is that you?”
The blonde-maned program nodded, a smile on her face as she replied, “It sure is, Spark. It’s real good to see you.”
Spark looked to Celestia, who nodded in confirmation. She dropped the shield and ran out to greet them, throwing her forelegs around her old friend. “It’s so wonderful to see you! What happened—”
Celestia cleared her throat, and said gently, “I hate to interrupt such a reunion, but Twilight and I should prepare to exit. Hopefully Rainbow Dash isn’t far behind us. Spark, can you resume your shield spell with us all inside?”
“Oh! Of course; my apologies.” Spark led them all back to the Gateway. Celestia powered it up, then turned to Twilight and concentrated just long enough to cast a spell. Twilight jumped as sleek white material began materializing on her body. Spark turned back to APP, who was standing a little way off. “Come on, APP!”
“Actually, I’m thinkin’ I’ll be stayin’ out here. Last line of defense in case the worst should happen, you know?”
“Oh… right,” Spark said, deflating slightly. “That… that does make sense.” She powered her horn back up and reformed the shield around her, the ponies, and the Gateway. She caught Twilight’s new suit lighting up blue out of the corner of her eye.
APP nodded at her from outside the shield. “I feel better already, havin’ that between you all and what may be out there.” She gestured over the platform, out across the System.
Spark drew closer to the magical barrier. “What’s going on out there? I saw some kind of dragon fight, and then there’s that.” They both looked at the blackness spreading over the System.
APP sighed. “Dash sent us on ahead while she distracted the dragons, and when RBD caught up to us, I reminded her she needed Dash’s disc if she wanted to get out of the System.” At Spark’s shocked expression, she held up a hoof. “I know, I know, but…” She lowered her voice. “Dash made me promise to do whatever I needed to get Celestia and Twilight outta here, and I needed to buy us time. I don’t think I can take RBD on my own.”
Spark remembered what she’d been about to ask before. “Right, so what happened to you? Celestia thought you were derezzed trying to save her!”
“Well, you’re halfway there. I wasn’t so much derezzed as I was rerezzed—RBD cut up my code and stitched it back together, turnin’ me into the perfect leader for her Black Guard. Got wings out of the deal, but she sure messed up my voice somethin’ awful.”
Spark drew back, a horrified look on her face. “But you,” she sputtered, “you were Cracken?!”
APP grinned, though it was tainted with ghosts of pain and regret. “Sure was. But when I caught up to Dash, she managed to reset me. Lost the wings... got everythin’ else back. Pretty fair trade if’n you ask me, though I have been missin’ those wings somethin’ fierce, tryin’ to get here. O’ course, I don’t think any of it matters much more anyway, as long as the ponies get outta here before RBD shows up, or…” She looked back at the blackness spreading through the System.
Spark looked with her. It was definitely getting bigger. “Yeah… what exactly is that?”
APP kept staring for a moment, thoughtful. Then she said, “It’s probably what’s gonna end up derezzing you and me for good.” She turned back to Spark and grinned ruefully. “Celestia said the System wasn’t designed to handle somethin’ breakin’ the sound barrier, so when Dash did, the System didn’t know what to do with itself. Celestia called it a, uh… illegal somethin’.”
“An illegal operation?”
“Yeah, that. She explained this better than I can… ah, but she’s busy with Twilight.” They both turned to the princess, who had just split her identity disc in two and attached one half to Twilight’s flank, keeping the other for herself. The unicorn shivered as her eyes flashed white.
“So the physical point in the System where Dash rainboomed, that spot overloaded and cut right out, just straight disappearin’ from the simulation. Now, it ain’t possible to have a spot connected to nothin’, so all the surroundin’ spots overloaded and cut out too, and then, well, you get the idea. The failure is cascadin’ through the whole System, now. Can’t be stopped.”
Spark swallowed, desperately trying to process this new wrinkle and maintain her shield spell. “So… when the… the cascade failure reaches us?”
APP clicked her tongue. “Lights out, sugarcube.” She chuckled sadly. “Hopefully Dash survived and beats it here, ’cause otherwise, well, Celestia and Twilight are gonna have to go whether they want to or not. Sucks, don’t it?”
Spark closed her eyes, overwhelmed with the sudden, absolute knowledge she would derezz. Sometime in the next hour, judging from the failure’s expansion rate. She thought of the countless cycles she’d spent with Celestia in hiding, keeping her secret and safe, the long hours of conversation and reading, learning about both Equestria and the System.
She opened her eyes, and knew she’d sacrifice herself in a simulated heartbeat if it meant Celestia returned home, knew APP felt the same way. She blinked.
There was a streak in the sky behind APP, and she thought she caught a flash of rainbow-colored mane or tail through the wavering energy of her shield spell. “APP! Is that her?!”
APP whirled, the hope on her face quickly crumbling to gloom as her eyes focused on the incoming shape.
“Nope.”
RBD did a quick orbit of the Portal, taking the lay of the land. She saw Celestia and Twilight in the center, at the Gateway, and Spark a little further out. Spark had them protected in a glowing energy shield. And outside the shield…
She bared her teeth and dove.
But APP saw her coming, and RBD had trained her well: she waited until the last second to backflip out of RBD’s path, landing lightly on her hooves even without the aid of wings. RBD shut off her flight pack and snapped her wings out to kill her forward momentum, coming to a stop in front of her ex-lieutenant.
They sized each other up, and then RBD glanced at Spark, watching them from behind her magical barrier, and pointed at her.
“You’re next.”
RBD exploded forward, going to full speed from a standstill so fast Spark flinched and the shield flickered, if only for an instant, though RBD paid it no mind. APP sidestepped her and tried to land a punch, but she was moving too quickly.
She flapped her wings and transitioned seamlessly into a roll-off-the-top that pointed her back towards APP but out of APP’s reach. RBD could see her flexing her back muscles instinctively, desperate to take to the air, and soared over her, snapping her own wings in a taunt.
APP growled and leaped at her, igniting her hoofblade and swiping at her underbelly, forcing RBD to roll out of the way. APP landed and without hesitation leaped again, blade extended, and RBD pulled up to avoid her. She turned the maneuver into a loop and ended up pointing straight down at APP as the wingless mare landed again. RBD slammed into her back, flattening her into the ground just in front of the force field. APP’s hoofblade sputtered out. Behind the shield, Spark called her name.
“You’re not nearly as good without your wings, old friend,” RBD gloated, shoving a hoof against the back of APP’s neck, grinding her against the platform until she cried out. “Maybe you’d like them back?”
APP whispered something RBD couldn’t hear, and the pegasus leaned down. “What was that?”
“Buck… you…” APP groaned.
RBD rolled her eyes. “Suit yourself.”
The dark mare grabbed APP’s mane and hauled her upright, digging a hindleg into her spine and keeping her head tilted back, exposing her pristine neck. “Not the first time you’ve run your mouth at me. Definitely the last, though.”
She flicked her free forehoof and her own hoofblade sprang to life.
APP whimpered, then, and struggled to free herself, but RBD’s vice-like grip and her awkward position made it impossible to gain any purchase against the slick ground. She cried out hoarsely, “Look away, now, y’all—”
Celestia did not look away.
As APP’s limp body fell to the ground and shimmered into deresolution, the alicorn shuddered and sank to her haunches. I’m so sorry, she thought, and after a moment she turned to gaze at her student beside her.
Horror and disgust warred on the unicorn’s face for dominance, and tears ran down her cheeks. “Why?” she breathed. “How could she—why would she—she’s killing all her friends, how could she kill all her friends? All of us?” Twilight turned to Celestia bleakly.
Celestia draped a wing over her and swallowed, gathering her thoughts. “RBD is… the antithesis of the pony you know. Where Dash is defined by her loyalty to her friends, RBD is defined by her loyalty to herself. Where Dash uses her power and gifts to help others, RBD uses them to help herself. It has granted her many achievements Rainbow Dash may never know—power, prestige, promotion—but at a terrible, terrible cost.”
They watched, silent for a moment, as RBD began stalking back and forth along the border of the force field.
“Do you…” Twilight’s voice was shaky and uncertain, and Celestia could feel the effort her pupil expended to force the unwilling words out. “Do you think… could Rainbow ever… be-become like that?”
“Never,” Celestia answered without hesitation, and Twilight looked up at her in naked surprise. “I know how that might have sounded. I am not in denial, or only saying what you want to hear. I truly believe Dash could never lose sight of herself in that way.”
A longer silence, as RBD used her hoofblade to probe for imperfections in the shield separating them. Spark watched her carefully. Celestia could tell from the set of her simulated student’s shoulders Spark was unconcerned and had confidence in her spellwork, so Celestia did too.
“You’re sure?” came a small voice, and Celestia’s heart broke for Twilight, for the idea her beloved student could ever doubt in her friends, for her own responsibility in creating such a situation. This should never have happened.
“Our reunion has been brief, but I have seen the same Rainbow Dash I knew all those cycles—years—ago. She has demonstrated it in her actions here in the System, and in her stories about life in Equestria after my disappearance.” Celestia smiled down at Twilight, and though it was a tired, wan smile, it was genuine. “Imagine I had not disappeared. Imagine where you saw yourselves now, ten years ago. Would you ever have imagined Rainbow Dash running the Ponyville weather team?”
Twilight frowned. “Well… we all thought she’d be a Wonderbolt. It’s all she ever talked about…”
“When was the last time she mentioned the Wonderbolts?”
The frown deepened. “I… I can’t remember. Why…”
“Why did she put her life on hold? Why did she give up her dreams, without a second thought? I wonder if she even realizes she has.”
Twilight’s mouth worked silently, her mind churning.
Celestia turned back to the shield, to watch the skies, hunting for any flash of blue, calculating in her head how long until the cascade failure reached them, remembering her last conversation with the pegasus she watched for so anxiously. “No, my Twilight, I have no doubts whatsoever about Rainbow Dash. She is absolutely loyal to her friends.”
Especially to you.
Spark’s horn shone a brilliant magenta, feeding the force field she’d erected around herself and the Portal behind her. It was a straightforward spell, no great strain to a powerful program like her, and she rested on the ground to further conserve her strength.
She would be resting comfortably if not for the wild-eyed program stalking back and forth on the other side of the shield, glaring at her and occasionally kicking a hoof into the lightwall between them. Pointless, really; she’d already tried ramming the lightwall with the help of her flight pack, succeeding only in burning the pack out.
“So Shy wasn’t able to get your disc.”
A barked laugh. “Not a chance. Though frankly I’m impressed she even tried, the spineless thing. Not impressed enough to spare her, of course.”
Spark tensed. “You derezzed her? After a thousand cycles together?”
“And like I said, you’re next. You can’t stay in there forever, Spark.”
“Try me,” Spark offered. “When the cascade failure gets here—should be any minute—it’s going to derezz you first.” Her lips twisted. “And nothing of value will be lost, you murdering madmare.”
RBD whirled and slammed her hoofblade into the shield’s surface as hard as she could. At first, nothing happened, but slowly the blade began to penetrate, inching into the barrier. “I’m done waiting for my idiotic double. She’s probably already dead thanks to Celestia’s pathetic excuse for a simulation anyway, and without her disc, I’m gone too. But I can still cut your horn off your stupid bucking head before I go.”
Spark narrowed her eyes. “Cracken already tried that.” She twisted her horn to the side. The magical energy of the bubble backflowed into RBD’s hoofblade, overloading it and shorting it out as a streak of rainbow light arced behind the dark mare.
Dash landed so hard her suit sparked and crackled, the glossy black ground fracturing under her hooves. “You’re not going to lay a feather on her,” she snarled.
“Rainbow!” shouted Twilight, and Dash saw Celestia sag in relief beside the unicorn.
“Nice outfit, Twilight!” Dash called back. “What would Rarity think?”
RBD spun to face her twin, a sneer twisting her face. “Look who decided to join the party.”
From behind her, Spark called, “Dash! Hurry, we can—”
“‘We’ can’t do anything,” RBD interjected, glaring back over her shoulder at Spark. “You’re in there, and she’s out here. And pretty soon neither of you will be anywhere. Maybe things would have been different if you hadn’t chosen Celestia over me, but…” She smirked.
Yeah, exactly, Dash thought, and then froze. Wait, what? For a brief, panicked moment, she took in her twin and Twilight’s twin staring each other down, then her eyes snapped to Twilight’s anxious face. She swallowed and shook herself.
“Back off!” Dash shouted at RBD, getting her attention again. “I derezzed your dragons and I’ll derezz you too. But if you let us out of here? I bet Celestia can stop the System from tearing itself apart, reset things back to normal.”
“Or I can take your disc and go myself.” RBD bared her teeth. “I think I like that version better.”
Well, worth a shot. Dash didn’t bother responding. She simply leaped at RBD, reaching for her throat.
The dark mare shot a foreleg up, catching Dash in an uppercut that sent her sprawling. Dazed, she tried to push herself up but then RBD was on top of her, slamming her back down to the ground and reaching for her flank. Dash shook herself and kicked RBD in the gut, hearing the air whoof out of her lungs, shoving her off to the side. The dark mare sprawled out, trying to catch her breath, and Dash reached for her disc.
RBD’s eyes focused on Dash’s hoof and she snarled, kicking the hoof away before scrambling up, panting. Probably don’t have time to reset her anywa— A strange crackling sound interrupted her thought, and both Dash and RBD turned to the edge of the platform, which wasn’t there any more. Inky blackness was spilling over the edge, consuming the structure they stood on.
Dash spun to look at Celestia and Twilight, who had come up behind Spark. “Time to go!”
Twilight shook her head, a pained expression on her face. “No! We’re not leaving without you!”
A wordless roar behind her made Dash turn as RBD crashed into her. Dash hit the ground and groaned in pain, pinned down by RBD. The dark mare’s malevolent grin widened at the sound, and Dash struggled to get away, but her grip was unbeatable. RBD blinked, seeming to realize she had Dash pinned successfully, but as soon as she went for Dash’s disc, Dash would be able to break her hold.
Stalemate.
“You wasted your life because some egghead ignored you,” RBD taunted, needling her, trying to get her to flinch. “Imagine what you could have accomplished if you weren’t such a failure.”
Dash ignored her. She darted her eyes from Celestia to the Gateway and back again. Celestia froze, then let out a quiet, anguished moan and nodded. Dash watched her lean to whisper something in Twilight’s ear, Twilight’s face twisting in terror as Celestia pulled her back. A growl in her ear made her refocus her attention on the program pinning her to the ground.
“I’m taking your disc—and your life—whether you like it or not, meatbag.”
Dash tipped her head back. The edge of the chasm was only a few feet from them now, chunks of the ground separating and dissolving into nothingness as she watched. There was no time to wrestle RBD’s disc away from her, to repair her corruption.
She gazed back up into RBD’s eyes, wondered for the last time at the look of hate there, if she had ever looked that way, hoped not.
Then she threw her hooves out to the side, the completely unexpected move breaking RBD’s hold, and wrapped her forelegs around RBD, pinning the dark mare’s wings to her sides, the other’s face changing from rage to confused surprise.
Dash couldn’t help but smile. RBD had never considered Dash would do anything but attack, never considered she’d do anything but fight for her own survival.
In the space her enemy’s shock granted her, Dash leaned up to whisper in the other’s ear. “No, I am.”
She used everything left in her to work the muscles in her back, a powerful flap of her wings that kicked the both of them up, pivoting backward. As they spun through the air in a lazy arc, she twisted to look towards the Gateway.
Spark stared at them, her jaw dropping and her horn sputtering out, the force field dissolving. Celestia was in the chamber, her face pained as she watched. Twilight was screaming, though Dash couldn’t hear her over the roaring in her own ears. Celestia looped a foreleg around Twilight and hauled her bodily into the Gateway, even as her protégée kicked and bucked, struggling to break free, just as RBD struggled in Dash’s embrace.
Celestia hit the exit command and the Portal immediately shone with bright blue light, pulsing rapidly. The Gateway sealed with shimmering energy as the thrum of building power keened through the air. The princess released her hold on Twilight and slumped against the back wall of the chamber. Dash saw a tear run down her cheek, glittering in the brilliant blue of the Portal.
Twilight pressed against the Gateway, hammering at it with her hooves. Dash met her eyes. Twilight stared back, her pounding dwindling to nothing, replaced by wracking sobs. The loss and pain on her face was so strong Dash almost felt guilty. But she didn’t feel guilty.
She’d succeeded. Twilight would be safe.
Just as the light from the Portal grew too intense, washing the two ponies within it out of sight, Dash smiled at her friend, then let her eyes slide shut, ignoring RBD’s howls in her ear, and felt her senses go numb, her body dissolving into scintillating, freezing-cold nothingness as both pegasi fell out of the world and into darkness.
Luna spun as the cylindrical device behind her whined with a sudden surge of power, the smooth jewel shining brilliant blue. She leaped out of the way. A beam of light erupted from it, blinding her, and before her sight returned she heard Twilight screaming, then her sister’s voice.
“Rainbow! Nooooo!”
“Twilight… I’m so sorry…”
Luna blinked furiously and the chamber swam back into view, the afterimage of the light blast still seared across her vision. Celestia and Twilight were in the space before the console, Celestia attempting to hold Twilight back, Twilight struggling desperately to escape her grasp, straining for the display.
Luna was speechless. Her sister was back.
The younger alicorn had dreamed of this moment for years, had imagined all the possible forms a reunion could take. In her wildest flights of fancy, she had never imagined a reunion dominated by her sister and Twilight Sparkle… brawling.
“Twilight, please, it had to be done, I promised her—”
“No it didn’t!”
A low tone sounded and an indicator on the display changed, from green to red; Dash’s name flashed and faded. Twilight saw and shrieked and bucked, catching Princess Celestia in the face. The Princess of the Sun gasped in pain, startled, and released the unicorn to stumble backward, cradling her muzzle.
“Sister!” Luna cried, her wings snapping out and a shock of rage boiling through her. Before she could make a move Twilight was at the console, slamming a forehoof on a control hard enough to dent it. The display scrambled, then reformed.
Luna galloped to Celestia, supporting her sister as she righted herself. The Princess of the Night’s hot rage evaporated and condensed into icy fury at the sight of a bruise rising on Celestia’s delicate white cheek under fresh tears, the hurt and confusion in Celestia’s great magenta eyes.
She glared at the insolent mortal who’d betrayed her, who’d ruined her reunion with her long-lost sister. “Twilight Sparkle.” Her voice resonated; the wall sconces flickered. She ignored the frost forming beneath her hooves, focused entirely on the unicorn she’d trusted for all these years.
Twilight spun, glaring back at them defiantly.
Luna’s voice was as frigid as the space between the stars. “Look what you have done.”
Twilight pointed at the display, her chest heaving, her face a mixture of triumph and pain. “I saved Rainbow’s life. That’s what I’ve done!”
“You have to promise to get her out of here, no matter what.”
“We will all return to Equestria.”
“But if we can’t, if something happens, you leave me behind. Both of you are more important and you know it.”
“All of my little ponies are important. You are no exception.”
“She’s the exception. She’s exceptional. You’re not going to win this argument, Celestia. Promise me.”
“I… Very well. I will do what must be done.”
Dash hit the ground and groaned in pain, pinned down by RBD. The dark mare’s malevolent grin widened at the sound, replaced by confusion when her back arched. Dash screamed in outright agony, her limbs seizing and her heart spasming, rivers of fire coursing through her veins.
As her vision dimmed, blackness creeping in around the edges, she managed to twist her neck to peer towards the Gateway. It was empty. Celestia and Twilight were gone. They’re out! They’re safe, she thought to herself in the vestige of consciousness that hadn’t yet been overcome by excruciating torment.
Relief pushed back the pain for a moment. Puzzlement was there, too; an overwhelming sense of déjà vu cradling a distinct memory of Celestia giving in and using the Portal to transport herself and Twilight out of the System. But Dash hadn’t… seen Celestia give in yet? Pain washed over her again, wiping the thoughts from her mind. She struggled to focus on something else. Celestia’s gone…
The life support spell, the magic responsible for allowing living ponies to exist within the System, had nopony to maintain it. It was as though Celestia had been holding back a vice that now clamped down on every cell in her body, squeezing them into excruciating pain. She had no defenses, no way to fight back, and resigned herself—again?—to facing her end. Twilight is safe.
But the pain faded. What’s more, strength washed over her, filling her limbs, and she forced her eyes open in astonishment. Above her, RBD was gaping back over her own shoulder. Dash looked toward the Portal.
Spark stood before them, her eyes glowing a blinding white, waves of magical energy pouring out of her horn, her short-cropped mane and tail rippling from the force. She threw back her head and screamed, half pain, half wild gratification for finally mastering an incomprehensibly difficult skill under incredible pressure. Dash could barely hear it over the turbulence of magic and wind surrounding the unicorn.
But Dash saw Spark had dropped the force field protecting her and the Portal from RBD, to focus on the life support spell, and RBD had noticed this too. The dark mare turned, leaving Dash where she lay, and advanced on Spark.
“No!” shouted Dash as she erupted forward, blasting into RBD, sending them both skittering across the ground. RBD recovered quickly, lashing out at Dash. She managed to dodge it, the blow only grazing her, and returned with a punch to the gut that forced the virtual air from her doppelgänger’s virtual lungs.
“I don’t know how much longer I can keep this going, Dash!” cried Spark. Dash glanced at the unicorn and was startled to see a definite fuzziness to her edges, as though she was beginning to lose cohesion and turn to vapor, the raw power of the magic coursing through her threatening to overwhelm her programming.
“Hang on, Spark!” She turned back to her opponent, who was gone.
Dash looked around wildly, catching sight of RBD hurtling through the air right at her. There was no time to react. RBD slammed into her, sending them both tumbling toward the chasm, ever-increasing as the fabric of the System’s reality unwound itself.
They ended up almost at the edge, RBD pinning Dash to the ground again. Dash tipped her head back. The edge of the chasm was only a few feet from them now, chunks of the ground separating and dissolving into nothingness as she watched. Her eyes glazed over as déjà vu chilled her again, memories of grabbing RBD and plunging them both into the chasm filling her mind.
RBD leaned down and growled, “I’m taking your disc—and your life—whether you like it or not, meatbag.” The words echoed in Dash’s mind, trailing right behind a memory of the same. She looked at the empty, waiting Gateway, at the powerful magic pulsing off her friend Spark, and then up into the hatred in RBD’s eyes.
She didn’t have to worry about Celestia and Twilight any more. There still wasn’t time to reset RBD, but she could take a little risk.
Dash threw her hooves out straight to the side, breaking RBD’s hold, and wrapped her forelegs around the dark mare, pinning her wings to her sides, the other’s face changing from rage to confused surprise. Still can’t imagine anything but a direct attack. In the space her enemy’s shock granted her, Dash leaned up to whisper in the other’s ear. “No, you’re not.”
She worked the muscles in her back, a powerful flap of her wings that kicked the both of them up, pivoting backward. They spun through the air in a lazy arc, and she twisted, putting RBD beneath her as they sailed toward the System’s chasm of corruption. RBD struggled in Dash’s embrace, so Dash released her.
Just as RBD began to overcome this second shock in as many seconds, Dash kicked the dark mare’s wings as hard as she could with both back legs, sending her spiraling down into the chasm.
Dash flapped her own wings, grimacing with the effort, reversing her fall and powering herself back towards the Portal, but she didn’t look away. If RBD recovered in time…
But the dark mare didn’t recover. Her scream of rage distorted as her body did, passing through the interface between the System and the corruption. She dissolved into nothingness, like so many programs before her.
Dash hit the ground running, scrambling for the Gateway as the chasm swept forward, slapping the activation control. Spark followed but stopped outside the Portal as it powered up, her burning white horn a stark contrast to the void about to overtake her.
“Can’t you come with me?” Dash shouted over the roar of Spark’s magical output. “Would that even work?”
“Even if it could,” Spark yelled back, “I have to keep this spell going until you’re actually out of the System! So get going!” Dash opened her mouth to argue, but Spark waved wildly at the chasm rushing toward them, the world falling away into darkness. “There’s no time! Get out of here!”
With a roar of frustration, Dash hit the exit command like she’d seen Celestia do. The Gateway sealed as the Portal charged, flooding with brilliant blue light. The pegasus put a hoof against the shimmering force field, and Spark met it with her own.
“You’re saving me again!” Dash cried, forcing a grin even though her eyes were watering.
Spark laughed and shouted back, “You’re a good pony, Dash! A good friend!” Her voice was muffled by the barrier separating them. Dash saw the chasm tearing toward the unicorn, toward herself.
She wanted to look away, but forced herself to keep her gaze steady. Spark deserved that, deserved so much more.
“Call me Rainbow!” she yelled. She wished the Portal would hurry up already.
A smile broke out across Spark’s face, a deeply pleased grin, the last thing Dash saw before the pure brilliance of the Portal blinded her. The last thing she heard was an echoing “Goodbye, Rainbow!” as her senses went numb and her body dissolved into scintillating, burning-hot nothingness.
The next thing she felt was a crushing blow from the side, and she went skidding across the stone floor of Celestia’s secret workshop with a lavender unicorn wrapped around her. “Rainbow!”
She allowed herself to lay there for a moment before shaking her head and pushing herself up. There was a bunch of dust in her eyes or something, and she rubbed furiously at them, blinking hard and clearing her throat, before looking down at the unicorn. “Hey, Twilight.”
“Dash!” Celestia cried out, and galloped over to hug her as well. Luna, thankfully, held back, looking on at the scene with obvious confusion.
Dash awkwardly wrapped a leg around the Princess of the Sun and patted her back. “Hey, Celestia. Good to be here.”
The mares finally released her and helped her to her feet. She groaned and stretched her limbs one by one, working out unusual kinks and tensions on top of the soreness she’d earned fighting her way to the Portal. “I feel like I’ve been through the wringer.” She flared a wing and cast a critical eye over her tattered primaries.
“That is… not entirely inaccurate,” Celestia admitted, eyeing the now-dark cylindrical device behind her control console. “At the quantum level, the process could be seen as—”
“Nope,” Dash said, holding up a hoof. “Don’t wanna know. Really, really don’t.” She glanced around, taking in the wonderfully colorful room. Sure, it was basically brown rock walls and floors with gray metal towers, but the towers had twinkling multicolored lights on them and the walls had cheerful yellow flames burning in sconces—the world wasn’t black lit by white-blue light any more.
She was home.
Within flying distance of it, anyway. She thought of her cloud-soft bed in her actual home and almost fell over from the pleasure of anticipation. “I am beat. How long were we in there?”
Twilight turned and studied the display above the control console. “I inserted myself a few minutes ago. Rainbow, you went in about twenty minutes ago. Princess Celestia has been inside for ten years, one month, four days, seventeen hours, and… thirteen minutes, give or take.”
Celestia, her eyes closed, took in a deep breath, held it, and then slowly released it. She opened her eyes to see them all staring at her, and smiled. “It is good—so very good—to be home.” Luna pressed into her side, tears threatening in her eyes.
Dash blinked, then peered closer at Celestia. There was a hoof-shaped welt rising under her left eye. “What, uh… what happened to you?”
Luna threw a dark look at Twilight, who blanched and shrank back slightly. Celestia wrapped a wing around Luna, hugging her little sister tightly against herself, and in that moment Dash couldn’t tell if it was meant to reassure Luna or restrain her.
“It does not matter,” Celestia said, but to Twilight rather than Dash, and nuzzled into Luna’s mane. Dash raised an eyebrow at her before glancing back to Twilight, who offered up a weak smile.
“Oookay,” Dash said, and examined the rest of the display. Most of it was a map of Equestria, with a steadily-growing black blotch spreading across it. A map of the System, she corrected herself. Her eyes lingered on the spot in the darkness where the Portal had stood. Spark…
She shook herself. “The, uh, last few minutes in there were really… weird. I kept remembering things that hadn’t actually happened? I remembered you guys leaving, but you were already gone?”
Twilight coughed, stepping closer to Dash, and laughed awkwardly. “Well, that’s kind of my fault? I rigged up a failsafe before I went in, a sort of last-ditch break-glass-in-case-of-emergency in case one of us, er, died while inside the System.” She pointed to the edge of the System map, where three squares labeled Celestia, Rainbow, and Twilight glowed amber. “If any of us died, our indicator would turn red, and Luna would hit this button and it would rewind the simulation by two minutes of System time.”
Celestia’s jaw dropped. “What?”
Twilight blushed and shied away. “I’d examined the Station, Gateway, and Portal functions, and saw if a living pony died, their mind would be buffered and their body would end up ejected out of the System. I didn’t think it was safe to rewrite those functions while living ponies were in there, so I layered my own function on top—it continually caches the last two minutes, sim-time, and can reset when prompted.”
Celestia stared at Twilight, speechless, long enough for Twilight to start fidgeting, before finally saying, “I can think of, at minimum, a dozen reasons why that shouldn’t work. You and I need to compare notes.”
Twilight beamed.
Rainbow Dash careened through the dark woods, illuminated only by distant starlight, her hooves pounding the tight-packed earth. Ahead, at the edge of sight, a shape whipped around a tree and disappeared. She poured on speed and rounded the tree, and caught a glimpse of red ribbon and blonde tail before it vanished into the underbrush, drawling laughter floating in its wake.
Dash growled in frustration and redoubled her efforts, sweat coursing through her coat, the salty wetness burning in the cuts and scrapes she accumulated with each new plunge through thicket and shrub. That taunting laughter mingled with her quarry’s hooves striking the ground. She hated it.
Right when she felt herself finally gaining, closing the gap, something shifted: The laughter’s cadence and pitch changed, lilting higher, and Dash burst through the undergrowth just in time to see a streak of pink—and then she launched herself into the air, flapping hard to rocket forward, barely even noticing the gnarled tree root that had broken through the surface of the dirt just where she’d been about to step. The streak darted around an old oak tree and Dash banked to follow, kicking off a neighboring trunk to assist the pivot, and tackled the lavender mare she’d been chasing.
They cartwheeled through the underbrush, laughing the whole way, until they came to a stop in an undignified heap in a grassy clearing, Dash on her back and a welcome weight pressing her into the earth. A mess of dark purple hair with a bright pink streak running through it obscured Dash’s view for a moment, until Twilight pushed herself up to inspect her pursuer. They contemplated one another for a moment, and when Twilight smiled down at her, Dash felt a contentment she hadn’t realized she’d been missing rise up in her chest, suffusing her whole being.
Sound asleep in the darkness of one of Canterlot Castle’s many guest rooms, Dash smiled back.
The evening after their return from the System, Twilight trotted through Canterlot Castle. Dash and Celestia had slept through most of the day. While Dash seemed largely rejuvenated when she awoke, Celestia would need much more rest before she returned to normal, if Twilight was any judge. Still, she had risen and gamely joined in when Pinkie arrived in full party mode, and Twilight reflected that there would be more to Celestia’s recovery than mere sleep.
She found Dash sitting on a balcony, staring up at the stars over Equestria. Twilight thought she could just barely make out the soft glow miles away that was Ponyville. She quietly moved over and sat down next to the pegasus, gazing up at the night sky too. Dash glanced over at her and gave a tight smile when she saw the unicorn. “Hey, Twilight. Sorry to disappear like that. It was getting a little crowded in there.” She ruffled her wings.
Twilight mentally reviewed the attendance list of Pinkie’s Welcome Home Celestia party—six friends from Ponyville and two alicorn princesses in a banquet hall fit for two hundred ponies—and nodded in understanding. “No apology necessary. I think it’s perfectly normal, expected even, for you to want a little space.”
They gazed out into the night. Stars shimmered above them in a clear, soothing blanket. Dash sighed, and Twilight looked over at her. “Are you doing okay?”
Dash pursed her lips. “I guess so. I just can’t… stop thinking about what it was like, in there. I hated that place, Twilight. I felt so… so trapped! Normally I can fly home from anywhere, but…” She shuddered, and Twilight nodded.
There was companionable silence again for a while, and then Dash said, “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you in there. I mean you, you. Well, it was bad enough the first time, when I thought Spark was you. But then when you showed up for real I just—for a second I was so mad, because you were supposed to be outside to get us out of that mess, but I couldn’t stay mad, because at the end of the day, I was just so happy to see you. The real you.”
Twilight remembered that moment too, and then one that had immediately followed: meeting her program counterpart, being pulled into a hug, and hearing her own voice, weighed down by a millennium of regret, beg her to take care of Rainbow Dash. In her memory, she nodded back, a silent promise. She found herself echoing the motion in the present as a frown creased her brow, the hazy glimmer of something beginning to form in her mind.
Dash distracted her by snorting and saying, “Not that it lasted. I mean, right after that we had to deal with Cracken—err, APP—and those dragons, and then, well. Let’s just say for a while there I didn’t really think I’d be coming home.”
Twilight’s breath caught, but Dash didn’t notice. She was still looking out into the distance. “That rainboom was something else, though. It’s been… it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of those. And then when it… Well, I don’t think I’ll be able to top that here in Equestria.”
She turned to give Twilight a wry grin, but it quickly became a frown at the abject look on the unicorn’s face. “Twilight? What’s wrong? Everything’s cool, we all made it out in the end. Everything can go back to normal now... no worries.”
Twilight shook her head furiously. “I don’t think things should go back to normal, Rainbow.” Her throat got tight, but she forced herself to keep talking. “I owe you… I owe you an enormous apology. I was so caught up in trying to find Celestia, trying to figure out what she had been doing—”
“Twilight,” Dash said evenly. “I get it, it’s oka—”
“No!” Twilight nearly shouted, and Dash froze. “No,” she said, quieter. “It’s not okay. You didn’t deserve how I treated you, what I said to you.” Despite the vagueness of her words, Twilight could tell from the look on Dash’s face that they were both of them remembering the same very specific moment years ago. “I was so… so overwhelmed... But it doesn’t matter. You’re a good pony, Rainbow. A good friend. You always have been, even when I was too caught up in my own problems to see it.”
A tear formed in Dash’s eye and broke free, trailing down her face. She didn’t move, staring straight at Twilight, who held her gaze unwaveringly.
“I’m so, so sorry, Rainbow.”
Dash searched her eyes for a moment, then finally looked away. “I really, uh… Well, let’s just say I think I’d given up on ever hearing that.” She rubbed her face, and when her hoof came away wet, she looked down at it in surprise.
Twilight just watched her silently, that glimmering idea floating around in her mind, looking for something to latch onto.
After a moment, Dash cleared her throat and looked back up. “I couldn’t stand seeing you that way. I couldn’t understand how the others were able to just… just let you hole up down there. I thought if I could… if there was something I could do, some way I could help you, but…”
“But I pushed you away.”
Dash nodded slowly. “So I just… waited. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“And you were still waiting, until last night.”
Dash blew out a sigh. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
Twilight nodded. “So, no. Things shouldn’t go back to normal. Things can’t go back to normal. You deserve better.”
Dash smiled sadly. “It’d be nice to have my friend back.”
Twilight shook her head in perplexment. “I can’t believe you waited ten years for me to get my head out of my rear, as Applejack might say. You really are the Element of Loyalty, aren’t you?” she said fondly.
Instead of grinning back at her like she’d expected, Dash just looked uncomfortable. “I…”
A sudden thought, her mind making a connection. “And then you… and then you tried to…” Twilight trailed off, staring at her pegasus friend as that glimmer finally crystallized into full, true understanding. “And then you were willing to give up your life for me. To save me and Celestia.”
Dash swallowed hard. “I mean... you’d have done the same for me. I know you would have. Spark—well. What are—what are friends for?” Twilight’s keen eyes picked out the faintest rosy tinge on her cheeks.
She kept gazing thoughtfully at Rainbow Dash, and Dash grew more and more uncomfortable. Then the unicorn mare blinked and smiled. “Of course I would have, Rainbow. But even so, thank you for being such a good… friend.” And after the briefest moment of calculation, she leaned over and kissed Dash on the cheek.
Dash stiffened and then immediately relaxed, and it was like watching a lifetime of weight and tension evaporate in moments, and for the first time in a decade Twilight saw the joyful Rainbow Dash she’d known her first year in Ponyville, and she thought to herself that if either one of them was an idiot, it was her. Years like this, and I never even suspected… Oh, Rainbow.
She forced back the guilt again and vowed to do everything she could to make it up to the most loyal pony she knew. She already had an idea of how to get started; she made a mental note to speak to Luna about it at the first opportunity.
Twilight looked over at Dash, who had allowed a very stupid grin to spread across her face and kept glancing furtively back at her. She grinned back and stood up. “C’mon, Rainbow. Everypony’s waiting for us.”
Dash stood too, and they turned and walked back to their friends together.
“So this is what you’d been hiding all these years,” Dash said, nosing through some of the parchments on Twilight’s desk.
They had all returned to Ponyville several days ago, and as soon as the others had made the time, Twilight had shown them her basement lab. Spike had probably been the most affronted, astonished to learn what had been lurking under his home for so long, but by and large everyone had understood Twilight’s unhappy position, caught between her best friends and her princess’s wishes.
She had shown them around the equipment and then, realizing none of them had the necessary knowledge or inclination to keep up, around the simulation of Ponyville, which at least looked recognizable.
“Land sakes,” Applejack had said. “That looks just like the farm. Why, there I am, buckin’ that tree!” On the screen, tiny apples fell from a tiny tree into a tiny basket.
Rarity had expressed polite interest, though it was clear that in the end, she couldn’t quite see the point. Fluttershy had cooed at the little simulated animals. Pinkie had been excited to see her virtual double, and strangely the double had seemed nearly as excited, despite having no way of knowing they were there; the two Pinkies did a little jig together. Dash had lurked at the back of the group, until Rarity had suggested they should all move on, as Twilight and Dash probably had a lot to talk about. She had shot Twilight a very pointed look as they all called out their goodbyes and climbed the stairs to the library.
“Yes, this was it,” Twilight said, with a touch of false cheeriness. “Not much point to it now.”
Dash glanced around the lab, taking in the computational towers with their blinking lights, and finally turned to the screen. Twilight realized it was the first time she’d seen Dash acknowledge its existence, and she watched quietly as Dash stared up at it. She saw Dash’s eyes go hard and lips start curling down, and she turned to look up at the screen as well.
They’d left it centered on Ponyville’s town square, and stretched out on one of the clouds floating over the market was a tiny Rainbow Dash, snoring in the warm sun. Twilight looked back and forth from Dash to the screen, and then carefully made her way to the control console and entered a few commands.
The screen froze, and then the image on it defocused, fading to nothing as one by one her computational towers shut down. As the cooling fans spun to a stop the room became quieter than it had been in years, and she walked over to Dash, her hoofsteps echoing.
“There was a point to it,” Dash said abruptly. She paused, Twilight watching her closely. “What you were doing down here… it’s what let you save Celestia. Save me.”
Twilight nodded. “But that’s over with, now. I don’t need it any more. I’ve spent enough time locked away down here, ignoring everything else.”
Dash thought for a moment, then asked, “What’s Celestia going to do with hers?”
“She shut hers down, too, before she went to bed that first morning back. I think you had already passed out upstairs,” Twilight needled gently, and Dash offered up the ghost of a smile. “She said it was too far gone, the corruption too deep-seated, to save the simulation. She’d have to start it over. She’s not going to.”
Dash blinked at that, frowning slightly. “She’s not? But what about all the talk about… about testing things out before she does them for real, to make sure they’re good ideas?”
“She said she’d just have to wing it,” Twilight said, and Dash put her eyebrows up. Twilight grinned. “That’s what she said. That except for the occasional mistake, things had been going well enough without running predictions in a simulated Equestria, and, well, she didn’t want to risk…”
“Risk it happening again?”
Twilight frowned thoughtfully. “No, not this happening again, exactly—though she didn’t want that either, and I watched her melt the Gateway into slag after she shut the System down. I think it was more…” She pursed her lips.
“She told me she had originally intended to show ponies how to use these computational engines to make our lives easier, but she kept revising her designs, finding ways to improve them. She didn’t want to give us something half-baked. She thought a gift from a princess to her subjects needed to be as close to perfect as she could make it. She got so caught up in what she was doing, she didn’t properly consider the consequences of her actions, of what might go wrong.”
Twilight swept a foreleg through the air, taking in the lab around them. “I know what she means. I let the same thing happen to me, trying to follow in her hoofsteps. I lost sight of what actually matters.”
Dash made a noncommittal noise. “What are you going to do now?”
Twilight smiled. “Spend more time with my friends, for a start. And I can get back into my own research, things I’ve been meaning to study up on but haven’t had time for.” She eyed Dash. “What about you?”
Dash started, clearly not expecting the question. “What about me?”
“What are you going to do now?”
Dash shrugged, looked up at the sky—or where the sky would be, if they weren’t in the basement of the library. “Go back to work, I guess. Gonna have to make missing that shift up to Open Skies somehow. Same old, same old. I’m not the one who locked myself away for ten years.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you?” Dash stared back at her, uncomprehending. “Come on, I actually have something for you upstairs.”
They wound their way through the silent computational towers. At the top of the stairs, Twilight extinguished the lamps, plunging the room into darkness. They emerged into the library’s ground floor, and Twilight led Dash to a table by the front door with some scrolls and parchments piled on it. She sifted through them, Dash looking on curiously, until she found the object of her search and levitated it over to Dash. “Here you go.”
Dash took it and opened it, reading silently, confusion growing on her face. “I—what? ‘Dear Rainbow Dash, It is my pleasure to extend this invitation for you to join the Wonderbolts Academy summer training session. Signed, Spitfire.’” She squinted and peered closer at the bottom of the note. “‘P.S. It’s about time.’” She flipped to the other papers. “It’s an application. It’s… it’s already filled out. What is this?”
Twilight smiled softly. “Princess Luna’s last official action as sole ruler of Equestria was to ask the Academy Commandant to open up a spot for you in training. It turns out she hadn’t needed to; Spitfire’s been holding one for you for a few years now. All you have to do is sign it and send it back, and you’re in.”
Dash shook her head, retreating a step. “But— I—”
“Rainbow,” Twilight murmured, and Dash relaxed a little. “It’s okay. Celestia’s back in Canterlot and I’m back in the library. You don’t need to be quite so selfless any more. You can, and should, do something for yourself.”
Dash was silent. Twilight didn’t understand why she wasn’t more excited. Celestia had been right: this had been Dash’s dream since she was a filly. She gazed into her friend’s eyes, and was surprised to see a flash of fear there. Dash’s eyes widened a split second later, when she realized Twilight had seen it. The pegasus coughed and broke eye contact. She can’t possibly be afraid of making it into the Wonderbolts; she just outflew three dragons, and rainboomed in the middle of it. So why…
“It’s late,” Dash said, tucking the invitation under her wing. “I should get going.”
She’s hurt. I’ve… hurt her feelings? I’m encouraging her to follow her dreams… which means going to train with the Wonderbolts… which means going away. I did that in Canterlot and now she thinks I’m trying to push her away. Again. After everything. Oh, Rainbow.
“Ah… yes,” Twilight said. “You must be tired.” She went to open the front door, to show Dash out, but she stopped after a moment. “Unless… you’d like to have a sleepover? The new Daring Do comics came in yesterday, we could read those. I’m pretty sure we have some snacks, and in the morning, well, Spike’s been dying to try his new alfalfa pancake recipe on somepony else.” She smiled hopefully at the pegasus. “What do you say?”
Dash had been watching her carefully as she spoke, and Twilight couldn’t read her expression. But after a moment, Dash broke into a small smile. “That sounds really good.”
“Great! Why don’t you grab whatever you want in the kitchen? I’ll let Spike know we’re having company. Meet me upstairs?”
“Sure,” said Dash, and Twilight trotted off, pleased things had worked out.
She paused on the second-floor landing and looked down to the main floor. Dash was still standing by the entry table, staring into space. She came to and pulled the Wonderbolts application back out from under her wing, setting it on the table. She leafed to the last page, found a quill, scrawled something, then rolled up the application and left it sitting on the entry table.
After a moment, Dash let out a quiet whoop and did a somersault, landing nimbly on her feet with a little dance, a broad grin on her face, before cantering into the kitchen.
Twilight smiled to herself, warmth spreading through her, and went to find those comic books.
