//------------------------------//
// Achievement: Locked 
// Story: Irreversible 
// by Trick Question 
//------------------------------//

"Coffee: your usual?" asked Twilight Sparkle, preparing a kettle. Her friend stood just a few hoofsteps away.

Moondancer shook her head, then adjusted her glasses with a hoof. "I'm surprisingly wired at the moment, so that much caffeine might be a mistake. I'll go with some green tea, if it isn't too much trouble," she said. "Either way, I'm significantly more interested in knowing why I'm missing this morning's memories than I am in libations and pleasantries."

"I'll take tea as well, then. I'm not surprised you're jumpy—you had three cups of java this morning," said Twilight, as she loaded the kettle's infuser with tea leaves.

"Wait, you were here early this morning, too?" asked Moondancer. "I usually take my coffee right after dawn."

"I arrived last night, actually," said Twilight. "You see, after we woke up in bed together—"

Moondancer froze. Her eyes widened and her mouth gaped.

"Oh! Oh shoot, I don't mean like, like that," said Twilight, blushing furiously. "Er, I mean, we weren't being super-intimate or anything..."

Moondancer raised a brow. "In your old bed, the one upstairs? The twin bed that barely fits one pony?"

Twilight grimaced. "Okay, um, I should probably stop brewing tea and just look for a spell I can cast to restore your memories," she said. "That will help avoid anything uncomfortable."

"No, brew away," said Moondancer, with a brief blush and a wave of her hoof. "I'll go look for the spell while you're doing that. Think I know one that will work, since it's been less than a day since I lost anything... well, that I know of, anyway. But it's fine." She paused for a moment before looking back at Twilight. "Twi, I want you to know something. I'm okay with whatever happened between us."

"R-really?" said Twilight. "Um, that's... Nothing really happened, but, um..."

"Oh," said Moondancer, and she glanced to the side as her face fell.

"Wait, I'm not, like, opposed to it or anything!" blurted Twilight. "I, um, I've just never really even thought about the possibility before, so this is kind of new territory for me."

Moondancer nodded slowly, then looked back over to her friend. "You mean the possibility of 'us'," she said flatly.

"No, I mean... more generally."

"The... idea of being with another mare?" asked Moondancer.

Twilight winced, and wound her hoof in the air in a 'keep going' motion."

Moondancer blinked a few times. "The idea of being intimate with anypony?"

Twilight sighed and nodded. "Yes," she said softly. "I mean, I never even had close friends until a few years back, as you know. I've only had a crush on one pony in my entire life, he wasn't exactly a friend, it faded quickly, and to be perfectly forthright, well, he was also a bizarre-looking bipedal alien being from another dimension."

"Huh. That's... well, it's fascinating, actually. After we sort this out, I demand intricate details," said Moondancer, and then she smiled. "Okay. Yes, I think this is all acceptable. I'm very sorry for bringing up something uncomfortable."

"Not uncomfortable, just new," said Twilight, with a sheepish smile. "It's like... trying to ice skate for the first time, you know? I keep falling down, because I have no idea what I'm doing right now."

"Oh. Well, for one, you're letting the water boil over," Moondancer pointed out. "Green tea should steep at a slightly lower temperature."

Twilight quickly removed the kettle as it began to whistle, then turned down the temperature on the stove. "Right, right. Sorry—distracted."

"Perfectly rational response, in these specific circumstances anyway," said Moondancer, heading out into the main living space to search the bookcase. "So I guess we're doing something we shouldn't be, or more likely, you are. If Princess Celestia is blanking my memories I can only assume you've dragged me neck-deep into an enormous pile of horse apples, which is a rather impressive feat in such a short timespan. Even for the two of us."

"Heh. Like I said, it's a long story. I'm looking into something strange that Celestia has apparently tried to keep hidden for at least a millennium, and it involves censorship of both astronomy and magic theory, among other things. You insisted on speaking with her to make sure we weren't doing anything stupid before we got carried away with our investigation," said Twilight. "The evidence appears to suggest that she still intends to keep it a closely-guarded secret, even after all these years."

"Ah," said Moondancer. "Well, I don't remember much from the meeting, so I can't levy an estimate on what she knows at this juncture. I'd be surprised if she isn't already neigh-certain you're the one behind this, even though it was very clear from the note on my frog that my aim was to prevent her from coming to that exact conclusion."

"Princess Celestia is as smart as we are, and much, much wiser. I guess it depends on what you told her," said Twilight. "We'll need to figure that out as soon as possible."

"What I do remember is going to sleep last night—alone, for the record. Then I felt a wrenching sensation and found myself standing upright with stars in my eyes. Er, not literally, but you know the kind I mean. My vision slowly cleared, after which it was obvious I was in standing in the Sisters' throne room. I looked around and noticed the doors were shut, and there were no guards. Luna wasn't there, which isn't a surprise—she usually sleeps until mid-afternoon at the earliest. So it was just me, and Celestia. She was sitting on her throne at quite a distance, so this wasn't exactly an informal conversation," said Moondancer, telekinetically looking through dozens of books she spoke.

"Please, go on," said Twilight, repeatedly tapping the side of a cabinet with a hind hoof.

Moondancer ignored the distracting sound. "Right. Well, Celestia said something like, 'Are you okay, Moondancer?' And I asked where I was, naturally. She told me I'd been victim to a magical accident of some sort that she was still investigating, but that I should be fine now. Early on in the discussion I noticed a pain in my hoof and looked at it to remove a tiny rock I must have placed there at some point. Pretty smart, Past Moondancer—and for the record, I view that as complimenting another pony so that doesn't officially count as egocentricity. Of course, that's when I saw the note I wrote myself," she continued. "Celestia told me that she suspected that you were responsible for the accident, but you might be under some kind of magical compulsion, so I should come to her immediately if I hear from you, in order to keep you safe or whatever. I said I would, of course. I asked if she could tell me anything more about what was wrong with you, and she said she was still looking into it and would keep me informed. Then asked if I could leave because I had a headache, which was a mild fib."

"Hmm. If you had already forgotten everything, I guess the note didn't help at all," said Twilight. "That's unfortunate. It was a very clever idea."

"No, the note did give me a hint that I should talk to you before turning you in, so to speak. Apart from that, however, it may have done more to harm than help. She probably noticed my reluctance to engage her in greater depth on the topic, because the note made me immediately suspicious. Hopefully she just assumed the spell she cast was part of the reason for my behavior," said Moondancer, frowning. "Stars above! Where is that blasted Advanced Magic book? The first four volumes are here, but the fifth one has all the good stuff."

"Oops," said Twilight, placing her hoof over her face. "I'm sorry, Moondancer. I have that one over there in the dining room. Ugh, I'm really scatterbrained at the moment. The idea of Celestia doing something like this to you is really affecting me..."

"And don't forget the bed," added Moondancer, with a smirk and a wink as she passed Twilight in the kitchen.

Twilight blushed. "Y-yes, I suppose that may also be a significant piece of the phenomenon," she admitted, then levitated the pot along with two teacups and saucers she followed Moondancer into the kitchen. "You don't need honey or anything with this, do you? I know you don't use a spoon."

Moondancer located the book and placed it on the table, then sat down. "I don't. Magic works fine. I feel a little guilty about it, being a unicorn elitist and all, but it's just the two of us so I don't need to pretend civility," she said, smiling. "Just don't tell the earth ponies."

Twilight chuckled. She telekinetically poured them each a cup of tea, then tugged on the infuser cord to lock it out of the remaining fluid in the kettle. "Same here," she said, setting the kettle on a heat-resistant matting. "I know the spell you're looking for, by the way. It's somewhere in chapter seven—"

"Found it," said Moondancer. She quickly swiveled the book to face Twilight. "Normally I'd be surprised you hadn't memorized a spell like this, but I guess it almost never comes up in practice. How often does somepony lose their memories, anyway? Outside of psychological counseling situations, I mean. I don't know of any magic that does it, so if it exists it must be proscribed..." She stirred her tea with telekinetic magic, then took a small sip. "Mm. Not bad."

"Your intuition is correct. That kind of magic is definitely illegal. We talked about this subject earlier this morning, but you should remember that soon enough. Just as I suspected, the spell isn't too hard to cast. I'm pretty sure you could cast it on yourself, even, since this is well within my best estimate of your abilities. Which, I must admit, is very high. Although..." Twilight pulled a bookmark ribbon into place on the page in question, then flipped further into the book.

"What are you looking for?" asked Moondancer.

Twilight raised a hoof for a moment as she spun through the pages. Then she stopped on a page and grinned. "Ah, there we are! I'm glad I thought of this first," she said. She turned the book back around for Moondancer to see, and pointed to the spell in question.

"High-level enchantment detection. Why would you need this..." said Moondancer, while Twilight sipped at her own tea, waiting patiently for her friend to figure things out on her own brainpower. "Oh! You think Princess Celestia might have put some kind of a trigger on my memories to detect if I used magic to recover them? That's... that's almost diabolical, Twilight." She scrunched her muzzle up in what looked like a mixture of distaste and disbelief.

"Removing the memories of somepony as gifted and friendship-allied as you are is diabolical to begin with," said Twilight, frowning. "I don't think we can put anything past Celestia right now. I don't think she's evil or compromised or anything like that, of course. She's undoubtedly trying to protect us from something dangerous, but I don't think it's wise for us to make detailed assumptions about her true motives."

Moondancer took a long sip of tea, followed by a deep breath. "Well, then... should we let her protect us?" she asked. "Maybe whatever you're doing—which you still haven't explained to me beyond cursory details about 'censorship', and given the argument I'm making now might be for the best—maybe all this really is a bad idea. Perhaps the memories themselves are dangerous, and you need to have your noggin wiped too?"

"Do you think that's even remotely likely?" asked Twilight, a quizzical expression on her muzzle.

"I could believe most of it, but not a second on the 'memories being dangerous' part," admitted Moondancer. "Memories are a non-literal encoding of events, and are very difficult to dissociate or translate outside of the mind of their owner. They don't interact with magic directly, unlike imagination, because they exist in the past, embedded in the detritus of the brain. They can't be 'dangerous' by themselves."

"So you do want to recover them, then," said Twilight, as she turned the book back around and began casting the detection spell.

Moondancer snorted. "They're my memories, Twi. Stars yes, I want them back."

Twilight nodded. "This whole thing is about hidden memories, by the way. Like, everypony's memories," she said. Twilight's aura glowed around Moondancer's head.

"I'm intrigued," said Moondancer, squinting. "So let's get this over with already. I doubt you want to do a second exposition on 'it's complicated' material."

Twilight's horn stopped glowing and the sounds of mana faded. She grimaced and pounded the floor with a rear hoof, causing the teacups to shake. "Arrrgh! I can't believe she actually did this!"

"Twilight, I think I'm starting to have second thoughts about this," said Moondancer. "She locked my memories? Like, seriously?"

Twilight Sparkle nodded. "Yep. They're still in your mind, I'm pretty sure, or there wouldn't be anything to hold the enchantment I can see there. She didn't delete them at all. She used them to set some kind of a trap. Any attempt to restore them will trigger a separate enchantment, probably a silent alarm, but I can't be certain without engaging in further study," she said. "I could easily remove all the magic, like all at once, but then Celestia would definitely know. I can detect that she actually sacrificed an iota of her magic to maintain a link with your mind. It's a tiny bit, but it's notable because it requires alicorn magic to form a passive link of that sort."

"Why didn't she just view my memories, then? Or, wait... did she?" asked Moondancer. "I didn't think remote viewing was possible, but I didn't think locking memories was, either! Dammit Twi, the entire Royal Guard might be on the way here right now! Do you need to book it out of here before they show up?"

"No, you were right the first time. It isn't possible to view memories with rote magic," said Twilight, with a sigh of relief. "Memories can be identified via rough time signature and compared to known events, and they can be inserted or deleted or locked as long as you can guess what you're dealing with. But viewing requires an incredible amount of decoding that nopony has been able to master, not even Star Swirl. It's due to the reasons that you yourself described just a moment ago."

"Horsefeathers. Then we're back to square one," said Moondancer. "Er, sorry about the profanity, if you care."

Twilight shook her head. "No. In fact, I agree with it. You're the only pony who can view your mem—" said Twilight, stopping short with a look of shock on her face. Slowly it grew into a naughty-looking smirk.

"Oh no. I know that look, Sparkle," said Moondancer, sighing. "You're going to do something dangerous with my brain, aren't you?"

"Not dangerous, just devious," said Twilight, grinning. "Believe it or not, I have a magic potion with me that will do what rote magic can't. It's not the reason I brought it here, but it's perfect for what we need!"

"You mean you can view my memories with the potion?" said Moondancer. "Even though there's no spell out there we know of that can do the same?"

"Yes, because it works through friendship rather than using brute magical force," said Twilight. "But even better, YOU can see your memories, presuming my hunch is correct."

Moondancer narrowed her eyes. "Didn't we just discuss this? Unlocking them will alert Celestia."

Twilight giggled and clopped her hooves together. "That's the beauty of it! We're not going to unlock them. We're going to make you view your own memories without actually restoring them, so you'll be creating new memories from the old memories! We're making a rough copy of them, essentially," she said. "Although, this will only work under one particular condition. If that condition doesn't exist, I'll need to be the one who does the viewing."

"What's the catch?" asked Moondancer.

Twilight Sparkle cleared her throat. "Moondancer, this is a delicate question, but... do you like yourself?"

"What? Um, that's a weird question. I guess... I guess I don't know? No, wait," she said, looking down at her hooves in thought. "Yeah. I think I do. It's kind of odd, because I'm pretty sure I used to hate myself, but ever since reconnecting with you that's changed. Like, significantly," Moondancer said, and smiled. "Do you like me, Twilight Sparkle?"

A blush tingled across Twilight's cheeks. "I, um... Yes. Yes, I do like you, Moonie."

"Moonie?" said Moondancer, raising a brow.

"What? Did I just say that?" Twilight's eyes widened.

Moondancer chuckled. "It's fine, I can be your 'Moonie'," she said, and Twilight felt her cheeks burn even hotter. "But, yes. If you like me, then I'm highly confident I like me too. You have good taste in friends, y'know." She winked again, and this time Twilight was certain her friend's aim was nothing more than to see how red her cheeks could possibly get.

(By Twilight Sparkle's best estimate, her cheeks were somewhere around nine out of of ten on the rubicundcheekometer, a measurement scale she invented at that very moment. Pronounced roo-buh-kund-chuh-KOM-uh-turr, of course.)

Staring at the floor to let the blood flush back into the rest of her body, Twilight used the opportunity to unlatch her saddlebags with magic. Then she pulled out the shot glass, removed the shrink wrapping, and set it down in front of Moondancer. "Alright then. Set the tea aside, and drink this instead. But first, I need you to concentrate on the question, 'What all did I forget over the past day?' Concentrate, then drink with your mind on the question. The potion will do the rest. You might have to suck on the rim a little, because the stuff's pretty thick."

"Um, Twilight?" said Moondancer, sniffing and examining the liquid in the shot glass. "This isn't what it looks like, is it?"

Twilight cocked her head to the side. "What do you think it looks like? It's a memory potion."

"Heh. You don't know too much about sex, I guess?" asked Moondancer, with a wry smirk. "I mean, I don't have much experience myself, so no worries."

"I... I don't think I know what you mean, so no," said Twilight, her lower lip quivering. "I'm sorry, Moonie. Is there something, er, 'sexy-ish' about shot glasses?"

Moondancer shook her head. "It's fine, dork. I'll tell you later." She closed her eyes in thought, then sucked hard on the opening of the glass and swallowed. Moments later, the shot glass fell and clanked onto the table surface as her eyes opened wide and glowed with white light. Moondancer continued to sit there motionless with two eye-shaped flashlights beaming directly out of her skull.

On the other side of the table, Twilight scooted her chair to the side to avoid the high-beams. Moondancer's eyes were glowing surprisingly bright. She blinked every once in a while, but the light was otherwise uninterrupted. "Wow, that's powerful stuff. Is this what it looks like from the other side? I guess it's a good thing I have the kitchen windows shaded," she said to herself. "Heh. You know, I'll bet we could actually use this potion to make a pony-sized flashlight in an emergency... except that it would be stupid and dangerous, of course."

After a moment, Twilight remembered that her previous visions were all relatively short, so her friends probably didn't have to wait for her. Moondancer, however, was more than likely viewing only data that was stored in her own mind, and her question was to learn about everything that had happened to her. The memories that did exist were probably lengthy, given their recency. Consistent with how the potion worked, her experience would presumably consist of a single, sequential vision... but that vision could be up to three hours long, at least from Moondancer's perspective.

This could take a while, thought Twilight. So she went into the kitchen to clean up after the tea, and make some sandwiches for later.