//------------------------------// // Chapter XXVII // Story: What I Am // by Knight Breeze //------------------------------// Chapter XXVII Princess Luna yawned as she picked up the note on her desk. As expected, it was from her sister, detailing all the important events that had transpired while the Lunar Princess had been asleep. It took her awhile to get through the whole thing, but what she found there was illuminating to say the least. So, it is as we expected. Starswirl, you old bat, just what were you up to? she thought to herself as she finished the note. With a huff, Princess Luna slowly made her way to her sitting room where breakfast was already laid out on her coffee table, waiting for the Princess of the Night to awaken. Her mind was still on other matters, however, so she barely even tasted the food as she dug in, attempting to make as short a work of it as possible before beginning her labors for the night. Before she could finish, however, a knock on the door pulled her from her thoughts. Now… who could that be? she wondered curiously. She quickly swallowed the mouthful of pastry, and washed it down before she answered. “Enter!” The door opened to reveal Sergeant Whisper Wind, one of her personal guards. The sergeant cut a clean salute, his gaze locked onto the far side of the room. “Your Highness! The… creature is outside. It-” “He, Sergeant,” Princess Luna corrected, her voice dripping with disapproval. “He is not an it. He also has a name, and I would suggest you call him by it.” The sergeant didn’t look too happy about being corrected, but let it slide in the face of his princess’s withering glare. “~Alex~ requests an audience with you, Your Highness. Says it’s a matter of great importance.” “Very well, show him inside,” Princess Luna said, before wiping her mouth clean of any jelly that might still be there. The soldier bowed a bit stiffly, before turning and leaving the room. Princess Luna ignored the guard’s grumpy attitude in favor of focusing on the alien that entered after the soldier had left. ~Alex…~ honestly looked like he shouldn’t have been up at all, but she had been around the wayward human long enough to know that a few injuries weren’t enough to keep him down for long. She concentrated on weaving the necessary spell to better facilitate their conversation, but stopped when the ~human~ gave a short cutting gesture, while speaking in surprisingly good Equish. “You don’t have to do that. The translation in my implants is much better now. A little sleep was all that was needed to fix it.” Luna relaxed, letting the spell dissipate as she gestured towards the couch opposite to her. “Very well. How are you doing this evening, ~Alex?~” The human took the seat gratefully, groaning in apparent relief as he sat down. “Well enough, I suppose. And the name’s ‘Alex,’ actually, though I completely understand why you would have had trouble getting my name right. It is an alien word, after all. I mean, I have trouble pronouncing Twilight’s name, so I think we’re even.” And he was right. Luna almost didn’t quite catch who he was talking about, due to how horribly he had mangled Twilight Sparkle’s name. “You apparently have some trouble with the half-nicker. It is not an uncommon problem among first time speakers of the equestrian language, especially the griffons. Despite this, though, your grammar is quite good, and you are understandable, which is saying a lot considering you just began speaking the language yesterday.” Alex gave her a half smile, before leaning back into the couch. “Well, thank you. I'm glad for that, at least. It's almost hard to believe that there was a time when I thought that I would never have an intelligent conversation with anyone ever again.” “Time does march ever onward, and we often find ourselves in positions we thought we'd never be in. But as interesting as that is, I rather doubt you came here to speak with me about your language troubles,” Luna said, before gently lifting her teacup to her lips. “It's that obvious, is it?” Luna giggled a little. “Though a few of your more… disturbing facial features make discerning your expression and disposition difficult, you still have a tendency to wear your emotions for everypony to see, regardless of how the gifts left behind by your former masters might mask them. It only takes a little practice to easily discern how you are feeling, though I do admit that being inside your mind does help a little in that regard.” “That's kind of what I wanted to talk about…” Alex said, before self-consciously rubbing the back of his head. “Do you know what the alien… visitors? messengers?” “Delegates,” Luna corrected him, easily guessing who he was talking about. “Ah… delegates,” Alex said, both misspeaking the word, and acting as if he were rolling it around in his mouth and savoring it. “Yes... do you know what they asked for last time they were here?” “I do, though I do not approve. I do not trust them,” Luna said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “I don't either, but I'm still going to let them do it.” Luna was somewhat taken aback by both the ~human’s~ bluntness and his decision. “But Alex, they could-” “Steal secrets from my head? Plant things there that might turn me into a puppet later? Strip me of the last of my humanity, and return me to the slave I was?” Alex asked, his voice sounding desperate, yet resigned. “I know. But I don't think the snake would do that. What I learned from the krin computer makes me believe they're better than that, but I still don't trust them. Not completely, anyway.” “You should fear giving them more information than they need more than losing your mind again,” Luna said, before she took another sip from her teacup. “I do not believe she is capable of changing your mind in any way. As I have told you before, your will is unnaturally strong. It would be extremely difficult to turn your mind against you again.” “You don't know that. She could be much stronger than me.” “She could, but I doubt it. Her aura is strong, but not powerful. Many of mine and my sister's mages far outstrip her in pure power, ourselves included. In fact, your aura alone is more powerful, though you do not yet know how to control it.” Alex looked taken aback by this, clearly unsure how to take this information. “I… thank you, but I still don't trust her. She could be hiding her power.” “She could, which leads us back to the question of why you are even considering this,” Luna pointed out. “It is far too dangerous, and there is a very good chance she could learn of the omniscope, our plans of defense, or of the mirror that connects our two worlds.” “She could… but I believe all of that does not outweigh the potential gains…” the ~human~ said as he rubbed his hand over his face. “Tell me Luna… what can you do to bring those responsible to justice? What can your sister do? What could any of us do, to make sure that they could never make another batch of victims like me?” Luna was silent for a while as she mulled over what Alex was implying. “I… see. And you think that they could bring you the vengeance you crave?” “This isn’t about vengeance,” Alex said, shaking his head. “We already got our vengeance. I personally… stabbed? Quite a few of those that were directly responsible, and I’m fairly certain that if any of the crew other than me survived, we would have heard something by now. This is about making sure it doesn’t happen again.” “Which is a bait too tempting for you to pass up out of hoof, I understand. But there’s more at stake here. You know things about what we are doing, things that we’d much rather the aliens not know at all.” “That’s why I’m here,” Alex said before he looked up at her, his pure black eyes staring right through her. “If there is even a possibility that we could catch these-” he then said a word that Luna had never heard before, but based on the pure venom in Alex’s voice, she knew that whatever it was wasn’t good. “-Then I want to take it. I just want to make sure that we don’t reveal our plans while catching them. Don’t want to release one bird in an effort to catch two, so to speak.” “A ~human~ colloquialism, I take it?” Luna asked, somewhat amused. “Something like that…” Princess Luna thought for a time about all of this, all while she gently levitated the tray full of pastries towards Alex, offering them to the wayward alien. He took one gratefully and began to eat, which gave Luna plenty of time to mull over the ~human’s~ decision to let another alien near his mind. “Then what is it you want me to do? The information in your head is too valuable to both sides, so what is it you want me to do to keep us from losing the bird in our hoof, so to speak?” Alex took a deep breath, before looking up to Luna again. His black eyes were filled with tears, and Luna could almost feel the terror radiating off of the ~human.~ “I think you already know what I want. They’ll be here tomorrow, and I intend to tell them that they can go ahead and mess around in my head. You’ve been in my head before, you know about this kind of stuff, so is there some way to hide away the information in my head? Some way to make me forget some things?” Luna smiled, but shook her head. “I already told you before, the mind is a multilayered, complex thing. With your consent, I could bypass your defenses and erase something from your mind, but it could do far more damage than I think you are prepared for.” The ~human~ looked depressed at that. “Oh… yeah, I forgot about that…” “I thought you might have. However, there is something else I could do for you, to help protect you from her.” Alex looked up, hope shining in his eyes. “Whatever it is, I’ll take it!” “Fine then, here is what we’ll do…” * * * Priestess Akitesh slithered out of the landing pod, careful not to make any move that could be seen as aggressive. While it was true that they had come a long way since their first landing on this planet, her and her entourage were still treated with distrust and thinly veiled hostility. Not that she could blame these people. They had had very few blessings come from space, and if she were in their position, she would have shot first, and asked questions from the corpses. She wasn’t in their position, however. Rather, she had the unenviable task of attempting to make these people see reason and allow her to probe the survivor for information. As far as she was concerned, she’d done a pretty good job up until this point: she still wasn’t any closer to gaining the information she needed, but at the very least her landing craft wasn’t being blasted from the sky, and the survivors of the ensuing crash hunted for sport. It was still somewhat galling to be surrounded like a horrifying monster every time she came planetside, though. It made everything ten times harder and more time consuming, especially since the two beings who ruled this land seemed to be quite busy most of the time, meaning that they were usually not on the landing pad to greet the priestess when she came to talk. It will all be worth it, especially if we can finally get our hands on that emperor and his forces, Akitesh reassured herself as one of the equines motioned for her to follow. She did so, leaving most of her entourage behind with the sole exception of Captain Hazalk. While the captain wasn’t of any particular use in these meetings due to his inability to speak the language, she still prefered to keep him around as a symbolic gesture. “How long are we going to continue with these?” Hazalk asked idly as he kept his pace even with Akitesh, his four arms held behind his back in what Akitesh easily recognized as the krin military’s sign of ‘at ease’. “As long as it takes until we obtain the information we need,” Akitesh answered curtly. “Once we have what we came for, we can send a message to The Prophet and your hiarch, who have undoubtedly already sent reinforcements to protect the sector. After that, our respective governments should have new assignments for us. For now, however, we stay, we guard, and we attempt to sway the natives.” Hazalk gave a short nod, but did not otherwise respond to her. His antenna were twitching in agitation, though. It was an outward sign of emotion that, if Akitesh had less experience with the krin species, she would have completely missed. “Is there something bothering you, Captain?” “Just soldier’s itch, Priestess,” Captain Hazalk said, before bringing up a single hand and rubbing his forehead. “My crew have brought The Bastion back to combat readiness, and while we’re extremely understaffed at the moment, we’re still ‘straining against the leash,’ as it were. They desire vengeance, and I can hardly blame them.” Akitesh nodded in understanding. While she personally had no love for combat, she had been around enough of the warrior caste to know what he was talking about. “You will get your chance, Captain. Just be patient.” “Do not worry about me, Priestess. My crew and I will endure. Keep your focus on your job, and we will do ours,” Hazalk paused for a few seconds, as if remembering something. “On that note, it may be possible that the survivor has no useful information. If that is the case, I would ask you to try to obtain access to The Ascent’s crash site. The computer core may be salvageable, which means we may be able to pull what we need from there.” Akitesh thought about this for a few seconds. “Agreed. However, if these traitors were even the slightest bit careful, they would not have left such evidence for us to find.” “True, but there is still a chance we might find something to point us in the right direction,” Hazalk countered. “At the very least, we would be able to recover the experiment logs, which would give us greater understanding on the survivor’s condition, how to better treat him, but more importantly, what we may be dealing with when we finally engage the traitors. The amount of information we’ve been able to gather to this point suggest that his neural implants are, by far, more advanced than anything we’ve ever been able to construct, and that’s saying nothing about the other changes they’ve made to him.” This did not sit well with Akitesh at all. She had avoided telling the captain about what she had guessed regarding those implants, and the course of this conversation had drifted uncomfortably close to information she was unwilling to share with any krin, regardless of what side he was on. However, she couldn’t just ignore him, for fear of raising his suspicions. “...You have a good point. I will see what I can do.” “Thank you, Priestess.” The rest of the journey passed in relative silence. Every so often they would spot a soldier or a servant, but no one stopped the small group before they reached the same meeting room they had met the White Queen in yesterday. The soldier that had been leading them up until this point turned, before giving a curt nod of his head and gesturing with a single hoof towards the door. “They wait beyond. Be polite, am watching you.” “Thank you,” Akitesh said, right before the soldier pushed open the door, revealing the conference room beyond. When she saw who was waiting for her on the other side, though, she had to rub her eyes, just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Sitting at the table was not only the White Queen, but her sister, as well as the survivor of the crash. The three seemed to have been talking with each other in hushed tones, though they all stopped the moment the door opened, their eyes all locking onto Akitesh and Hazalk the moment they came into view. The two queens eyed the two with what Akitesh assumed was distrust, while the survivor looked more angry than anything else. At least, Akitesh thought it was anger. As similar as her and his species were, she couldn’t be certain of anything. This was especially true, since the survivor’s eyes were absolutely pitch black, hampering any attempt to read his emotion from facial expression alone. She was expecting anger, though. It was a completely normal reaction to what the survivor had been through, and Akitesh would have been worried if Alexander had reacted in any other way. What she hadn’t been expecting was the radical changes to his appearance since the last time they had spoken. Every bit of exposed skin on the human was discolored, either being a dark blue, or an ugly looking purple. One of his arms was missing as well, though there seemed to be an odd lump underneath the oversized white coat that he wore, suggesting that the arm wasn’t missing, so much as it was in some sort of sling, or brace. Akitesh wasn’t a part of the Arcanum caste’s medical division, nor did she have any experience with injuries outside her own species, but even she could tell that the human was hurt, and hurt badly. “What happened to you, Alexander?” she blurted out in Krin. “A little accident, followed by a misunderstanding. But that’s not really important,” he answered her, before he let out a sigh of frustration. “I… I believe you wanted to ask me something?” Akitesh easily saw that she wasn’t going to be able to get much more out of him about his injuries, so she put her concerns away for now, in favor of addressing the matter at hand. “Well, yes,” Akitesh said as she and Hazalk took their seats at the table. “I would like to have a look inside your mind.” The human clearly already knew this, based purely on how his expression hadn't changed in the slightest, which made Akitesh curious as to why he asked the question in the first place. Whatever his reasoning was was fated to remain a mystery, since instead of answering the unasked question, or indeed to even let Akitesh or Hazalk a chance to say anything else, the human simply leaned back, folded his arms, and fixed Akitesh with a look that could burn a hole through steel. “I have a couple of conditions before we go through this.” Akitesh felt her heart leap at this. Whatever the human wanted would be a tiny pittance compared to the information she could obtain. “Whatever it is, if it is within my power, I will give it to you,” she said, maybe a little too quickly. “First and foremost, she comes with,” Alexander said, pointing a single thumb towards the Dark Queen on his left. “Second, you change nothing you find there. Third, if you see something in there that doesn't directly relate to the krin traitors or their goals, you keep to yourself, and tell no one, understand?” “I would never-” Akitesh started to say, both shocked and disgusted at what the human was implying she might do, but she was stopped when she felt a single hand light on her shoulder. She quickly turned, her hurt and anger dying as she saw the clear, steady gaze that the krin captain was leveling at her. “Don't try and explain yourself. Just agree to his terms.” “But it's against my highest oaths to-” “And he doesn't know that, nor does he care. He doesn't trust you, OR your power, and frankly, neither do I,” Hazalk said, cutting through the explanation she was about to muster. “He's terrified about letting ANYONE into his head, and who can blame him? His only experience with people messing with his brain ended with him becoming a living weapon and killing who knows how many people. I honestly never expected him to give permission, given how much has already happened, so just take the win, and accept his conditions.” Akitesh swallowed uncomfortably before she turned her attention back to the human. Alexander hadn't moved a muscle during the whole exchange, his eyes still boring into her with the fiery intensity of a thousand suns, silently judging her, despite any intention she might have or oath she might have taken. Finally, after a few seconds, she swallowed her pride, and lowered her head. “I fully accept your terms. Anything I see will stay with me until the day I die, and I will only look for that information that is relevant. Nothing will be changed, and you will be the same person as you were when we begin.” “Then you have my permission to look inside,” he said, his expression unchanging. He then turned towards the blue-colored queen. He didn’t say anything, just nodded once, before looking back to Akitesh. “W… Whenever you’re ready…” Akitesh stood up, before slowly maneuvering to where Alexander was sitting. She then lightly put a single thumb on his forehead, before looking him in the eye. “Just… relax. This won’t hurt, and it will be over before you-” “I don’t care. Just… just get this over with,” Alexander said, before closing his eyes and clenching his teeth. Akitesh nodded once, before closing her eyes, focusing her spirit, and delving into the human’s mind.