“Oof!” Twilight slammed into a horizontal wooden beam. Her gut took a sharp blow, and the beam snapped in half. She and her friends smashed through a few more before finally smashing into the ground below.
After a moment of silence, Spike queried, “Is everypony alright? Everypony here?”
“Sweetiebot, here!” Sweetiebot cried out in a singsong voice.
“I didn’t mean you! Ugh. Twilight, Fluttershy? You there?”
Twilight spat out a mouthful of dirt. She lay sprawled on her stomach and made no attempt to move. Weakly, she raised her hoof and said, “Here…”
“H-here…” Trembling all over, Fluttershy clung to her butterfly-marked cube. She buried her face in her hooves and muttered, “I can’t take this… So very dark…”
The only light in the darkness was that of Spike and Sweetiebot’s glowing eyes. After finding the portal gun beside her, Twilight sifted through the darkness with those glowing orbs as her guide, and used her magic to pick up her two robot friends. Then she followed the sound of Fluttershy’s whimpering and pulled the pegasus off the ground.
“Where are we?” Spike asked.
“P-Probably an older part of the facility…” Fluttershy said. “They were supposed to be sealed off deep underground, but…”
“Well, if we’re going to get out of here, first we’ll have to find a way to turn on the power so we can see where we’re going,” Spike said.
Careful not to get separated, they stumbled at random through the dark for a short time.
“Oh my, oh my! It’s so dark! So very dark!” Nervous as a ghost, Fluttershy trembled and her teeth chattered. She kept one hoof on Twilight at all times to keep from getting separated as they walked along the scaffolding.
“Don’t worry. Think I’ve got a flashlight feature. But man! Ha ha! Didn’t you say you’ve been scurrying around in here for years? Shouldn’t you be used to it by n- AHHH!” Spike managed to startle himself and Fluttershy when, upon activating his flashlight feature, a beam of light shot out of his eye. “I totally meant to do that!”
“EEEK!” Fluttershy dropped to the ground and wrapped her hooves around Twilight’s leg. She calmed down a bit when Twilight petted her head, and upon seeing that they now had a bit of illumination. “D-Don’t do that!” she hissed at Spike. “And for your information, no one ever gets used to walking around in the dark, no matter how long you’ve been doing it! And besides, I try to stick to the areas that still have power…” With an embarrassed look, Fluttershy ran her hoof through her mane a few times.
“Right, right, of course!” Spike was still a little worked up, and not really paying attention. “But the important thing is now we’ve got light, so we can find our way back up to the surface and escape this place.”
With Spike lighting the way, and Twilight leading the way, their band made their way to a building up ahead. After sifting through the rundown rooms and broken gadgetry, they managed to find a control room. Fluttershy flipped a switch to turn on the power, and some flickering lights provided some much needed illumination. As a side effect, the power also activated some loud pumps and whirring machines. The noise gave Fluttershy a fright, and she ran out into a waiting room. Twilight followed after her. The place had a dusty reception desk and a pair of red velvet couches.
“Oooh!” Twilight looked up and beheld a big, gilded portrait about twice her size. Displayed on the portrait was an imposing, though obviously aged stallion with a confident grin. Behind him, holding a clipboard, was a pink mare with cotton candy hair. The mare was wearing a lab coat and glasses, and her smile was radiating optimism and positivity.
Fluttershy looked up from where she was cowering under the couch and followed Twilight’s gaze. “That’s the founder of Aperhoof Science, Filthy Rich. And that other pony is Director Pinkamena Pie, though she was just his assistant when this portrait was made. When Filthy Rich passed on the facility to Pinkamena, she took a more… festive approach to running the place... Lots of parties and such. And she was always popping out of nowhere and surprising me. I didn’t like that… Plus, she was always fussing over me even though I’m a year older than her…” Fluttershy growled and took on a bitter tone as she muttered, “And she still wouldn’t let me bring my pet bunny to Bring Your Daughter to Work Day… Just because he was a bunny… and male…”
“Um, Fluttershy?” Spike said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine!” Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Anyway, like I was saying, Pinkamena is in charge now. Well, she was in charge. I haven’t seen her since... Well, you know. I haven’t seen anypony since then, actually. She probably got every last one of them. Oh my, I hope that doesn’t mean I’m in charge! Er, wait… I suppose she’s in charge, so there’s no need to worry. Well, actually, her being in charge is very worrisome, since she’ll most likely capture us and get rid of us, because she’s a crazy, powerful, maniacal artificial intelligence with all the resources in the facility under her control, and we have to go through her in order to get out of here. Now that I think about it, we should just stay down here.”
As Fluttershy rambled, Twilight wandered over to read a sign on a door that read: “Elevator to Surface”. Through the glass windows on the door, an old, velvet-cushion furnished elevator was visible.
“Look at that!” Spike crowed. “You’ve done it, Twilight! An elevator! Look at that, the sign even says it goes to the surface! You’re brilliant! Now we can get out of here!”
“Um, I don’t think we should go…” Fluttershy said, speaking softly. While staring at the ground, she rubbed her hooves together. “She’s still up there… and she’s dangerous.”
“Welcome ponies, to our state of the art facility!” a cheerful voice announced over a speaker system. “I’m Pinkie Pie, Filthy Rich’s number one assistant and the most amazingly fun party pony around, and I’ll be your guide for today!”
“Eeh!” Fluttershy ducked back under the sofa. She peeked out a moment. “I-Is that Director Pinkamena? Is she really around?”
“Alright, medal-winning athletes, royal guards, interdimensional wizards, here’s the dealio: you’re here to help us test out some of our super neat sciency stuff, because we need the best of the best for our test subjects. So grab an Aperhoof Science Portal Device, head on through those doors, and let’s get to testing!”
“… I think it’s a recording?” Fluttershy crawled out from her hiding spot. “Huh. I guess it used to play when test subjects were testing.”
Twilight gasped. “Testing!” She clapped her hooves and cheered, and when a doorway opened on the left side of the room, she dashed right on in.
“Ah, Twilight, but the elevator to the surface is-” Seeing it was no use, Spike sighed. “There’s just no stopping her.”
Fluttershy tiptoed after Twilight. “Taking the long way back up is fine by me. I’m in no rush to face her.”
The test chamber they entered was a wide open room, with a cement floor and no walls, giving a view of an underground lake below. Tubes about the place were dripping a blue goo onto the ground.
“Okeydokey lokey!” Pinkamena said. “This test is all about our blue goo! What? Propulsion gel? Alright, whatever floats your boat! Anyhoo, it’s real bouncy and fun! And I know it looks yummy, but don’t eat it! Trust me, I learned that the hard way! Bleh-eh! All that rumbling and churning, I’m getting a tummy ache just thinking about it! Huh…That makes me hungry. Somepony, refill my candy bowl! This thing is not supposed to be empty, ever!”
“Oh my…” Fluttershy took a glance at the room and took in the test, with its x’s painted all over the place, blue gel dripping out of pipes, and the exit put on a raised platform. “Are you sure you can handle this, Twilight?”
“Woohoo! Testing!” Beaming brilliantly, Twilight raised her portal gun over her head and cheered. So eager was she, that she dove right into the test, and used portals to paint the room in propulsion gel.
“Guess we should have known, huh?” Fluttershy said to her Fluttercube.
“Yeah, I don’t think anything is going to deter Twilight from testing…” Spike replied. He, Twilight, and Sweetiebot were already at the exit, after having been propelled by the gel about twenty feet into the air. Fluttershy put her cube on her back and flew up to join them.
“You’re doing a super job, test subject!” Pinkamena declared. “Keep it up!”
“Yay!”
By now Twilight was a testing pro, and she tore right through the old test chambers and their gel based puzzles. Twilight was so good, that Spike and Fluttershy didn’t even have to weigh in. They didn’t get a chance to, actually, with the speed at which Twilight solved puzzles. Spike was beginning to wonder whether she really had brain damage. He didn’t have to wonder about the lazy eye though, because she definitely had that.
After getting through a batch of tests, they took a short reprieve to explore the facility a bit. They walked along some steel girder platforms, and Twilight shot portals around to get to far-off areas.
As they went, they passed by a set of three sealed doors. They caught Twilight’s eye because they had words written on them; mainly, a big fat “Vitrified” in yellow paint, but also some warning notes taped to the doors. Naturally, and in spite of Spike’s whining and moaning, Twilight stopped to read everything. She wore a look of intense concentration as her good eye skimmed the contents of the notes. But they were mostly just cryptic warnings about cosmic spallation, without much details, so Twilight was left feeling a little disappointed. But she cheered up when she remembered Fluttershy was with them. With a big smile, Twilight looked to the former Aperhoof scientist and stomped her hoof against one of the metal doors.
“Oh? You want to know about those? Well…” Fluttershy hesitated a moment. Her voice trembled nervously as she quickly explained, “They’re old experiments that had to be sealed up. Nothing interesting, nothing you need to know about. Shall we move on?”
Still smiling, Twilight stomped her hoof against the door again.
“Stop it!” Fluttershy hissed. She chewed on her hoof. “Oh no! What if one of those clones is still around?!”
“Clones? What are you talking about?” Spike asked.
Fluttershy sighed. She pointed her hoof at the door. “That chamber is one of the ones used for the Alicorn Shift Project. Probably one of our most horrible ones… I tried to tell them that it was mean, and not nice at all to treat clones like that, but nopony listens to me, and-” Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Er, anyway, they were trying to make Sunset Shimmer into the most powerful Alicorn ever. The plan was to have her defeat twenty thousand clones of Lyra and Minuette, two of our researchers. All those battles were supposed to help Sunset evolve into an Alicorn. But as I recall, the project was deemed a failure after an earth pony punched Sunset in the face. Not sure how she got through Sunset’s magical defenses, but it sure proved to those scientists that Sunset wasn’t as powerful as they’d thought, and they froze the project as a result…”
“Whoa… That’s pretty interesting, actually,” Spike said.
“Um, yeah…” With a fearful gaze, Fluttershy cast looks about into the darkness. “Gosh, I sure hope none of those Lyra clones are still around… They could be awful mad… Or Sunset Shimmer… She became really unstable after getting humiliated like that, and she was already really mean before… And come to think of it, I wouldn’t want to run into the original Lyra or that earth pony with the swirly pink and pigment blue mane… They were both so mad…”
Giddy from the excitement of learning, Twilight clapped her hooves together. Then she hopped over to the next vitrified door in the row and knocked on the door.
“That one?” Fluttershy squinted at the door and checked the identification number. “Oh, this room houses the RD-70s, also known as Dashinators. They were going to be sent back in time to stop… whatever it is that’s happening up there. They’re equipped with advanced weaponry and advanced friend-making capabilities. Nothing can stop them. Absolutely invincible.”
“But they’re still in there, right? Why weren’t they ever sent out?” Spike asked.
“Oh, they never managed to make a working time machine.” Fluttershy waved her hoof dismissively.
Finally, they came to the last door in the row, which had a sign on it that read “You cannot have a nightmare if you never dream”. Twilight was brimming with excitement as she waited for Fluttershy to explain it.
Letting out a sigh, Fluttershy said, “That one was a social experiment that Director Pinkamena put Starlight Glimmer in charge of. Under Starlight’s guidance, they took a bunch of volunteer ponies and built a town where everypony was equal. I don’t actually know how it turned out. It was going great at first; too great, in fact. Starlight wanted to expand out and spread her economic and social theories to the rest of the world. We tried telling her we didn’t have enough data yet, but she kind of went crazy with power. The Director said the only way to contain them was to build a maze around their settlement so they wouldn’t be able to find the chamber entrance, and to seal the vault for good measure. I guess for all we know, that experiment might still be going on in there…” With a sad look, Fluttershy sighed. “Oh, those poor volunteers didn’t know what they were signing on for…”
“Yay!” Looking jubilant, Twilight clapped her hooves.
Fluttershy cast anxious looks all about. “Alright, story time over. Can we get out of here, please?”
“Hold on a second...” Spike said. “Look, Twilight! I think I see more doors over there!”
“Ooh!”
“No more doors!” Fluttershy yelled. Seeing how Twilight balked, Fluttershy got a little flustered. “Oh, I’m sorry for yelling… But we should get back to those tests, don’t you think?”
“Yay!”
They took the elevator up to the next floor expecting to find more tests, but instead Pinkie thanked them for their participation in Aperhoof Enrichment Center Activities. After passing through an exit room that lacked any working exits, they found themselves in another lobby. This one had a big portrait of Pinkamena. She wore a big, open-mouthed grin, and was arrayed in her lab coat once again. The frame had the words “Director Pinkamena” written on the bottom part. A smaller portrait next to Pinkamena’s showed Filthy Rich, presumably retired, exploring the arctic waters at the helm of an icebreaker ship. They were soon greeted by the sound of confetti and party streamers coming from the intercom system.
“Welcome, ponies!” Pinkamena cried out over the intercoms. “As you might have heard, Filthy Rich put me in charge of the facility! That means it’s time to party! Yep, I’m going to be running things a little differently from now on. And you know, I was just thinking and I asked myself, ‘Pinkie, why should athletes and wizards have all the fun testing? And why should they be the only ponies to get congratulatory parties and cake?’ So that’s why I’ve opened up testing to all Aperhoof employees! We’re going to have a blast doing science together! Hee hee hee! So head on in to the chamber! And don’t worry: these prerecorded messages will guide you as you test! You’re welcome, everypony!”
Fluttershy, with a nervous mien, looked toward the door that opened. “I guess this is the part of the facility that was used when Pinkamena first became director. Which means these tests are from then too… I don’t know if we should…”
“Testing!”
Twilight dove right into the testing chamber. With a long sigh, Fluttershy followed after her.
As Twilight tested, Fluttershy was pretty anxious and jumpy. They got through the first couple of tests without incident, using the blue propulsion gel and the orange acceleration gel, but then they reached a chamber that had a myriad of platforms and ramps suspended in the air, with the obvious solution being one had to use the portal gun and gels to hurtle herself across the gaps. The gaps which led to a fifty foot drop into murky black water.
“Oh my!” Fluttershy’s legs began to tremble. “I don’t know about this test… It looks really dangerous. And Director Pinkamena wasn’t known for having a good safety record…”
As if in response to Fluttershy’s concerns, Director Pinkamena’s voice boomed through the chamber: “Some of the lab boys and girls say this next test is too dangerous. Can you believe that?! Those silly fuddy-duddies don’t know what they’re talking about! I mean, sure, they’ve got degrees in all sorts of stuff, like anthropology and geometry and whatever, but you know what I have a degree in? Fun! A PhD, in fact! That’s the kind of degree you only get from studying fun your whole life! And that’s why I’m the one in charge, and why I know this test is one thousand percent ‘really fun’! So let’s get this party started!”
Fluttershy narrowed her eyes and cast an annoyed look up at the metal pole where the speakers were mounted. She glanced worriedly at Twilight. “Look, if it looks too dangerous, you shouldn’t-”
“Cake!” Twilight declared before diving into the test.
“I think she means, ‘piece of cake’,” Spike clarified. “Either that, or she really thinks she’s going to get cake like the director said.” Chuckling, Spike uttered, “Sorry, but it’s just a recording, Twilight… Just a recording…”
Fluttershy’s anxiety rose every moment she watched Twilight going about the test. “Oh, do you think she’ll be alright?” she asked her Fluttercube. After a moment of silence, she said, “I know, I know. I shouldn’t worry so much. And you’re right: Twilight knows what she’s doing! She’s solved many dangerous tests already and- OH NO! Twilight!” Fluttershy gasped when she saw Twilight flying at high speed through the air, over the moat below. But there was nothing to worry about: she bounced off of some propulsion gel and landed safely at the test’s exit. Fluttershy wiped the sweat from her brow and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness!”
After only a few more of Pinkamena’s tests, they made it to the end and were once more congratulated on their efforts by the prerecording of Pinkamena: “Good work on that testing, everypony! Lots of sciency stuff getting accomplished here! Now head on into the next room to get debriefed, and then that you’ll get that congratulatory party, with cake! And once you’re done partying, the results of your testing should be available.”
“Oh, thank goodness…” Fluttershy said. “And I think there should be an elevator back to the surface in there...”
Walking over the canopy of forms for grief counseling and party opt-out requests, they passed through the exit office, but before they could find the exit elevator, they passed by more vitrified chambers, and Sweetiebot suddenly spoke: “I know this place…”
Twilight looked to the door, but the sign there only said “Don’t make eye contact”, so with an expectant gaze she turned to Fluttershy.
“Oh my…” Fluttershy’s eyes grew sad. “This chamber is where the Sweetiebots were originally designed and created. You see, their creator…” Fluttershy took a deep breath. “She lost her little sister, and she… Well, she was grieving, and maybe she wasn’t in her right mind when she made the Sweetiebots in her sister’s likeness. And she played with them and dressed them up… They didn’t have much use to anypony else, so somepony weaponized them. Their repurposing made them a tad eccentric, like saying cutesy stuff while they attack.”
“So she went mad with grief, huh? I wonder if this story is related to that other one about the caretaker…” Spike looked to Sweetiebot. “I’ll bet Sweetiebot must be feeling sad, seeing this place again...”
Sweetiebot deployed her cannons and opened fire on the door, but since Fluttershy had disarmed her, the cannons only made clicking noises.
“She’s probably not one of the originals that was made here…” Fluttershy said.
“But she said she remembers this place!” Spike pointed out.
“Yes, but they initialize all new Sweetiebots with the memories of the originals, so…”
“You think I can get my Cutie Mark from hitting this door?” Sweetiebot asked, as she continued clicking her useless cannon triggers.
“Ugh, I give up,” Spike said. “Let’s just go.”