May 16th, 2099.
It had been years since Sparkle Labs had closed down. Well, since it had closed down to everypony else. With a flash of her teleportation, Twilight appeared in Lab 8, like she did every time. Except this time, she had somepony on her back. It had been a long, long time since Fluttershy was able to stand under her own power, so she was laid on Twilight's back, eyes closed. It was exhausting simply to process light and sound, so she spent a lot of her time in a sort of half-sleep, letting the world slip by.
Twilight wasn't having it. She didn't care what Celestia told her. She didn't care what Luna told her. She didn't care what Polaris told her. Her Alicorn body was a curse to her, a curse that forced her to stand around, smiling like the princess she was supposed to be as her friends and family were washed away by time, taken away from her. Fluttershy was all she had left out of her group of friends. Rainbow Dash. Applejack. Rarity. Pinkie Pie. Four agonizing funerals. Four exhausting sets of meetings, ensuring that the homes of her old friends would stay preserved.
She wasn't doing it again. Tears splashed onto the barely-awake Pegasus below her as she laid her down on a padded little bed, and the yellow mare opened her mouth to speak. "Twilight..." She said, her voice raspy, but still carrying the signature tone that made it clear she was still her friend. The princess froze at the word, giving her time to speak. "It's okay, Twilight..." She said, offering a weak smile up to the princess, a smile that did nothing but shove the spike of terror that seemed to fuel Twilight these days deeper into her. She didn't know what to say. "I-I just want to try something" She stammered, resting a helmet with wires and antennas on Fluttershy's head with as much care as she could. "I'll just have another nap" Fluttershy quietly said, her eyes closing once more.
It would be the last time her body spoke.
The machine was simple. Twilight's breakthrough in energy production sat in the corner, wired up to the computers and machines that were now prepared around her friend. She would rip her friend's weary soul from her body, and trap it within the artifact. Then, it was a simple matter of transferring her to the new body she had built. Everything was ready. The ship was ready, the machine was ready, her friend was ready.
But Twilight wasn't.
The machine was built with the help of old DarkRock textbooks. A pony's magic could be pumped through a machine, and from there a spell be generated, and amplified. A similar spell would later be used for Equestria's other SuperFreighters, even. It was easy to design everything, and Twilight was the princess of magic! Sure, Celestia and Luna and Starswirl and even Polaris had told her that it wouldn't work, but she was the princess of magic. Yes, the two sisters had experience. Yes, starswirl was the only other pony who could craft spells to the same extent as her. Yes, Polaris was one of the few ponies alive to figure out how to live in harmony with something as horrible as Dark Magic.
But Twilight was too stubborn to listen to any of them. She set the machine into motion, and it began to hum and whir. She walked into Lab 9, where the most important of her notes were. She'd need them for the procedure, and she could feel the magic begin to drain from her as she walked into the room. No matter, she could handle it. Twilight picked up the proper paper, and then the elaborate setup of machinery set itself into motion. And she wasn't ready. The mare gasped in pain as her horn suddenly lit up brightly with magic, magic that was being drawn out of her to power the machines. Through the pain and the noise, she could hear a quiet little whimper from Fluttershy in the other room, but she didn't hear any noises to indicate an error.
Twilight felt her legs give out, and she shuddered as she realized how weak she felt. it wasn't a good sign. Spells like this would take everything from a pony, starting with their magic. Then, it would sap their life force itself, and their soul along with it. Tirek used similar types of sorcery, but he always stopped after taking away the magic from a pony. If he had known the full extent of what he could have done, thinga may have gone differently. But was it supposed to be so severe? Did it really need this much magic?
Panic blossomed within Twilight as she realized what might happen. Anger rushed through her veins as she was forced to finally confront the possible problems in her plans, mainly the one she was experiencing. She grabbed paper, a pen, and she began to write on it with a hoof, gritting her teeth to withstand the pain. But even that became too hard within a minute. The mare collapsed fully on the floor, wincing with pain as she felt her senses fading.
The moment before everything went black, she heard the machine switch noises. It had finished its main task! She had done it! But it was too late, she was already gone. Twilight tried desperately to hold on, but she simply couldn't. She had fallen halfway into a black hole, and the only route left was sinking all the way into it. The machine didn't care, of course. It had finished the main task, so when the fuel it was getting from Twilight ran out, it simply swapped over to the Bunker's power. It was a little bit of a strain, but everything that required actual magic to perform had been finished. The lights began to flicker a little, and some of the servers started to struggle for power.
And then, it finished. And everything went quiet. Nothing but the sound of fans filled the air in the bunker, and the large screen in Lab 10 lit up, displaying jumbled text and odd splashes of color and static. It took only a day for the bunker's generators to run out of Fuel. Twilight had used the generators intead of the HydroElectric power, which couldn't be trusted as fully as the well-maintained gas generators.
And as the final generator finally stopped spinning, the lights in the entire facility shut off. Servers died, the main door began to slowly sink open, and all sorts of machines stopped humming. And with them, a mare went to sleep.
✩｡:*•.──────────.•*:｡✩
Finally, it had stopped hurting. Twilight opened her eyes, eager to check on the machine that she built to save her close friend.
But this wasn't Sparkle Labs. From behind, she heard a voice. "Wh... Twilight? How did you get here?"
She turned around to look.
"M-Mom?"