//------------------------------// // Anypony else but you? // Story: Hello? // by Prince Polaris //------------------------------// As Silver walked into Lab 10, the computer screen switched to the picture of the eyes, though they looked smoother and less odd now. A camera zoomed in on him, actually focusing this time. "Twilight...?" The voice quietly asked, sounding less weak than it had before. The voice knew that it wasn't the princess, but... maybe she was with this stallion? She wanted her friend, so she could ask what had happened. And from the look on the stallion's face, she could already tell something was up. Silver nervously smiled, saying, "I... she's... not here right now" as he looked at the rest of the room. Silver walked further into the room, wondering what was behind the large machines on either side of the room. And he wished he hasn't. On the left side, there was actually something good. he could see the core! It had to be. It was a cylindrical metal tube, locked inside of a machine that seemed to be interacting with it. But on the other side... something just as awful as he had seen in Lab 9. Another body, this one smaller. he couldn't tell who it was under the wires... it was a pegasus, fur a faded yellow, mane looked pink. Wait. That was Fluttershy. Twilight was in the other room. This is where they had gone missing to! They were both in this bunker! But who was in the machine? With an expression that hinted at a lot of different emotions, Silver backed up to look at the TV, and in a soft voice, he asked, "Who are you?" She didn't say anything. Silver began to worry about the mare, and he had started to look around at the imposing amount of electronics when she finally said, "F.. Fluttershy" In a soft voice. Silver's eyes widened, and in a soft tone, he said, "You... you're Fluttershy? The element of Kindness?" For a moment, he was kind of assuming Twilight had been the one in the computer, but he was proven wrong. "I... yes, what happened to me?" She asked quietly. She sounded scared, and it hurt Silver's heart to hear it. "I-I don't know, it's... it's _such_ a long story" He said. "Could you tell me?" She asked, the tone of her voice unreadable. When he didn't say anything, she said, in a tone that was ever-so-slightly more firm, "I don't know much about your life beyond these walls..." Silver hesitated again, but she was right. And if she wanted to know about him, well, he wasn't going to deny her. Why would he? He slowly sat down against a machine, groaning as he felt the aches in his limbs. "I uh... well, it's the year 2207, and boy, have things gone south". As Silver retold everything to the reawakened mare, hours melted away like it was nothing. At times he complained, at times he sounded excited, and the first time he heard a giggle from the digitized mare was when he admitted to actually saying "Oh Celestia" to the mare herself. When Silver got up to the current time, he forced himself to tell Fluttershy about the two bodies. Oddly, she didn't seem too concerned. Well, not with her own. She was clearly saddened by what happened to Twilight, but in her words, "I had tried to tell her..." After he had finished, Silver was really feeling the exhaustion settle in. The computer mare stubbornly told him to take a nap, and after some halfhearted resistance, he gave in. The next day, very little changed in the old bunker. When Silver woke up, he only left the room to snag some water, and then it was back to the mare he was rapidly becoming friends with. The two ponies actually managed to spend pretty much the entire day talking to each other! Fluttershy was happy to listen to Silver talk about his life, but Silver loved hearing about Fluttershy's adventures. After all, she was one of the elements of harmony! She was there when Luna was turned, she was friends with Discord, she fought the storm king and queen chrysalis and so much more... For Fluttershy, it was one of the best things he could have done. Being able to journey down the roads of her life did a lot to help keep Fluttershy's memory stable, and with her computerized, temporary state of living, it was important that she stay intact. As she steadily learned how the computer functioned from the inside, she was able to do more than display her eyes on screen, she was able to construct crude likenesses of herself to talk to Silver with, standing or floating in blocky, unfinished landscapes. Eventually though, the talk turned back to their situation. Fluttershy told Silver that the core was attached to her, but she couldn't tell how. She also couldn't feel the body resting in the next room, and it was Silver that reasoned that Twilight probably meant to put Fluttershy in that body. She'd gotten halfway there, but something clearly went wrong. But what? Silver barely knew how computers worked, and he knew he had been extremely lucky so far that all he had needed to do was turn things on to get as far as he had. After they both did their best to figure out how the machines worked, they decided that he would go talk to Celestia again, and tell her about everything. So, back Silver went, trotting down the hallway. Silver had been extremely lucky so far in his journey, but it was about to run out, and in one of the worst ways. The Equestria outside of the bunker was still a wreck, and it had decided it was time for another earthquake. Thankfully, Silver was flying with it struck, but it was incredibly obvious to him that the area he was in was experiencing a bad earthquake. The ground began to shudder, the lights began to flicker, and Silver found himself dodging plastic light covers and dislodged lightbulbs as the main room of the bunker began to fall in on itself! Silver just barely escaped the cave-in, the stallion hiding in the far corner of the room as he watched rocks tumble down from the fallen ceiling. It was a disaster. The bunker had been split in two, and he was cut off from both the exit and Fluttershy. He could just barely slip into the hall that led to the Power room from the looks of it, but at the moment, he decided that he needed to get to the phone. Thankfully, the Office room was safe, other than a few fallen lights. And hey, the door power got cut off! So at least it was open, to expose the massive pile of rocks on the other side. And in Canterlot, the phone began to ring. The pony watching the phone picked it up right away, but instead of answering, Silver heard them shouting orders to notify Celestia. Then, they said, "Hello?" Silver let out a shaky sigh, saying, "H-Hey, I've got trouble... half the place just caved in, and I can't get anywhere near the exit now" The stallion hissed a curse, and he hadn't been quiet enough for Silver not to hear it. "Yeah, you said it" He muttered. The other guard tried to be encouraging, saying, "Well, from what I hear, your rescue team's made it to Centria". "Well, that's good" Silver chirped. "They oughta be able to dig through to-" he had started to say, but they were both interrupted by a fwoosh of yellow magic, as Celestia teleported in to get the phone. The guard quickly told her what was going on, and then she spoke into the phone herself, saying, "Silver, are you okay?" "Somehow, I am" The pegasus said, smiling a little bit. "I guess I've got uh, news for you.. I um... I found Twilight, and Fluttershy's body is here too, but..." "But?" Said Celestia quietly. She hated to rush him, but she needed to know what happened. "I.. I don't know how to put it princess, but Fluttershy, she's... she's in these machines, a uh, a computer, I've been talking to her about all sorts of stuff and it's gotta be the actual pony" He said. before the princess could speak, he said, "Oh! She said to tell you that she's sorry about your lemon birthday cake, I guess cause it's something you would understand?" "She is the one who ate my-" the princess began to say, before she broke out in a laugh at the absurdity of finding out the culprit of such a small theft centuries after it had happened. "I can't believe it, Twilight did it... but I guess it really did do her in at the end, didn't it" The princess said, slipping back into her melancholy tone. "That's not all... the uh, the power thing, it's here, and there's also some sort of... like a robot body in the other lab? Fluttershy says they must have something to do with her, but I don't know how to... I think I'd kill her if I just took out the core, wouldn't I?" He asked softly. Celestia wished she had an answer. "I don't know, Silver" She said. "Did you try looking at her notes? She used to write down pretty much every step of a spell, then act them all out" Silver sighed, then said, "Well, no, there are a ton of notes though... I just don't really know what they mean, but if that's what I have to do..." "I'm afraid it is, Silver" She said softly. "Can you still reach her after the cave-in?" "I don't think I can, it's almost covered the power room hallway and the hallway for her lab is way behind it" Silver said, sending dread creeping down the spines of both ponies. "Well, Silver," Celestia said, "You've awakened her again, and I'm sure that if you've got this far, you can save her and everypony else, too" "I-I sure hope so..." Silver said, his nervousness clear in his voice. "At least the power's still on, and I'm not hurt" "That's the spirit!" Chirped the princess. "She depends on you, and so do we... and I promise you, if you manage to pull all of this off, I've already got you a seat as one of the highest ranking ponies on the Twilight" She said. "Oh dear, I don't know if I'm-" he began to say, but she cut him off with "Don't you even try" Silver wasn't about to argue with Celestia herself, so he sighed, wearing a bit of a smile. "All right... and hey, do you think maybe you could get a computery pony on the phone so I.... oh no" He said softly. Celestia was immediately worried, asking, "What? Silver?" As she sat up, holding tight onto the phone. She didn't get much of an answer, but she felt the dull rumbles under her hooves. Another damned earthquake, and from the sounds on the phone, it was close to Silver. His voice broke through the rumbling sound, And he sounded panicked as he said, "Oh no, oh no, it's all-" Then, the phone clattered to the ground, hanging from its cord. It was still on though, and Celestia could hear falling stone and shattering glass, and Silver yelling something in the distance. And then, he was drowned out by the sound of twisting metal and crashing stone. The sound only went on for a moment before it was abruptly cut off, replaced with the annoying "off the hook" beep that stereotypically would mean that the other pony hung up. She didn't care in the moment, but Celestia nearly made one of the guards outside her door faint with the force with which she threw the plastic phone through one of the heavy doors. ✩｡:*•.──────────.•*:｡✩ Getting to Centria had not been easy. The crew of Underworld guards had just stopped their train when the first earthquake hit, and the second one hit when they had been working on getting towards the embassy. The first one had been awful, they thought the train might derail, and Centria had collapsed even further as they watched the ground shake. The second one was much worse, though. This time, it shook free stalagtites from the ceiling of the cavern, and the five-pony crew found themselves sprinting for the Embassy as house-sized spikes of rock slammed into the ground around them. Thankfully though, none of them were hurt. Getting into the embassy was easy enough, and all it took was some equipment borrowed from some firefighters to shove open the heavy metal doors that locked away the researh station. Inside, the cavern was a wreck. Whatever buildings hadn't collapsed were flat against the ground, and a large chunk of rock had broken free from the left side of the cavern, collapsing down along with some of the roof. However, they could see the glow from the everflame orbs at the rear. The only issue was that when they got to the entrance to Sparkle Labs, they found nothing but a wall of collapsed rock. They were prepared for it, they had shovels and picks, but it would be a long time before they managed to actually get far into the Bunker. ✩｡:*•.──────────.•*:｡✩ See, the rescue party would have to excavate pretty much all of the main room to get anywhere. The first collapse had caved in half of the main hall, and the second collapse took away the entire thing. Administration had survived, entombed away in the stone, but the offices were done for. All that was left were the server rooms, and about half of the labs. The server rooms were holding on mainly because they were more fortified than the other parts of the bunker. After all, they were bigger rooms, and the server racks throughout the rooms did a good job of distributing weight. A lot of Sparkle labs had shifted around, in ways both minor and extreme. When the second earthquake hit, Silver had fled into the first row of labs, and he was incredibly impressed that the lights were still on. The walls were cracked in multiple spots, he could hear water dripping somewhere, and the awful chemicals in Lab 16 had been shaken out into the hall. Ew. Silver didn't want to get anywhere near it. Silver didn't even want to try getting out to the main hall, so he had to think of something else. And the cracks in the wall looked interesting! After some flying up and down the hall, Silver decided on which crack looked the most promising. He could see into server room two, and after shoving one of the bricks out of the way, he could fit a hoof through! it was slow, difficult work, but Silver eventually managed to pull a big enough chunk of bricks out of the hole, and he squeezed through into Server room 2. From there, it was easy to walk through into server room 1, where he desperately hoped he could find a way to get into the other hall. And annoyingly, there was nothing. However, Silver happened to notice that one of the computers in the server room looked different than the others- its screen was black, with white text on it. Like fluttershy did! Silver gasped, and he walked over to the machine, sitting down in front of it. And he started to type. "fluttershy?" "Silver! Is this you?" "yes! im in server room 2 and i need to figure out how to get through the wall" "Why do you need to go through the wall? Is the normal way blocked off?" "yeah and i managed to get this far through a crack in the wall" "What if you went through the Ceiling? I don't know about down here, but I remember that lights like these used to be in a false ceiling that was below the real one" "you think i can do that? heck ill try it" "Just be careful, Silver, I don't want to lose you" Reading those words sent a shudder through Silver. A good kind of shudder. The kind that sent warmth through a pony's chest, and stuck a smile on their face. It was strange, but Silver really liked Fluttershy. He had gotten closer to Fluttershy in just a day of talking to her than he had with ponies he had spent most of his life with, and as he watched the computer screen, he vowed to do everything he could to save the mare. "i will, im not letting either of us get stuck down here" Fluttershy took in his words, while Silver got up from the computer and got ready. Interestingly, she felt similar feelings. She felt them. There wasn't the physical reaction, sure, but Fluttershy was quite attached to the little Underworld guard. After all, he was the first pony she had seen ever since Twilight carried her there so long ago. And while some ponies would have just grabbed the core and left without ever realizing that they would have killed her in the process, Silver hadn't even made a mention of the concept. Still, if it came to it... he had told her how many ponies depended on that thing. And if she had to, she would tell him to take it, even if it meant she wouldn't be coming along. She had lived a long enough life, after all. Getting into the ceiling of the Server room was hard, but it wasn't too bad. He had climbed one of the server racks to reach the lights, and then all he had to do was remove one of the light covers, then the lights, then he shoved the light housing out of the hole it was mounted in. With that done, he discovered an area above the bunker, a crawlspace with just enough room for a pony to crawl around and work on the wiring for the bunker's lights if need be. He could look out over everything that hadn't collapsed, and he found it kind of interesting that there were lots of brick support beams reaching up into the stone ceiling. Made sense, and it seemed to prevent at least some collapses. Silver crawled his way towards the general location of where he thought Fluttershy was, and he pulled away one of the lights. Silver happened to pull out one of the lights overtop of Lab 9, and it was right above one of the tables. "As good a spot as any" He muttered, as he carefully stuck his back legs through the hole. He jumped down onto the table, landing with a grunt as he sent a few books tumbling. Silver was reminded of Twilight as he looked down at her body, and his ears went down again as he thought of her fate. But this time, he noticed a piece of paper next to one of her hooves. And he decided to pick it up. "I'm sorry It wasn't supposed to happen this way I couldn't lose someone else If I don't make it, you have to transfer her from the machine to the other-" It wasn't a very happy note to find, but it gave him a hint. The other what? Other parts of the machine? So, like, the body? Silver held onto the note, and he walked out into the hall, then over to Lab 10. Both Silver and the fluttershy on screen gave matching grins to each other as he walked in, and she beat him to speaking as she said "There you are!" Silver nodded, saying, "Your plan worked! And I think I know where to start looking for what to do..." He said, looking at the note he held, then the machines filling the room.