//------------------------------// // The Fillydelphia Experiment // Story: Feeling Pinkie Keen - Extended Cut // by AdmiralSakai //------------------------------// (♫) Come morning, the hospital staff fitted Twilight with what they called a “dog’s wheelchair”- essentially the wheel-and-axle from a small cart, attached to her barrel with a padded wooden yoke. It kept the pressure off her bandaged left hindleg -as well as her perfectly functional right hindleg- and permitted her a sad parody of locomotion accomplished by more or less dragging herself around by her forelegs. There were enchanted versions of the things available that added some of their own motive power, of course, and could even levitate up stairs, but not in a town like Ponyville. After completing her many, many discharge papers, Twilight wheeled herself directly from the hospital to the train platform, and caught the 12PM dedicated to Fillydelphia Harbor. Once again, she rode first class -she needed the extra space to be able to lay on her side- and made use of the trip to write free of distractions. Her first task was to prepare a memo, officially directed at the naval yard’s government staff, but written in language she was sure Princess Luna would understand. It restated that she, Twilight Sparkle, had been given final control over the entire ‘onboarding’ project by Princess Celestia in her capacity as sole Exarch, and that Forward March and the other staff were technically her subordinates. It listed, for reference, all of the services the Lunars were currently being provided courtesy of the Imperial Republic and the Equestrian taxpayer. Then, it explained that it was Doctor Twilight Sparkle’s judgment that Luna’s full participation and support for any experiments relating to her newfound ‘prophetic’ abilities was absolutely essential for the continuance of the integration project. The memo did not explicitly state that, if Luna declined to participate, her loyal Night Guard would find themselves on the streets of Fillydelphia without a bit to their collective name instead of sitting for literacy classes and dining on roast oats, because that would be untrue. However, the implication was quite clear. If anypony found that difficult to believe, they’d have to ask Celestia herself to clarify -this project being run from the top levels of the Office of the Exarchy, after all. With Celestia out of the country, that currently meant going through either Kibitz, her personal secretary, or her Chief of Staff Raven Inkwell. Twilight knew both of those ponies personally, and most importantly knew neither was particularly fond of Princess Luna’s sudden intrusion into Canterlot affairs. As she signed the document, Twilight experienced a brief and unpleasant sensation of guilt. This was how ponies like Harshwhinny and Wind Rider were said to operate, not upstanding Academy types like herself. One might even go so far as to call what she was doing extortion. Then she remembered Fluttershy, shivering and looking over her shoulder in an empty bog in the middle of the night, and any trace of guilt immediately vanished. As Applejack might put it, what was good for the goose was good for the gander. Once that bureaucratic chore was dispensed with, she pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment and began considering hypotheses: Princess Luna can, in fact, identify images or structures that are symbolically meaningful to ponies. This would presumably be through some form of divination, perhaps cast unconsciously, or a sensory channel ordinary ponies lack; we can begin trying to explain the methods once we’ve determined the essential nature of the process. Princess Luna is able to ascertain the age of objects remotely, and thereby assess their provenance (the same methodological concerns as above apply). Princess Luna is using conventional divination methods (again, perhaps unconsciously, or at least without understanding the significance of what she’s doing) to scry through the access link we have set up to Froggy Bottom Bog. Princess Luna has been partially affected by her own memory spell, and is remembering information about the campsite without being aware of it. Princess Luna is suffering from some form of endogenous memory repression, not mediated by any mnemonic spell, and is remembering information about the campsite without being aware of it. Princess Luna is able to detect magical fields on a level far more sensitive -and discriminative- than any current instrumentation (c.f. thaumoperception in birds, conspiracy theories relating to ideopathic magical hypersensitivity and Maregellons Syndrome, etc.) She paused, tapping her quill against the underside of her muzzle for a while. Then she went ahead and added 7. Princess Luna remembers perfectly well everything she did in that valley, and is lying. She sipped her tea and watched the Fillydelphia suburbs blur past outside her window. This time, there was no honor guard waiting for her on the train platform, just Forward March. Twilight wasn’t sure if that was because she’d arrived during the daylight hours, because she’d arrived on such comparatively short notice, or simply because she was no longer honored. Probably some combination of all three. She didn’t particularly care. Twilight took a few foreleg-driven steps out onto the platform, wincing as the wheels strapped to her rear half bounced down the few centimeters of elevation from the floor of the car she was leaving. She unlatched her saddlebag, extracted the vial of diluted poppy tears they’d given her at the hospital, and took a quick gulp. The manufacturer had added a flavoring: something akin to cherries, as envisioned by somepony who might once have seen a photograph of the fruit in question, for a few seconds, many years ago. She quickly added the experience to the mental list she was maintaining of everything to thank Luna for once this was all over. Major Forward strode over, and for a second seemed about to extend a wing and physically help Twilight across the platform, but she settled for laughing nervously and telling the unicorn, “Hey. Wow, you… kind of look like shit.” They both started walking, slowly. “I got Spike’s letter, but… are you sure you want to go through with this? Because I’m not sure you want to go through with this.” Twilight nodded. “I want to go through with this. In fact, I think we should’ve done this a long time ago, back when Luna first started her… whole seer thing. We’ve been pretending it’s not a huge problem for way too long, and it’s past time we got to the bottom of it.” “What if there’s… not a bottom to get to?” Forward suggested, speaking slowly and carefully. “What if it just… is what it is?” They crossed the courtyard slowly and laboriously, in strained silence. There were far fewer Lunars out and about in broad daylight, which suited Twilight Sparkle just fine at the moment. She couldn’t tell if the mob at the front gate was any less expansive; if they’d been backed up five blocks versus three today, they would still have looked exactly the same from her vantage point. “Twilight, you know, I’m just… not sure it’s good for you or for Luna, long-term, to be effectively coercing her into participating in these tests of yours,” Forward finally said. “Forward, you know I hate having to pull rank on you…” “But you’re pulling rank on me.” Forward dipped her head downward. “I get it.” “Yeah. And…” Twilight scuffed at the ground with one foreleg, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “… I think I’m also going to need a place to stay for the next few days, so if you could maybe look into that, too…” “Yeah, I’ll… I’ll see what I can do. I think there’s some spare junior officers quarters still open, on the ground floor too, if you don’t mind sharing a wall with the medical staff. But… Twilight, I think it’d be better, for everypony, if I’m actually the one working on these experiments with Luna, and you stick behind the scenes to observe and direct.” Twilight stopped and closed her eyes. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to another face-to-face conversation with Princess Luna after everything that’d happened, and it was probably a good idea to make sure the experiments she’d be running were double-blinded anyway. “Deal.” Twilight sat in a dark little alcove lit only by the glow of several magic circles, watching the therapeutic psychomancer -whose name she wasn’t sure she had ever been told- fiddle with this and sketch out that. She understood the theory behind it all just enough to know that this was very powerful magic indeed, the sort of thing generally used in cases of total amnesia or deliberate memory-scrambling by malicious parties. Back in 1085, a leading mnemonic therapist at the Cloudsdale Clinic had taken to stabbing coworkers who’d made various imagined slights against her. She was detained several times over the course of six months, but had always gone to the trouble of planting ironclad alibis in the minds of patients, family members, and -in one spectacular case- the detective overseeing her own interrogation. Then an earlier version of this very spell had brought back full recollection of her tampering to three witnesses in as many hours. Twilight doubted that any first-century memory spell, no matter how sophisticated or far-reaching, could stand up against it. On the other side of a sheet of enchanted one-way glass, in a plain little room made of whitewashed brick, Forward March presented Princess Luna with the remains of ten different swords. Three were genuine Lunar weapons recovered from Froggy Bottom Bog, cleaned of any remaining soil. Two were genuine Lunar weapons recovered from other, distant sites by other archaeologists who had no relationship with Twilight or her project. They had also been freshly cleaned using the same methods. The remaining five were forgeries assembled by Dr. Proper Verse and a few Academy alchemists. Dr. Daycaller had been asked to sort them from the real versions, and had admitted to being completely unable to do so without the use of deliberate divinational magic- which Luna was currently forbidden from using and which would be easy enough to pick up in such a controlled environment. Neither Forward nor Twilight knew which were which, and Forward didn’t even know how many of each type there were. The technician who’d laid them out had been sent out of the building entirely, leaving behind only a chart. That, in turn, was sealed in an envelope and set on a table in the corner, in Twilight’s side of the chamber. Luna just looked at the samples for a good long while. The thaumosensitive bands cinched around her hooves, wings, and horn remained pure white. She tapped one blade, and seemed about to sniff at another before she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Without opening them, she reached out with a wing and pushed one blade a few centimeters forward, then another, then another. Twilight grabbed the envelope in her telekinesis and tore it open with more force than was probably necessary. She unfolded the chart inside, squinting at it in the dim light. All three of the swords Luna had selected were the ones taken from Froggy Bottom Bog. Twilight turned back to the psychomancer. “Anything? Any… associative register at all?” “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” They ran the same test a dozen more times, using different psychomantic methods. Sometimes they included fewer authentic swords, or more. Sometimes they included no genuine swords at all. Mid-way through, they elected to switch to pieces of armor, then to cookpots. Luna identified the camp artifacts -or lack thereof- with unerring accuracy. Their spells and equipment never registered anything at all. The next night they moved out to the parade ground, forcing Twilight to observe through a tiny scrying pool hastily set up in one of the outbuildings. Fillydelphia Yards’ engineering corps and small complement of geomancers had churned up ten pits full of ordinary mud. They had then pulled up groundwater into three until the consistency was more similar to quickmud. Finally, they’d given each a light dusting of dry soil to make sure each pit looked basically identical from above. Once again, this had all been done out of sight of Twilight, Forward, and Luna, and the ponies who had done it were currently located in a completely different part of the complex. The records of their work had, once again, been slipped into a sealed envelope in Twilight’s hide-away. Memory spells wouldn’t be of much use in the outdoor environment with its numerous other ponies and miscellaneous natural phenomena, but Twilight had kept the thaumoluminescent paper bands. “We can sense… nothing, here. There are no signs, of danger, or otherwise,” Luna said, after a long period of staring off into space. “Umm… uhh… just try your best?” Forward March prompted. Luna walked up to the edge of each pit in turn, from right to left. Then she turned around and went back the other way. Finally she returned to where she’d started and extended her left front hoof. “Here. Here. Here… and here.” It was hard to see through the pool and in the dark, but Twilight thought the bands remained pure white. She had slipped one onto her horn and tested it by generating an extremely weak illumination spell before beginning the experiments, and that had caused it to immediately turn pitch black. Next, she opened the envelope. Luna had identified four pits when only three were dangerous. That, in and of itself, was discouraging. Now that she had the chart in front of her, the unicorn could see that Luna had in fact identified only one quickmud pit and three containing regular mud- no better than chance, and certainly nothing like her previous performance with the artifacts. Twilight was surprised by how excited that made her. They tried again the next night, with Luna scrying on the parade ground through a communication link similar to the one they’d set up to Ponyville, on the theory that her methods somehow relied on the pre-existing divination magic it provided. They employed single and multiple loci; fixed loci on poles and movable loci carried around by Academy staff; photographs, audio links, video links, and every combination thereof. The whole time, Luna employed none of her own magic, performed no better than chance, and offered no explanation whatsoever as to why. The medics in the Yard’s hospital wing finally saw fit to release Twilight from her horrible half-cart, and fitted her with a more manageable single-leg brace. Walking on it still hurt, more than she was willing to admit, but that was what the poppy tears were for. On down the list they went. The next night saw Forward and Luna moved back indoors, presented with an assembly of ordinary rocks. Some had been collected from Froggy Bottom Bog, others from various locations around Fillydelphia. Using magical scans, they had been dated according to the last time they had been exposed to direct sunlight for a significant period- some had been buried for a millennium or more, and some were more recent. Luna not only identified the rocks from Froggy Bottom Bog under double-blind conditions without producing so much as a speck on her thaumoreactive bindings, but she sorted them from oldest to youngest. The night after that, Twilight made use of the Yard’s workshop and had all of the samples ground down to identical spheres. This time, Luna again performed no better than chance. Twilight found that fact incredibly fascinating. Another night and another test saw Luna presented with closed boxes containing a fresh set of artifacts. Some of these were genuine, ancient Lunar inscriptions. Some were comparably ancient but not Lunar- a collection of early Minotaur and Griffish emblems sourced from the Royal Academy’s archives. Some were modern but in the Lunar style, helpfully provided by the introductory stonework and sculpture class at the Fillydelphia Institute of Art. Some were modern and genuinely Lunar, manufactured by the surviving artisans resident at the Yard using their preferred First Century techniques. A final group were etched with completely abstract designs by the Yard workshop. Once again, it was up to Luna to identify the genuine article. Once again, her performance gave every indication of picking boxes completely at random. Luna had fallen out of the habit of saying much of anything during her tests, and Twilight had fallen out of the habit of paying much attention to her reactions when they weren’t an explicit part of the experimental protocol, but at the end of this most recent battery, when Forward March read off the results, she thought the Princess actually seemed confused. The final test that Twilight had found the time and mental energy to dream up involved bones- specifically, some of Lunar soldiers, some from modern research cadavers, and some taken from First Century but non-Lunar digs. Luna could identify the Lunar bones with perfect accuracy no matter how they were shifted or shuffled, as long as she could see them- the only thing Twilight couldn’t do was damage the remains, so that precluded grinding anything into identical unrecognizability as she’d done with the rocks. However, there was one other peculiarity that emerged, in test after test: Luna was, for the first time, consistently getting false positives on a small number of their samples. None of the bones for which she showed this behavior, a set of four, were modern in provenance, but they dated from the First Century up through the Sixth, and all of them had been confirmed to come from ponies with zero connection to any surviving Lunar movement. Twilight found this of intense interest, since it was the first time they had witnessed Luna engage in any behavior that wasn’t either complete, inexplicable success or perfectly ordinary failure. Then, by chance, she happened to encounter the medical officer who’d sourced the remains, over lunch in the service staff cafeteria. She asked him where, exactly, they had come from, since thanks to the double-blinding requirements of the tests she had deliberately avoided learning that information while they were running. He’d told her that they’d had a difficult time finding suitable candidates. Most museums and private mortuaries had strict requirements for the exhumation and transport of equine remains, that a project to examine the behavior of an anachronistic Royal Sister did not meet. As such, he’d sourced the four unusual cadavers from Twilight’s own operation, by way of Spike- all of them were adventurers or treasure-hunters who’d been found in the course of the excavation of Froggy Bottom Bog. (♫) Twilight sat at one of the wooden mess tables across from Fluttershy, Applejack, and Spike. For her, now thoroughly adjusted to the Lunar schedule kept by the rest of the support staff, this counted as an early breakfast; for everyone else it was a late dinner. “We’re heading back to the Midnight Sparkle era, I see…” Spike quipped as he sprinkled ground glass- his seasoning of choice- onto a bowl of mushroom stew. “Wait. Maybe she’s secretly a Lunarkin!” Everypony laughed, except for Twilight. “Not today, Spike. Or… well… tonight. Whatever.” “So, umm, how’s it all going?” the dragon asked, more evenly. Twilight squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then opened them again. “It’s… weird. Every time we run something past Luna, she behaves as if she’s operating off of incredibly detailed memories. But every test I’ve tried to positively prove she’s operating off of memory comes up inconclusive at best and completely negative at worst! And what’s more, her ‘memory’ seems to extend out into at least the Sixth Century if not later, well after the point where she was banished! Or it’s just completely random and happens to be suggesting trends where there aren’t any, I don’t know.” “I still don’t see what’s so inexplicable about this, though,” Spike countered. “I mean, a month ago we weren’t having any problem following a prophecy that predicted things a thousand years in the future. While you’ve been up here I’ve been reading up on conventional divination, and I’m pretty sure there’s spells that can duplicate each and every single one of Luna’s… signs.” “Yeah, I’ve been reading up on that too,” said Twilight, “but those methods would all require Luna to be actively casting them, when we know she isn’t, and in any case most of them weren’t developed until centuries after she was banished.” “Maybe it’s… innate?” the dragon suggested. “Spike, magic like that isn’t something that just… happens to a pony. It’s something you study and practice, it only happens when you decide to do it, and it’s meant to make something specific, that you choose to happen, happen!” Twilight realized that she was standing up from her bench with her forelegs on the table, and quite a few of the Harbor staff were looking at her. She slipped back down, took a quick sip from her vial of poppy tears, and washed it down with a paper cup full of strong black coffee. “Well, Luna’s… actually been really busy in between your experiments,” prompted Fluttershy after a long silence. “I’m actually surprised by that,” said Twilight, “I just thought she went back home and did… I don’t know, Luna things in between the tests, actually.” “Well Ah’m surprised you’ve been givin’ Luna any time between yer tests,” muttered Applejack. “They live a block away from each other now and she still doesn’t have any idea what Luna’s doing.” Spike flung his arms out wide before an imaginary audience, “Twilight Sparkle, everypony!” Twilight laughed along with the others this time, then looked around to make sure that the only slitted eyes currently focused on her were Spike’s. Then she leaned low across the table and whispered to Fluttershy, “Luna’s not been… bothering you, or pressuring you or anything anymore, right?” “Oh, no, nothing like that,” the pegasus whispered back, “Actually, she’s been really polite.” “Fluttershy found some kinda’ tracks out there in the bog,” Applejack explained, “Some kinda’ big animal with claws, looks like, but Ah couldn’t make much else outta’ ‘em. Luna sure does like ‘em, though. Keeps sayin’ we aughta’ follow ‘em.” “That’s a little different from Luna’s usual M-O,” said Twilight. Usually, Luna seemed to produce her ‘advice’ apropos of nothing at all, not in response to any recognizable external stimuli. Her ‘signs’ were usually objects or activities that happened to be occurring around her, with no logical connection to what she was attempting to do. “We aren’t actually following them, are we?” Twilight asked Spike. The dragon shook his head. “No, we’re still working on security around the sites we’ve already dug at, just like you told us.” Applejack and Fluttershy both nodded. “Your pal’s been doin’ a pretty good job keepin everythin’ ship-shape while yer gone,” the farmer explained, “we ain’t had a lick a’ trouble.” The implication that trouble followed Twilight Sparkle could not have been clearer. Spike took a long sip from his own coffee cup, so packed with saltpeter that it verged on the consistency of mud. “It’s nothing. Growing up with Midnight Sparkle’s pretty much convinced me that sleep is… pretty much optional.” “Thanks, that… actually really means a lot to me.” Twilight floated her now-empty cup over to the nearest trash can, and spotted a piece of paper sticking out of the bin with a telltale abstract pattern. She extracted it, uncrumpled it, and spread it out on the table. It proved to be another pamphlet bearing the now-familiar insignia of the Society for Lunar-Equestrian Studies. A few penciled-in transliterations in Old Ponish suggested one of the genuine Lunars had made an attempt to comprehend it. The annotations ended after the first page, suggesting that attempt had not been successful. The centerpiece of this particular publication was a grainy, low-contrast photograph of the broken pillar Twilight and her friends had discovered. The text alongside it claimed its inscriptions ‘accurately predicted’ both the fall of Timbucktu and the war with the Crystal Empire, seemingly completely unaware that both events had, in fact, happened decades beforethe pillar had ever been constructed. The ‘whole story’, the last few pages advertised, could be found in a groundbreaking new Society report available by mail for only fifty bits. FIFTY BITS! What is this, Blitzfeed? “It’s good to know at least some ponies- and dragons- haven’t completely lost their minds,” was all she said aloud. “Can I… have that, actually?” Spike asked, “I’m going to tell Captain Marigold to start posting round-the-clock guards when we get back, and I’d like to show her that picture when I do.” “Sure.” Twilight slipped it across the table to him; he grabbed hold of it, folded it neatly, and slipped it into the leather messenger bag slung over his shoulder. “So… when do you think you’re going to be heading back to Ponyville?” asked Fluttershy. “Well, first and foremost I’m waiting until my leg heals up and I can go back out into the field,” semi-consciously, Twilight shifted the offending limb from side to side. The medics had finally disassembled her brace a day ago, but the cast would remain for an indeterminate period. And, of course, it still hurt. “But other than that… I really don’t know. I’ve more or less eliminated every hypothesis I had about how Luna is doing her… seer thing, and I don’t really know where to go from here.” “’Cept for one, looks like,” Applejack corrected, tapping at the now heavily-crumped piece of note paper upon which she’d written her original hypotheses. 7. Princess Luna remembers perfectly well everything she did in that valley, and is lying, Twilight read. “Yeah… I guess.” It would certainly explain the fact that the only results to come out of Twilight’s experiments had been contradictory and frustrating. Natural phenomena didn’t anticipate the motives of an experimenter to alter their behavior, but intelligent beings- especially ponies like Luna, a seasoned guerilla commander- certainly could. And even the most powerful psychomancy currently available had a difficult time reliably determining when a pony -of her own free will and without any magic whatsoever- simply elected to say something different from what she understood to be the truth. But as near as Twilight could determine, Luna had nothing to gain from a lie like this. She could’ve been fishing for sympathy, renown, or money, but she already had more of those things than kooks and bottom-feeders like the SLES could possibly offer her. Even disregarding the government funds currently being sent her way, Luna had returned to find herself creditor to a number of extremely old debts, as well as having free access to Celestia’s extensive personal fortune. More importantly, it was in Luna’s best interests politically for Twilight to find her journal- and to do so quickly. Did she not want to be Exarch? If so, Twilight found it hard to believe she couldn’t just say as much. The idea that Celestia would respond to Luna’s stepping down with anything other than absolute support strained credulity. Or, perhaps, Luna already knew that whatever was inside that book would absolutely not exonerate her, and was stalling for time. But time to do what? “I really hope that last one isn’t the answer…” was all Twilight said aloud. “We won’t know until we try it,” said Spike. Twilight nodded, and policed her silverware and plate back into something resembling a portable arrangement. “I guess we won’t. How long do you think you can stay out here for?” (♫) “All right,” said Twilight, “Just try to relax, and make sure not to blink more than is strictly necessary.” “Aye. That, We hath much practice in.” They were back in the improvised psychomancy lab where they’d first run their memory tests, although Twilight had brought most of the instrumentation out into the same room that Luna was occupying. For this next round of experiments, the unicorn would need to do more than just observe. The Princess lay on her haunches on a gurney in one corner, surrounded by spell tags and inscribed circles designed to pick up on the slightest hint of magical activity. In addition to the thaumoluminescent paper wrapped around her limbs, an enchanted leather-and-brass harness around her barrel would monitor pulse and respiration, and the assembly of crystal and fine gold wires held just past the length of her eyelashes would record pupillary movement and dilation. Not only was all of this being recorded on the paper-reel machine in the opposite corner, but Twilight had also ensorcelled the sensors into a feedback system linked to several psychically resonant crystals. Those crystals were designed to provide distracting random stimuli if Luna employed any of the mental processes generally associated with imagination- or lying. Nothing analyzed this way would be considered definitive if, for instance, Luna were to be charged with something in court, and in fact Twilight wasn’t entirely certain this exact combination of tests had ever been employed before, but she was convinced it would put an end to the question of Luna’s honesty one way or another. “Do we have audio?” Twilight asked, then spotted Forward March motioning her over with one wing. She limped over to where Spike and the medic were fiddling with one of the crystal stands, a complicated affair of brass rods and rubber grippers sitting on a specially-leveled table. “What is it?” “I… just really wish you’d give me a script or something to read off of,” Forward muttered, “and do this remotely like we did all the other tests. Even just having you in the room might be more distressing for Luna than you’d think…” “I think Luna knows I’ve been watching her the whole time,” Twilight countered, also being careful to keep her voice low. “And, given what we’re trying to do… maybe a little distress might not be such a bad thing.” Forward didn’t respond to that right away. She and Spike just shared a long, intense look that Twilight had a hard time reading anything into. Then they both nodded and Spike said, “All right. Okay. Let’s get this over with.” “Good.” Twilight limped back into the center of the lab, stopping in one of the few regions of floor space not packed with chalk inscriptions or instruments. “So, if we’re finally set up and nopony else has any objections, we are going to proceed. Spike, start the recording.” She grabbed a clipboard off of one of the nearby tables in her telekinesis, quickly reading through her own hornwriting: “Luna, I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I need you to do your best to answer simply, factually, and honestly. That includes telling me if you are confused or don’t know the correct answer.” After that, in Spike’s writing, the sentence You’re free to stop this test at any time, or refuse to answer any question, if it makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe had been penciled in. Twilight skipped over it. “Do you understand?” “Aye.” Twilight flipped the page over. “What’s today’s date?” “The eighteenth of Sun’s Height,” Luna answered immediately, then paused, “1098.” “Do you remember working with a pony named Paper Clip?” “Aye. He was the head of clerks in Our Night Court… while there still was a Night Court,” Luna answered. The continuously-scrolling line of ink indicating her aggregate stress level wobbled ever so slightly, then returned to its baseline. “What was the last thing you did with him?” Twilight asked. Supposedly, Luna knew this information, but only secondhoof- she’d claimed to have no direct memory of the clerk’s fate. The line oscillated again, slightly higher and for a slightly longer time, before once again returning to its neutral position. “I kicked him into a wall, and left him for dead.” “What is your relationship to Princess Celestia?” “She is my sister.” This time the stress monitor barely shifted, but the aggregate mental activity indicator crystals lit up like a Hearth’s Warming tree before dimming again. “What is your name?” If, in the worst case scenario, the Elements of Harmony had proven ineffective and Nightmare Moon had never been properly separated from Luna at all, Twilight was hoping that even such relatively simple questions might trigger a noticeable response. But, instead, the inked line shifted upward only very slightly before returning. “I am Luna, daughter of none, ward of Starswirl the Bearded.” “Do you desire to be an Exarch in the Imperial Republic of Equestria?” “Aye.” “Have you ever killed another pony?” “… Aye.” The monitor line ticked upward ever-so-slightly again before falling back to baseline. That was an encouraging indicator. It’d take a true sociopath to have no response whatsoever to a question like that. That did it for the baseline questions. Twilight flipped another page over on her clipboard. “Recently, you communed with the wildlife in Froggy Bottom Bog. Can you tell me what you instructed those creatures to do?” “I instructed them to seek out signs, symbols, and omens of the presence of artifacts of great meaning. Beasts are perhaps wiser than thou mayst believe.” Despite this being the longest continuous statement Luna had made all evening, none of the ink lines so much as drifted. “How did you find the stone carved with the moon symbol, on the island in Sector K-7?” “We saw signs in the circling of the birds and the rustling of the reeds.” Again, Luna’s answer was accompanied by no physiological response whatsoever. “Do you remember placing that stone a thousand years ago?” “Nay.” There was, once again, no response. Twilight paused, and let the clipboard drift to one side, temporarily forgotten as she considered an unforeseen loophole in her questioning. “Do you remember anypony else placing the stone for you?” “Nay.” Luna’s outward response -her posture and her tone of voice- seemed to be the same as it had been when she’d delivered her previous answer, but this time both the stress and mental activity lines described a few sharp waves on the paper. One of the amplification crystals pulsed with a brief surge of violet energy, and then faded again. Twilight decided to probe further. “Is the pony who placed the stone for you still alive right now?” The unicorn had a pretty good answer to that question -none of the Lunar troops currently staying here had come forward- but was curious to see how Luna herself would react. “We… I… I do not recall.” Just as Luna’s mouth opened, all of the indicator lines shifted farther from baseline than they ever had before. Twilight quietly thanked herself for positioning the readout where Luna couldn’t see it. This time, all of the crystals pulsed at once, and remained glowing faintly for a few seconds afterward. The unicorn closed her eyes. Think, we were talking about Luna’s interactions with her officers just before she had her first… episode… “Luna, did General Silver Shade place that stone for you?” “I do not recall.” There was another intense, prolonged upward movement in each of the stress lines, perhaps a full second before they returned to somewhere just above their previous values. “Let’s go back and talk about the… umm… the archery contest.” “I have already told thee everything I remember…” Luna sounded almost… pleading. Twilight paced in a tight little circle in her narrow patch of free floor. Her hind leg was aching again, so she grabbed her bottle of poppy tears from the table and took a drink. “Let’s go through this step by step, okay? The sooner you answer these questions, the sooner everypony gets to go home. After that competition, what happened?” “I recall… nothing, nothing after our last glide,” Luna was visibly breathing more heavily now, her gaze darting from Twilight to Spike and Forward March and back again; the instrument readouts shifted constantly, far above their baseline values. The crystals pulsed in a slow, regular, steady pattern, and ever-so-faintly Twilight’s ears began to register a low buzz. She heard Spike whisper something to Forward March that sounded like “… crystals might be stimulating each other, I think we should move them apart.” She looked at the dragon and shook her head. Then she turned back to her subject. “You have to remember. Luna, before you told me you remembered the score. You made four shots and Shade made ten, right?” “We… I… but… I do not understand…” Luna stammered. Twilight watched, fascinated, as the readings climbed higher and higher. The hum was clearly audible now, the entire lab bathed in slowly pulsing purple light that grew a little brighter with each cycle. “Twilight, I’m not gonna lie, this is givin’ me the creeps,” said Forward March, “we’d really better-” “We do not… we cannot…”Suddenly, Luna’s head dropped forward and her eyes slid shut. For a moment Twilight wondered if the alicorn had passed out, but far from declining her mental and physical activity lines continued to climb until they bumped into the mechanical limits of the plotting machine. Forward and Spike both sprang towards Luna, but Twilight gave them a quick telekinetic push back away, fearful that they might tread on something important. “Let her be. Luna, what happened after that last glide?” “Our score was… tallied up… and we landed…” Luna muttered, in between gasping breaths, “I bade Silver Shade to walk with me, out to the… edge of the campsite… I called out to the sentry and bade him to give us our leave… and asked General Shade of our plans to liberate Everfree City…” the alicorn paused, then continued all at once, “Shade told me she feared the bloodshed that would follow should we destroy the Council Hall in the morning, when it was most occupied. But that was the only time we could be sure that Celestia would be attending…” The pace of Luna’s breathing increased, putting her on the verge of hyperventilating, and every so often she made odd little whimpering noises. Her eyes remained closed, but Twilight could see intense movement beneath the lids. The hum of the crystals had increased in pitch, becoming a strange sort of buzzing whine that Twilight could feel tickling at the back of her skull. “Twilight, this is… this is messed-up…” Spike said, as he made to climb directly over the table holding the feedback system towards Luna and herself. The unicorn raised her forehoof in front of his snout. “Wait!” She grabbed a pad of note paper and began scribbling down everything she’d just heard Luna say, but the alicorn wasn’t finished: “Shade… Shade wished to move against Celestia later, once we held the City, but she… she doth not understand… every night spent out here, hiding like a feral beast from Celestia’s armies, watching her move the Sun and our Moon… living in her shadow just as before… is an insult that We cannot abide…” “Twilight, stop, let her go…” Forward March practically growled. “How? I’m not restraining her, she’s doing that on her own…” “Celestia has already taken so much from us, she doth not understand that Celestia must die… Celestia must die soon… and how dare Silver Shade fail to comprehend this… to comprehend our struggles and pain…” “Twilight…” Spike hissed, barely audible over the buzzing of the crystals. “Let her talk…” The unicorn was writing as quickly as she could, struggling to record both the wild fluctuations of their instruments and Luna’s continued rambling. “Twilight, stop!” Forward barked. Twilight ignored her. “Shade… wishes to leave, and speak again come morning… presumptuous…” Luna muttered, tears leaking out from between her tightly-closed eyelids, “She dares to exceed me in our contest, and then to dictate when we will speak… dictate to me, the Princess of the Eternal Night! She is afraid, I can see the terror on her face, she says she will fetch one of the healers and moves to go, as though there is something wrong with me… the coward… the blackguard… traitor… she turns to treason against the Moon rather than face Our pain… I strike out with my hoof… her helmet crumples and her jaw with it, the bones in her neck give way-” “Twilight THAT’S ENOUGH!” Forward March shouted. She burst through the unicorn’s telekinetic field, swept out a wing, and knocked one of the feedback crystals clean out of its mounting. (♫) There was a deafening bang as the crystal hit the floor and shattered in a burst of luminescent smoke, reduced to fifty thousand bits’ worth of finely-calibrated shards. Twilight reeled backwards, landed awkwardly on her cast-wrapped leg, and ended up flat on her belly. Luna jumped as though kicked in the barrel, ripping the tracking rig and several of the thaumoluminscent bands apart as her wings suddenly unfolded, then slumped back down, openly sobbing. “Silver Shade… oh, brave Silver Shade, what hath become of thee…” The pegasus medic sprang forward, half-flying and half-galloping, scuffing several of the chalk inscriptions in her path, and stopped in front of Luna’s prone form, cradling the Princess’s head in her forehooves. “It’s OK, I’ve got you, we’re done… are you all right? Don’t try to speak, just nod your head if you can hear me…” Luna did nod, and opened her eyes, tracking Forward’s outstretched wing as the pegasus moved it from side to side. She shook her head as though clearing it and began to climb back onto all-fours. Spike slipped over to the far wall and rapped on it twice, and immediately two more Royal Guard medics with full packs stepped through the lab door. They took up positions beside Princess Luna and carefully escorted her back out into the hallway. Twilight hadn’t even known they’d been waiting. That sort of thing was supposed to be included in the written experimental protocol. Next, Forward March loped over to the prone unicorn and extended a forehoof. Twilight grabbed ahold of it and was hauled roughly to her feet, and afterward Forward did not let go. “What in Taratus do you think you were doing?” the Major demanded, her muzzle centimeters from Twilight’s own. Twilight looked down to where her notes had been scattered over the floor. Most of them were barely-coherent scribbles. “I… I don’t know. I’m sorry, I guess I wasn’t… I guess I wasn’t thinking.” “I can tell,” Spike snapped, then continued with a normalcy that almost sounded convincing, “If anypony needs me, I’ll be cleaning up the instrument room.” He promptly disappeared into the darkened back half of the lab, even though they’d already moved all of the equipment they’d needed out into the front. Forward March just sat down on the floor and shook her head. “Twilight, I never had much patience for all this talk about super-ids and displaced actualization something-or-others and Chrysalis complexes and psy-cho-dy-namic what-have-you. These shrinks, they ask you to tell ‘em your whole life story and then they come up with some convoluted explanation that only ever fits once, for you, and never gets brought up again. I’m a medic. I look for symptoms. Show me heatstroke, show me dourine, show me a sword in your barrel, show me shell shock, and I can have you fixed up in short order, because those are all problems that a pony can recognize. And what just happened to Princess Luna? That wasn’t anything strange and… and otherworldly. I know shell shock, and that was shell shock. What you just did… I wouldn’t wish on Discord himself, going through that.” “Okay, so, if this is a posttraumatic condition, how come our original scans didn’t pick up any incised memories?” Twilight snapped. “Damned if I know. But I’ll believe one of my patients over some fancy psychoscope any day.” “Yeah, you and everypony else…” Twilight muttered, and turned away. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about any of this?” “Yeah, actually. In fact, it bugs the living daylights out of me! But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna start… interrogating a deeply traumatized pony just for answers.” “I just asked her a few questions-” “Yeah, and that… ghost or spirit or whatever it was just tapped you on the leg.” Forward laughed, bitterly. “I’m done. We’re done. No more tests, and I’m willing to go straight to Celestia to make sure it stays that way- if that means I have to fly out to Minos all by myself.” Twilight’s mouth opened, but she herself had no idea what she was going to say. Eventually, she settled on “I guess we’ll just have to live forever in uncertainty, then,” which certainly sounded final, even if she wasn’t quite sure what exactly it referred to in this context. She wound her way through the now somewhat disrupted tables full of equipment to the door, and shouldered past the clusters of gawking Naval Yard staff in the corridor beyond. As she made her slow and unsteady way across the green outside, Twilight realized that both Spike and Forward March were following her at a respectful distance. She assumed they’d assumed she wouldn’t notice, although obviously their attempts to be covert had been unsuccessful. In the big, open parade ground, there weren’t many places for them to hide. Fluttershy and Applejack had probably already taken one of the earlier trains back to Ponyville, and Luna, mercifully, was still nowhere to be found. Twilight spotted a bench up ahead, looking out over the darkened harbor, and sat down. For a long time, nothing happened. Then her ears caught the faint sound of clawed feet on the grass behind her. “Look. I’ll admit it. I’ve been… extremely stupid tonight, and caused Luna a lot of pain without needing to,” the unicorn said. “If I ever propose anything like that again, anything that makes the ponies I’m working on uncomfortable or that makes you uncomfortable, or… anything, really, I want you to come out and tell me right away, all right? I promise the next time, I’ll listen.” Very quietly, Spike slipped onto the bench beside her, drumming his clawed fingers against the wooden surface. “Okay. Yeah, all right. I… didn’t think this was going to happen either, and I can understand why you were a little slow to react, I guess. I should’ve done something too. It’s late… or, I guess, early, and that stupid thing on your leg can’t be fun to walk around on. How about this- I’ll clean up things over here, and… I’ll also tell Luna everything you just said. The six AM train to Ponyville leaves in half an hour. Why don’t you go ahead and take it, spend a day or two away from… this mess. I think it’ll do you good.” Twilight’s entire body suddenly felt immensely heavy, and it was only then that she realized she had slept perhaps six hours out of the last forty-eight. “… Okay.” She didn’t remember stopping by the Yard infirmary to have her cast removed, only that she’d gotten off the bench with it on, and boarded the train with it gone and with a fresh flask of poppy tears in her saddlebag. She sat down and extricated her much-abused notebook, intending to massage her fragmentary records of Luna’s most recent outburst into something remotely comprehensible… and then was jolted awake by the insistent prodding of an earth pony mare in a conductor’s uniform. “Miss? Miss? I think this’d be your stop.” It was, indeed, her stop. Twilight dragged herself off the platform and down the road to the Golden Oaks. Captain Marigold had left a note on the table in the main room, informing her that the communication link to Fillydelphia had finally faded away. As she slowly climbed the stairs into the loft, shucked off her saddlebags, and collapsed into bed, Twilight breathed a quiet sigh of relief that there would be no more interference when she finally mapped the pillars to the sigils and, maybe, hopefully revealed where Luna had been hiding all those years ago. She’d decided she much preferred archaeology when the ponies involved were not currently alive and could not talk back.