Celestia held her hand to her chest and let out a whimpered sigh, before turning around to face the locker. She didn't know why she felt this crushing guilt, nor why the word Luna rattled around inside her mind as if trying to fracture it, but she did know that she refused to wait for answers and Twilight definitely wouldn't give any to her if she asked. Not to mention what she might do to her.
Taking a tentative step forward, as if the locker itself could reach out and snap her up at any moment, she lit her horn, gripped the circular bulkhead knob that sat in the center of the locker, and began to turn. A number of clicks and thuds rang out as the knob rotated fully, then a hiss as silver gas was ejected from the bottom and around her hooves.
Celestia froze as she knew there was no going back after she opened this box. The sweet life that she knew she could have, if only she walked away, would be gone - but that sweet life would always have that hint of sourness, poisoned with the knowledge of what could have been. Stealing her resolve, she pulled the doors open and found herself staring at a singular object, suspended in the center of the locker.
The very same core from the video recording.
The sphere idly rotated while floating at the centre point of the locker, suspended with some sort of magical pressure that Celestia found herself leaning away from as it caused her fingers to droop off her arm and deactivate. "W-What is this..." she muttered, noticing a cable connecting the bottom of the core to the locker.
She frowned, retracted her fingers back into her arm with a slight buzz and reached in. She could feel her hardware begin to repeatedly send error signals to her core, each sensor signalling elevated electromagnetic and thaumic radiation. Her arm’s exterior sizzled and began to revert to the same blocky and rough texture that it had when first installed on her. Her hoof made contact with the metallic sphere.
Sister
Celestia recoiled in fear as her mind was overwhelmed with a horrified scream, an echo of guilt that threatened to break her there and then. "B-By the goddess!" she cried, falling to her knees and holding her head as the distinctive smell of burning wood flooded her senses. "What is this?!"
Her head was splitting as reality warped, causing her to fall onto her side and curl into a fetal position.
Celestia pulled her gaze away from the crackling fire and towards the mare sitting opposite to her. She let out a pleased sigh after inhaling the delightful scent of camomile tea and placed her cup down with a light clink that seemed to echo louder than she expected.
"Twilight, as much as I so thoroughly enjoy your visits, what brings you here?" she queried, staring over at the purple mare with her usual mask of contentedness. Behind it though, she was rather giddy, due to the fact that Twilight had sent no mention of her visit to the castle.
She sat on a princess sized, red velvet couch which allowed her to lay out and relax within her own room; the one place where she could actually be lazy without anyone judging her, and it clearly showed as she let out an unpricesslike groan, stretching her legs out.
Twilight herself sat on her usual cushion opposite her, with the fireplace crackling just off to the side, illuminating the mare in just the right way. Celestia swore Twilight picked that spot to try and take her breath away each time she came to visit. It wasn't long before Twilight was flicking her eyes back and forth over Celestia's body each time she thought she could get away with it; not that the Princess would ever let her know that.
"I... had just finished some work and thought you would like some company for this evening?" Twilight replied, a hint of a tease of a blush forming across her cheeks, forcing Celestia to work for her satisfaction.
"I would be delighted if you would keep this old mare company tonight. Perhaps we'll even break out some first editions if the occasion calls for it~" Celestia laughed.
Celestia gasped and found herself in Twilight's basement. She didn't know what had just happened, leaving her a scared, crumpled heap of metal on the floor.
Countdown: 2hr 46m 03s
She laid there for several minutes, each of her hardware rebooting and connecting with her core once again.
That voice, I knew that voice, Celestia thought, worry slowly swelling up and swallowing her whole. But I couldn't though; Twilight made me?
There was a hint of reservation in her tone that she didn't realise creeped in there. She made me, I remember... But I was before. I felt warm...
Celestia pushed herself off the ground and up onto her hooves, only to see her arm was not returning to the smooth material the other was. It's surface was covered in rough, opaque, white hexagonal plates which crisscrossed halfway up her forearm.
Looking around, Celestia saw the locker doors still opened and precariously inched closer. That voice whispering inside her head only seemed to grow louder with each step. "A-Are you Luna?" she asked, reaching her hoof out towards the sphere.
Her hand entered that protective field again and error signals began to ping from her electronics, until she pressed her hoof against the Core. She pulled and tore the sphere out of the magical field with a grunt, causing the Terminal to throw up error messages onto its screen!
"W-What... oh, no no no!" Celestia gasped, pulling the jack out of the bottom of the Core and closing the locker. Perhaps she could make it look like nothing had happened?
Rushing over to the terminal, she tapped away, trying to remove the error messages and eventually restarted it, fixing the issue. With a sigh, she looked down to the Core held tight in her digits and smiled. She didn't know what it was, but there was something comforting about holding it, as if she needed to keep it safe.
But where though? As soon as Twilight came down to check, she would be busted and that would be the end of her. She would probably be melted down and scrapped for parts before Twilight started again with another model. Celestia loved the mare but there was numerous ways she could imagine Twilight could react to this, each one worse than before.
"A-Alright... I just need to take a second and formulate a plan," she whispered to herself, closing her eyes and feeling herself relax. "Alright, reassign my main operation..."
Focus reassignment: Twilight Sparkle Azure Core
Operation adjustment: Discover more information about L.U.N.A and how it relates to my memories.
Operation pipeline:
- Connect with the core
- Further Operations TBD