Midnight Sparkle wasn’t sure where she’d gone wrong. Perhaps the containment field hadn’t been calibrated to the correct dimensional frequency? Maybe the bolts on the casing for the device that had just sundered the barriers between this world and another needed more tightening?
Regardless. It wasn’t her fault. Surely.
At least, that’s what she hoped as she found herself sliding on her belly towards the panic room.
“ALERT!” the computer shrieked. “ALERT! BREACH HAS OCCURRED! RETREAT TO SECURE SAFETY ROOM NOW!”
In hindsight, the strobing red lights were a mistake. As was the wailing siren that drilled its way into your skull no matter where in the lab you were.
“ALERT! THE END TIMES ARE UPON US! FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!”
As was, perhaps, not dumping the computer’s memory this morning.
Why did every machine she or Twilight build turn sentient after a week? It was getting old.
She slid past her sister, Twilight Sparkle, who was even now throwing the emergency levers in the panic room with wild abandon. With a solid metallic shriek, seven steel doors slammed shut behind Midnight, cutting off the… creature from pursuit, and dulling the sound of the alarms still blaring behind her.
Midnight finally breathed out a long, tired sigh and…
“GAAAH!” she screamed as a hot wetness seeped through her lab coat into the small of her back.
She leapt up, nearly hitting the ceiling in her panic, and whipped her coat off. The space she and Twilight were in was small, and so the coat did not go very far before slapping against a nearby wall.
Midnight cringed as she watched the white lab coat, soaked with the juices from a rather distressingly large purple and green tentacle which remained stuck to its back, slide slowly down to the floor.
“Ewww,” she moaned, and started checking herself for any more of the foul, fetid, slimy mess that had nearly grabbed her.
The doors behind her thumped ominously, causing the teen to jump away with her heart hammering in her throat.
Twilight, still dressed in her own coat, sank to the floor, panting from their dead-sprint out of the lab.
“That… that was too close!” she gasped. She ripped the scrunchy from her head and readjusted her hair, having it fall from its tight bun into a more manageable ponytail. Then, with a sigh, she pushed her glasses back up her nose, and started the old breathing exercises Cadance had taught her long, long ago.
Midnight huffed, and dragged her fingers through her own hair, but left her hair bun in place. Lab safety protocols were basically shot, at this point, but she wasn’t about to give Twilight the satisfaction of looking too much like her again.
“What happened!?” she snarled, glaring angrily at the foot-deep glass plate in the door, which allowed her to glare out at the lab hallway they’d escaped from.
Well. It was more a mass of tentacles, eyeballs, and gnashing teeth at the moment, but it was still technically a mass of tentacles, eyeballs, and gnashing teeth in a hallway. So there.
Twilight, breathing now under control, said, “Containment protocols failed. There were supposed to be two redundant force fields in case the cage failed to contain the…”
She frowned.
“You know, I still can’t pronounce what that thing was…”
“Doesn’t really matter at the moment what it’s called,” Midnight scoffed. “What matters is that the experiment was a failure. Applying a magically-enhanced laser beam to a Hindstein-Ponyberg Bridge without—”
The door groaned as another heavy tentacle crashed against it.
Midnight grimaced. “Uh… right. Science later. Save the universe from an eldritch horror now.”
She looked around, and started to calculate.
Twilight, meanwhile, scratched at her chin in thought.
“Well,” she said, “at least it can’t get out for the time being. The shed walls are lined with lead, and Sunset showed me how to inscribe sealing runes last weekend.”
Midnight’s eyebrows tilted up. “I thought you and Timber were hanging out at the camp last weekend?”
Twilight, still contemplating the groaning metal door before her, laughed. “You think I can’t also do science and-or magic in between make-out sessions…?”
Perhaps it was due to random happenstance, but Twilight got the distinct impression that even the beast outside in her lab grew silent for a moment.
Blushing, she half-turned towards her sister. “Please forget you heard that part.”
Midnight’s grin was nearly catlike in its cruelty.
“Once we’re sure the world isn’t ending,” she said, slowly, “I will tease you mercilessly with this new information. But…”
She sighed, and glared at the one item in the room.
“All we have to save the world is an old computer that’s almost as old as I am…”
Twilight frowned.
Midnight noticed. “Okay, as old as you are. Happy?”
The aged machine sat in the center of the empty bunker, sitting atop a metal stool. The thing was an off-cream gray, except for the top casing which was an obnoxious green-blue color, with the emblem of a banana on the side. Midnight was half-seriously thinking there would be punch-cards inside if she were to crack it open.
“Beggars couldn’t be choosers,” Twilight reminded her with a reproachful finger-wag. “Dad was nice enough to donate his old computer to the cause of science.”
“I don’t think this thing even has one RAM in it…”
“Regardless!” Twilight said with a shake of her head. “It’s what we got. So, how can we use it to call for help?”
Midnight scowled. “If we just had our geodes…”
Twilight sighed. “If we had our geodes, the experiment could have been contaminated. I was surprised – shocked, really – when you of all people suggested it.”
“The one time I follow scientific safety protocol, and look what it’s done!” Midnight shouted. “And your stupid lead-lining makes phone calls impossible!”
“Not that any of the girls could come help us anyway,” Twilight said, nodding. “I’m pretty sure we’re the only ones in town right now, what with camps and college and Equestria…”
Midnight walked up to the old computer, and gave it another look of disdain.
“So, that’s it then? The world ends, not with a bang, but with an unpronounceable squishing noise?”
Twilight bit her lip, and stared at the floor. Her eyes worked side to side, as her brain burned for an answer. “It… it looks that way…”
Midnight sniffed, and pressed one hand to the bridge of her nose.
“If only we hadn’t scrapped the Wonderdog Project,” she sighed. “At the very least, we could…”
“OF COURSE!”
Midnight nearly toppled over the old computer as her sister screamed. Twilight clapped her hands like a child being promised ice cream, a smile completely contorting her face into a horrifying visage of unbridled, mad-cap, mad scientist joy.
“Er, what?”
“The Wonderdog Project!” Twilight cheered, and danced in place. “Midnight! You’re a genius!”
“Be that as it may…” Midnight straightened herself out, and brushed a loose strand of aquamarine out of her eyes. “… but, what? Or, in what specific way this time?”
Twilight pranced up to her sister, smile never leaving her features. It was rather unsettling.
And then, she shoved Midnight away, almost knocking her over again.
“Hey!”
“Sorry!” Twilight laughed. She started slamming her fingers down onto the computer keyboard with wild abandon. “But I don’t have time!”
The computer’s screen flashed to life. Text and motherboard screens loaded.
And loaded.
And loaded some more.
“Hm,” Twilight grunted. “Okay, so… I guess I do have time. Why didn’t we put this thing’s OS onto a solid state?”
“Because it’s one step above being an actual calculator, in terms of memory,” Midnight said. Then, gently drawing her sister away from the glacially slow-loading machine, she asked, “What’s this about Project Wonderdog?”
Twilight locked eyes with her sister, and the act alone appeared to have an effect. Her breathing slowed, and her smile dropped from being Manic to merely Deranged in its intensity.
After a moment, she exhaled a long, slow breath, and collected herself.
“You said we scrapped Wonderdog?” asked Twilight.
“Yyyyes?” Midnight said, slowly, not quite sure where this was go—
Oh.
Oh, come on!
“Another memory gap!?” she snarled, and punched the side of her own head.
This was a bad idea. It took several seconds for the tiny stars and dancing ponies to vanish.
She groaned. “I thought we’d found the last of those stupid gaps…”
“Yeah, well,” Twilight sighed, “splitting ourself into two people was supposed to solve our problems, not create so many more. But here we are.”
Midnight’s eyes snapped back up to her sister’s. “When did you restart it? Wonderdog?”
Twilight glanced at the computer screen. It was starting! She quickly signed-in… and snorted in disgust as a further set of loading screens began to roll.
Suddenly, blowing their allowances on that drone last summer seemed incredibly short-sighted.
“Once we had to kill that robotic dog-friend we built for Spike…” she began, glaring at the ancient computer.
“The one that declared itself the Singularity?” Midnight asked. She frowned, and grumbled, “Why does every robot we build do that…?”
“I figured we needed another backup,” Twilight said, finger poking the computer screen. She seemed to be hoping the progress bar would scoot a little faster. “You know? How many times has the world almost been destroyed just this past year? This past month?”
“Fair point,” Midnight conceded. “How far along did you get?”
The computer hummed an electric musical note.
100%
“Oh, it’s done!” Twilight cheered.
She immediately began to type, furiously striking the keys beneath her fingertips. A flurry of code and algorithms flashed across the screen in black and green light.
“Twilight?” Midnight asked again. “Hey, Twilight? How far along did you get?”
Twilight smashed a final key, and grinned.
“I just told you,” she laughed. “It’s…!”
There was a dusty pop somewhere deep within the machine. Both Sparkles stood back, and watched as a side panel slowly withdrew, and a long, thin bit of metal began to snake its way out. At the end of the rod was a tattered bit of cloth that made the whole thing almost look familiar.
“Is…” Midnight squinted. “… is that a microphone?”
“Yes, it is!” Crowed Twilight, who eagerly grabbed hold of it.
Midnight frowned at this, and stared as her sister began puffing into the microphone. “But… why? What good is…?”
Her eyes lit up as a memory resurfaced.
“Wait,” she said, warily, “is Spike’s collar still a communication device? I thought we scrapped that one after it also became self-aware?”
Twilight punched in a few new commands.
“No, of course we scrapped it,” she said, shaking her head as the screen readout changed again to a giant phone symbol. “But this thing is still hooked up to the subspace comm beacon we built in middle school, and that carries a signal that Project Wonderdog can…”
A hidden speaker squealed to awful, shrieking life somewhere in the room.
“GAAAAAH!” A familiar voice screamed with a static whine. “What is that!? What’s that sound!?”
“Spike?” Midnight gasped.
“M-Midnight?” the puppy stuttered. “W-where are you? What time is it?”
Twilight shoved Midnight out of the way before she could respond.
“Spike!” she called. “This is Twilight. We could use your help.”
Spike yawned. “Uh, sure? You just startled me, is all. I was having the best dream. There was this cat, right? And…”
“Spike,” Twilight sighed, “listen up. We…”
“How are we talking, anyway?” asked Spike. “I thought after the collar tried to hack the government's—“
Twilight’s brow knotted into a scowl.
“Why does everyone bring up the… whatever. I’m accessing the nanites in your inner ear to tell you that…”
“The WHAT!?”
“Nanites, Spike,” said Midnight, shooting Twilight a look.
“I told him about the nanites!” Twilight protested, and crossed her arms defensively. “What sort of scientist do you think—“
“A mad one.”
Twilight grumbled, but said nothing.
Spiked hummed, thoughtfully. “Was I eating when you asked me? I don’t listen to stuff when I’m eating.”
Midnight snorted. “But you’re always eating?”
“True,” he laughed. “Anyway, what’s up? Need me to bark at something? Did a squirrel get stuck in the centrifugal generator again?”
Twilight blanched. “Wait, when…?”
Midnight coughed, and gave her another meaningful look.
“… memory gap. Consarn it all…” she grumbled again, mimicking Applejack’s speech for just a moment. “No. No squirrel this time.”
Both sisters turned, as the wall behind them groaned in metallic distress once more. A hateful, yellow eye glared at them through the mass of tentacles and the glass viewing port.
“Something bigger…”
Midnight shook her head. “Okay, we really don’t have time to explain it. One of the experiments failed, and a dimensional horror is trying to destroy the earth. Twilight says you can fix it.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“You still there, Spike?”
There was a puppy-sigh.
“Yeah. I’m here,” he said, wearily. “How can I help, apparently?”
Twilight grinned, and leaned into the microphone.
“Wonderdog Activation Protocol!” she said with entirely too much enthusiasm. “Passcode: NOW UNLEASH THE DOG OF WONDER!”
The computer screen flashed once, and the phone symbol went dark. The signal was lost.
Panic swelled in Midnight’s chest for just a moment, before she caught the look of glee in Twilight’s eyes.
“Twi?” she asked. “That’s a good sign, yes?”
The metal doors groaned again, as if the Beast from Beyond the Stars could hear them.
Twilight nodded.
“Yes,” she said with finality. “Though, you shouldn’t stand so close to the…”
The entire room shook violently. Midnight lost her balance in an instant, and crashed head-over-heels into Twilight’s chest, knocking both teens to the floor. Both were screaming, as they fell, partly due to their fall, and partly due to the unholy sounds roaring around them at that moment.
Metal tore, and glass shattered, off somewhere in the garage-shed-turned-laboratory. The Beast howled in pain, as what sounded like an entire freight train smashed through the building. An explosion sounded in the distance, followed by a scream of anguish and terror.
That last one might have just been Midnight and Twilight, currently curled up on the floor of their panic room, its primary namesake purpose finally being fulfilled.
And then… silence.
The roars quieted, and the room came to a stop in its shuddering. As the echoes of whatever had happened began to fade, the tinkle of falling glass could be heard in the lab itself.
Just not by Midnight or Twilight, who were still screaming a full five seconds after the catastrophe had passed.
Twilight was the first to stop.
“...” she said.
Twilight frowned, concerned. There was a ringing in her ears.
She blinked, and watched as Midnight stood slowly beside her, the other Sparkle rubbing furiously at her ears. Taking the cue, she followed suit.
After a few moments of this, the sounds of the world began to fade back into existence.
“What…” Midnight gasped. “What… was… THAT!?”
She and Twilight stared at the still-intact doors. They had not even buckled under whatever had just occurred. The glass remained totally un-cracked.
It was just completely covered in green slime. No eyes or tentacles to be found.
Twilight took one experimental step forward, and was surprised that her balance was already back. She reached out, and pushed the emergency release switch.
The doors shifted. They stopped. Then, with the sound of grinding, shredding steel, they slowly lifted up and away from the ground. Each layer of door peeled back with agonizing, groaning shrieks, until the final one revealed the lab.
Well. The backyard and accompanying pile of scrap metal and debris that used to be a lab.
And every square inch of it was covered in slime. Slime and alien entrails.
“Oh, noooo…” Twilight cringed, and tried to look away for the benefit of her stomach and this morning’s breakfast, which was even now doing flips inside of her.
But then, she found she had to amend the previous statement.
Slime and entrails covered most everything, yes. Just not one solitary patch in the middle of the floorplan.
It was a perfect circle of ash. And standing in the center of this perfect circle was… something.
“Uh…” Midnight managed to articulate to the best of her abilities.
The tiny, puppy-shaped machine was brilliant. Purple-chromed armor plating in doggy form. Little green spikes and flames and bits and bobs stuck up from its sleek hull like the precise thing Midnight and Twilight would have assumed Shining to have collecting dust on his shelf somewhere. It was such a toy-like bit of hardware that Midnight could almost not conceive of what it actually had to be.
The helmet peeled away from Spike’s muzzle with a hiss of steam.
He glanced around, at the carnage around him. And then, he looked back up to his owners.
“You know what?” he said, slowly, with a look on his face that appeared quite off-put by what he was presently experiencing. “Next time you wanna build a nano-machine mecha-suit with me inside…”
He sighed, and shook his head.
“Nevermind. Just don’t ask me to do science stuff when I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry,” said Twilight, stepping around something that might have once been an alien lung.
Spike raised one paw, and pointed it at Twilight before making a little sound with his mouth that she naturally took to be some sort of ‘you got it’ expression not expressible normally without human hands.
Midnight snapped her jaw – previously hanging loose from the rest of her head as she looked on at the destruction all around her – shut.
“Hold on,” she said, eyes swimming at the sight of her lab as it failed to stand now, “you did all this? Just… just by yourself?”
Spike nodded.
Midnight stared at him.
“Dang… good dog.”
“Ahem.”
Both Twilight and Midnight glanced up from their dog of wonder.
A rather nonplussed Night Light and Twilight Velvet, the Sparkle siblings’ usually accommodating and understanding parents, stood at the edge of the ‘splash-zone’, arms crossed.
“Midnight,” said Velvet, one eyebrow raised high. “Twilight. Do we need to have another chat about allowances?”
Night Light sniffed. “Or spitting in the eye of the universe with experimental science and-or magic?” he added.
Both sisters blinked.
“Uh…”
“That’s… ah…”
Spike just smirked.
“I can see you guys got this covered,” he laughed. Then, closing his helmet once more, he said in a metallic, threatening tone, “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I gotta see a mutt about a squirrel.”
His paws flared as jet-fire shot out from the suit, carrying the tiny puppy up, up, and away, to parts unknown. But probably wherever the unluckiest squirrel in Canterlot City happened to be at this precise moment.
Night Light watched his dog fly away, a shockwave forming as Spike sailed off into the wild blue yonder.
“And that suit better not become self-aware, young ladies!” he said, glaring.