//------------------------------//
// 14 - The Alicorn Project 
// Story: Re:Harmony 
// by starcross7 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 14 - The Alicorn Project
 
"--skin you into a purse!  And lemme tell ya something--I hate purses!  Huh?  Wait, where are we?"
 
Applejack and Twilight shook their heads to regain their balance from whatever they escaped from.  They found themselves in a large chamber, though it was much smaller than the dragon pen they landed in.  Though clean, everything inside felt old and dusty.  Behind them was one set of massive doors where they heard the whirs and the banging from the Roboponies.  Across from that was another massive door.  Painted on its smooth surface appeared to be a faded blue flag with six purple stars inside a white circle.
 
"This must be an anteroom to the Alicorn Chamber," said Twilight. "But how did we get here?"
 
"I thought you did that," said Applejack.
 
"I can't teleport to a place I haven't been to or what I can't see."
 
"That can only mean…"
 
The mares, alerted by the sound of coughing, found Spike laying on his side next to an open grate too small for an adult pony mare, but large enough for a baby dragon to squeeze through.
 
"He must have done it," said Twilight.
 
"Well, I was mighty wrong about you lil' fella," said Applejack.  "You saved our plots!  Hey, are you all right?"
 
The mares trotted closer, and found that Spike was not only clutching his stomach, he was coughing up blood.
 
"Oh my goodness," said Twilight.  "Spike, what happened?  Who did this?"
 
"No one did anything," he said.  "I had to save you guys, and I had to do it fast."
 
The dust.  His dragon fire.  Teleportation experiments.  For him to suffer another experiment, he must truly regard his saviors as his friends, and risked injury in doing so.
 
"Spike, you didn't have to," said Applejack.
 
"Well, you are the only other nice ponies besides Octavia," Spike coughed as he slowly rose back to his feet.  "I'll be fine.  This is nothing compared to what they did to me before."
 
"You sure are one brave baby dragon.  That settles it, you are now part of the Rebel Cause."
 
"You can't decide that for him!" cried Twilight.  "He's only a baby dragon!"
 
"He's a pretty smart one if you ask me.  Now, how do we get into that chamber?  I don't see no lock, keycard panel, or anythin'.  Just some old painting of a flag with somepony's Nature's Call or somethin' on it."
 
Twilight didn't know what to make of it either.  Clearly the chamber was beyond that door, but she did not have enough strength to focus teleporting inside without any prior knowledge.  The diagrams she remembered about this floor were not descriptive enough to provide her with a layout of what kind of equipment or interior structures were inside.  Back at her village, she heard horror stories of unicorns failing to teleport properly.  Some were inconveniently stuck inside rocks, while others found themselves accidentally dismembered or blown apart.  She could still risk it though, even without a lot of magic power in her.
 
You must set her free…
 
That voice.  She grunted when she heard it, and she looked around to be sure if another had heard it.  All she saw was Applejack's katana emitting a pulsating glow.
 
"Applejack, your sword," said Twilight.
 
"I thought I felt something funny," said the orange pony as she held her katana.  "Whoa, nelly!"
 
The katana flew right out of her hooves and hovered before the painting of an ancient nation's flag.  It then inserted blade first into one of the flag's six stars, turned, and then pulled itself out to float safely back to Applejack's possession.
 
The door didn't just open in a normal way.  It did not swing or slide.  Instead, it flipped and folded over itself in individual square panels for several minutes, eventually revealing a circular chamber surrounded by tall and imposing steel arms rising from the floor and the ceiling.  Lying in the center was a white earth mare with a pink mane and the image of a sun branded on her flank.  Her four limbs were shackled to the ground, and her tail and snout were wrapped in heavy belts that were chain-linked up to the ceiling.
 
Something else seemed peculiar about the chamber.  There, three additional shackles hung from above, but they did not connect to any part of the mysterious pony.  Two looked like they were meant to bind the wings of a pegasus prisoner, and the third for a unicorn's spiral horn.  That pony was neither.
 
"Who is this pony?" asked Applejack.  "Is she the Alicorn?"
 
"I don't even know what an Alicorn should look like," said Twilight.
 
“Whatever the case, let’s set her free.”
 
Applejack immediately trotted over with Twilight to a pony-high computer cart wired to a taller computer console that was more ancient as evidenced by the small buttons that only Spike could press.  Before they did anything, they observed a progress bar for decoding and decryption hovering just above 26.6%.
 
Then it suddenly started climbing.  The chains that shackled the supposed Earth-Alicorn rattled.  Applejack’s katana began humming and shaking in its holster.  The decryption progress jumped to 100%, and the lettering all turned green.
 
“DECODING COMPLETE,” said the computer.  “SECOND ELEMENT OF CREATION LOCATED.”
 
“Bless my stars, that pony is the Alicorn!” Applejack cried.  “Now it’s beginning to find the third one.”
 
The entire chamber suddenly jolted, but Applejack dismissed it as she was too excited at the findings being displayed on the screen.  Twilight and Spike’s retained their attention to the rattling shackles wrapped around the rising pony.
 
“Applejack,” said Twilight.  “She’s moving.”
 
“She better not!" cried the earth mare.  "Come on, only halfway to go, and we’ll find our third Element.”
 
The chamber jolted again, and shackles became noisier. Spike instinctively hugged the leg of the unicorn in fright as the mysterious pony opened an eye straight at Twilight.
 
Set her free.
 
Twilight grunted.
 
“Are you okay?” Spike asked her.
 
“Come on,” said Applejack with her eyes glued on the screen.  “A little more.”
 
The chamber jolted sharply a third time, and the shackled white pony stated speaking.
 
“Twi...”
 
The unicorn’s eye widened.  There was just no way she knew her given name before she even came here.
 
“Twi...”
 
“What’s going on?” Spike asked.  “What’s she saying?”
 
Finally, the Alicorn was on her hooves, and she screamed:
 
“TWILIGHT!”
 
The shackles exploded off her entire body.  The computer screens went black.  Power fluctuated until all the lights went dark, and a giant tremor shook the chamber for several minutes.
 


 

In the frozen chambers above, the sirens wailed, shouting a warning uttered from the digitized lips of an ancient civilization.  Water trickled from the centuries of accumulated interior snow.  The WnDg coolant pipes began bursting, howling a ravenous whinny.  Lights that had not been used for the longest time blinked a foreboding red.
 
The giant prison doors slowly whirred open, revealing into the gargantuan halls the growls of a thousand-year slumber.  A company of Roboponies had arrived to assess the dire situation.  Before they could even investigate, acidic ooze and burning lava already melted them down, but had left one to flee.  That was the thirteenth, when there should only be twelve.
 
The massive door to the prison containing the Changeling Queen was wide open.  Inside, it was empty. 
 


 
The emergency lights finally flickered on.  Applejack threw herself back on her hooves to stare at the blank computer screen much to her dismay.  For Twilight and Spike, a normal-sized white earth pony stared at the unicorn curiously with a tilted head.  After a moment, she then licked Twilight on the cheek before nuzzling her.
 
“Dagnabit!” cursed Applejack as she banged at the computer console.  “I was this close to getting the location of the third Element.  Hey, you get off her!”
 
Applejack drew her katana and waved it at the white pony, who backed away silent in both confusion and fright from Twilight, who she had been nuzzling with unusual affection.
 
“She wasn't hurting me Applejack,” said Twilight.
 
“I didn't like the she was doing, bein’ naked and all. You know where the Elements are sunny-flank?”
 
The white pony just tilted her head.  She tried advancing towards Twilight, but Applejack kept them both separated.
 
"Whatever happened just now," said Twilight, "it probably isn't a good idea to remain here.  We got what we came here for, right?”
 
“I suppose. Can you rustle up some computers to pull whatever is from her mind?”
 
“We could try asking her again.”
 
The main doors to the anteroom exploded.  Spotlights carried by a dozen Roboponies shone inside, and ahead of them was an angry and scrawny stallion donned in a gunmetal-colored armor that appeared too heavy for him.  Yet his outfit did not weigh him down in any way as he paced without hindrance.                
 
“I thought I could use you two as an excuse to deploy my Roboponies,” said Gizmo, "but not in this way.  Do you know what you have done?”
 
“Overthrowin’ the government,” replied Applejack with a sly grin.  “What else?”
 
“You fools!  There is a reason why she has been imprisoned here for a thousand years, and this to prevent the world from being destroyed!  Those beasts who were imprisoned in the level above us, they weren't captured for their crimes.  They were there to prevent that Alicorn from escaping!"
 
“Weren’t you planning on releasing those ancient evil creatures anyway?” asked Twilight.
 
“Even I’m not that stupid to do such a thing.  Even so, I can’t let any of you leave.  Roboponies, kill the terrorists and capture the Alicorn and the dragon.”
 
Suddenly, the Earth-Alicorn dashed in blurring speeds, and the result was that she head-butted a long row of Roboponies down to their haunches.  She blitz-bucked and rapidly rammed every Robopony surrounding her with strength that dented their silver armor.  The Earth-Alicorn had cleared a path and ran off ahead for Twilight, Applejack, and Spike to run as fast hooves and claws could carry them.
 
The mangled metallic ruin of the Roboponies Twilight and her companions passed by were testament of the Earth-Alicorn's speedy strength.  Even with a super-pony on their side, they were still in danger.  The alarms were blaring.  Overhead speakers cried out foreboding words nopony could understand, and the lights continued blinking red.  During their escape, Twilight could not help but notice something purple oozing from high up through the ceiling cracks and vents.
 
Twilight hoped that the Earth-Alicorn was leading them the right way.  The halls were getting darker and darker, and cave formations started appearing.  Even if she had memorized the map of the catacombs, it would have been no use.  The very edge of that map began where the metal floors had ended. 
 
Five shadows suddenly flew ahead of them.  The lead flyer fired a shimmering hook shot that snagged the Earth-Alicorn’s legs.  Descending before Twilight and her group was Gizmo and his Roboponies--with wings.  Mechanical wings that were designed to control the thrust of their back-mounted jet engines.
 
“I told you before,” said Gizmo, the lead flyer.  “I can't let any of you escape.”
 
The four gunmetal and winged Roboponies deployed their electrically charged horns, and fired upon Twilight and her group.  All three received the initial shock, and before they were rendered unconscious by the pain, the electricity suddenly redirected past them. 
 
There it was again, the blue Robopony that Twilight and Applejack encountered in the first level.  It had absorbed all of that electricity fired from its darker brothers, and then deployed its blue horn.  Deep Blue fired four laser-like electrical beams at the winged Roboponies, and if those machines could think, they thought they had advantage of rapid response time.  Yet the attack Deep Blue used behaved like magic, and the beams made sharp turns and curves that penetrated the winged Roboponies, grounding them for good into four piles of scrap.
 
“You dare betray me Deep Blue?” Gizmo cried.  “You piece of junk!  I created you!"
 
Gizmo released the cable holding the Earth-Alicorn and dove down to attack him with a heated laser-whip he fired from his gauntlet.  Twilight and her companions leapt out of the way as the battle between robot and master scarred the ground.  Deep Blue narrowly avoided two direct cuts through its metal flank, and had led the mad scientist away from Twilight and her group.
 
“Twi, let’s go!” cried Applejack.  “We gotta skedaddle!”
 
“But that blue Robopony...”
 
“Let them duke it out for all I care!”
 
But Twilight didn't listen.  She ran back to the fight between master and machine with a strange feeling welling up in her heart.  It was a feeling that she felt when she first beheld the blue Robopony.  It was the same feeling she felt when Shining Armor had suddenly left the village.
 
Perhaps it was the loss of her father that she wanted to find some semblance of him lingering in these dreaded labs and the ancient subterranean prison.  Earth pony science and technology were indeed advanced enough to fool a unicorn to think they magic was being cast, but the way Deep Blue redirected the electricity wasn't anything mechanical.  She witnessed that spell before, but she couldn't remember when. 
 
Gizmo had managed to subdue Deep Blue by “wounding” its mechanical legs and severing its retractable horn.  From his gauntlet, he flexed laser-his whip into a stiffened blade, and prepared to make the final cut.
 
Right then, Twilight teleported in front of him and parried his whip-blade with a Psy-Blade she emanated from her horn.  She pushed him back one step, and in one swing with all her might, she swatted him towards the wall.  He fell, but he immediately rose back to his hooves feeling unscathed. 
 
“Ha!” he boasted.  “I didn't feel a thing!”
 
Right then and there, the Earth-Alicorn head-butted into his torso and shattered his armor.  He finally fell, and he no longer had the strength to get back up from all the severe pain and the blood he coughed up.
 
“Twi, we really oughta stop adopting everything that helps us,” said Applejack as she arrived with Spike riding on her back.  “And you get off her!”
 
The Earth-Alicorn had been licking and nuzzling Twilight again, much to the unicorn's embarrassment.  As for Deep Blue, it managed to rise back to its metallic hooves through whatever advanced technology or unknown magic that helped it.  Its cold presence finally caused the Earth-Alicorn to let go of Twilight, and Twilight watched as it focused its red mono-eye upon her.
 
“Um, thanks?”
 
Deep Blue whirred.
 
The entire unmapped hallway jolted again.  And again.  And again.  On the third, many of the metallic ceiling panels fell, some of which crushed Gizmo, who couldn't even scream in terror.  From above, lava flowed before Twilight and her companions, and from its burning fury many faces and eyes emerged to howl a dreadful tone.
 
Everypony ran for their lives.
 
“What is that thing?” Applejack asked.
 
“It’s Lavan, one of the imprisoned creatures from the floor above,” replied Twilight.
 
“That’s a creature?  That’s just living lava!”
 
“Actually, it’s a living fusion reactor entity that takes the form of lava after the absorption of nearby--”
 
“We ain’t got time for lectures either!  We’re coming up to a cliff!”
 
“I see a bridge!” Spike pointed.
 
The metal and concrete floor had already transitioned to rough rock, and from hereon the prison and the lab had ended.  They had now entered into a cavern system, similar to that of Twilight’s home, and before them lie a deep and wide trench which the only way to cross it was a precariously narrow rock bridge.  The Earth-Alicorn took point, followed by Applejack and Spike, then Twilight, and with Deep Blue pulling up the rear.  However quickly they moved, Lavan was still gaining.  Bridge, or no bridge, the living lava was going to devour them.  
 
Suddenly, explosions rocked the cavern, and a cave-in blocked Lavan's advance.  Descending via a hover cart was none other Octavia, albeit many of her fur and mane had been frosted off.  On her back she carried a large object the size of a cello, and in one hoof she held a strange weapon shaped like a violinist's bow.
 
"Octavia!" Spike cried.  The baby dragon leapt off his carrier and hugged the good doctor.
 
"Octy, I thought you froze to death," said Applejack.
 
"When handling captured Windigoes, we all have to take necessary precautions to unfreeze ourselves," said Octavia.  "But enough of that.  The cave-in I set up won't hold Lavan for much longer, so I'll need to detonate this WnDg Bomb right here."
 
"Well then, leave it here and let's go."
 
"I can't.  This is an experimental device and there is no remote detonator.  I'll stay behind to make sure Lavan and the other creatures are frozen once more."
 
"Octavia, why?" wept Spike.
 
"I may have only been working here for years, but it's no excuse for putting you through such experiments, dear Spike."
 
"But you were nice to me."
 
"I wasn't nice enough.  I should have… I should have found a way to set you free when we first met.  Spike, I'm sorry, but I am partly to blame for this terrible mess.  Miss Twilight."
 
"Yes?" answered the unicorn. 
 
"Please take care of him from hereon."
 
"Octavia, you can't!" cried Spike.  "There has to be another way!"
 
"We gotta go little guy," said Applejack.  She allowed herself the use of Octavia's hover cart, and pulled the weeping dragon onto her back much to his protest.  She sped away to the other side of the trench.
 
Knowing that Applejack would come back and pick them up, the Earth-Alicorn and Twilight resumed their path, but Deep Blue lingered still not far from Octavia as she bravely faced the living lava that gradually seeped through the rock barrier.
 
“You can come with us!” Twilight cried out to the Robopony.
 
Deep Blue shook its head.  It trotted up and nuzzled Twilight before turning around to stand beside Octavia.  On its flank were two crescent-shaped gashes that Gizmo had inflicted, and it was drawn in the same pattern of a pony she once knew.
 
"Father?"
 
In full force, Lavan had burst through the rocks.  The Earth-Alicorn suddenly picked Twilight on her back and sped off down the narrow bridge that slowly collapsed behind them.  Lavan's glow was bright, but not bright enough for Twilight to know for sure what was happening behind her.  At the other side of the trench, Applejack nearly sped off to pick up the remaining two companions.
 
Then the WnDg Bomb had detonated in a flash.  The explosion let out a roaring whinny, rocking the entire cavern that caused the narrow bridge to collapse entirely.  A gust of freezing winds briefly passed their direction, and everything became cool and silent.  In respect for a fallen comrade, Applejack took off her Stetson hat.  Spike instinctively ran to Twilight and cried on her shoulder, but he was not the only soul who lost a loved one.               
 
One lost a pony who was like a mother to him, and another lost her father.  Perhaps twice.