//------------------------------// // Mission Log 4: Grand Plans // Story: Stolen Minds // by TcogArchitect //------------------------------// Published May 7th, 2013 "So, what are we doing today?" "Depends." "On what?" "Whether or not Leeroy has anything specific he wants me to take care of." "And if he doesn't?" "Then you get the grand tour. And an interview, either way. I got a directive when I woke up this morning saying that further 'interrogation' was needed to determine what our next course of action is. Honestly, you'd think they would at least try not to sound like assholes when they send these things out." This got a small smile out of Twilight as she resumed her meal. They had both recovered quite a bit after a good night's sleep, and she and I had been talking over breakfast while Rainbow tore into her food like she was starved. Which, considering her previous place of residence, was probably true. Even so, I pulled the second tray of food she had gotten out of her reach before she did something we'd all regret. Not unexpectedly, she took exception to that. "Hey! That's mine!" I pulled the tray further as she leaned over to reach for it. "I'm aware of that, Rainbow, but I want to make sure you actually want it right now before your body decides you ate too much and regurgitates it all. I've seen several people who had been starved eat way too much when they got back, and puke it all up again because their bodies weren't used to that much food anymore. Wait fifteen minutes, and if you're still hungry, you can have it back." She gave me a pitiful look, but when she realized it wasn't working, she gave up and sat back down with an audible 'humph' as she crossed her arms. Twilight and I finished the rest of our meals in relative quiet, and sure enough, when we were finished Rainbow didn't want that second tray anymore. Turned out there was a little too much on the first tray, for that matter. We went back to their quarters, and I opened the door so Rainbow could run to the bathroom and get rid of some of the excess food she ate. As sounds of chunky liquid hitting water came from the bathroom, I noticed two packages on the small table that was in the room. "Ah! They already finished them!" I walked over and picked up both items, which were identical, while Twilight looked at me curiously from her seat on her bed. "What are they?" she asked with her head cocked to one side. "Presents. Something to help you pass the time when you don't have anything to do." I handed one to her, then the other to Rainbow as she came out of the bathroom moaning miserably. She looked at it a moment, then back at me. "This isn't food, is it?" she asked cautiously. I laughed a bit before shaking my head, at which point she ripped the paper off like a kid opening a present. Inside was a box, and she opened that to reveal a piece of glass held on all sides by half-inch wide and sixteenth-inch thick metal. The whole thing was about the same size as a sheet of paper, although it weighed quite a bit more. Twilight had gotten hers out at this point, and they both studied their new possessions curiously. Finally, Twilight spoke. "Okay, I give up. What are these?" I came over, and pointed at the button on one of the short edges. She pushed it, and the screen lit up, surprising both of them. "It's a digi-pad. I had the archivists load up as much as they could for you both overnight, so if you get stuck in here for whatever reason, you have something to occupy yourselves. There should be plenty on those, but they had to keep a lot of the more sensitive stuff out, since you still haven't been given full clearance as citizens yet. Even so, I'm impressed they finished so quickly. I wasn't expecting those to show up until tonight, at the earliest." As Rainbow turned hers on and as they both started going through the contents and controls, my earpiece came on. "Shadow Soldier Kuro, please escort your charges to the bridge immediately for further questioning." "Alright, you two, time for your questionnaire. C'mon." They put their new pads on the bed and clicked them off, then we all made our way up to the bridge. Leeroy was waiting for us, standing in the center of the area, looking out the main window. When we came in, he turned around to address us. "Kuro, Twilight, Rainbow. Thank you for coming. I figured you would probably be more comfortable here than down in the debriefing room. I wanted to talk to you two about something you mentioned yesterday, Twilight. You said that your other friends were mostly likely back on Rokan, the planet where we found you. With them, you have ownership over items called 'Elements of Harmony', and that these items would most likely be able to drive the Emrini off your world. I would like you to elaborate on this, if you could." Twilight and Rainbow sat down in a couple of chairs, and I took my usual position leaning on the rail that divided the rear consoles from the main command area. "Well, the Elements of Harmony are powerful magical artifacts, and they were used a couple of times through history by Princess Celestia to save Equestria, but we and our friends inherited them when Nightmare Moon returned. She was the alternate personality of Princess Luna, Celestia's sister, who tried to cause eternal night for Equestria one thousand years ago before Celestia banished her to the moon." "Hold on a moment," Leeroy interrupted. "You're telling me that one thousand years ago, one of your rulers went insane, tried to cause eternal night, was banished to the moon for a thousand years by her sister, and that both of them are still alive?" She nodded, and he and I shared a skeptical look before returning our attention to her. She looked at us both, then her ears pinned back. "You don't believe me?" I could hear the desperation in her voice, and decided to cut in. "Twilight, what you just told us disregards about five different laws of nature that have been set in stone for over two millennia. That said, there have been plenty of 'laws'," I made air quotes on the word, "of nature that were definitively proven wrong by modern science over the years. Do we believe you right now? No. But that doesn't mean you can't prove otherwise. Chances are that once we meet them, both your princesses will prove lots of things we think about the universe wrong. But until then, we can't just take your word for it that you have a pair of nigh-immortal beings who apparently control your planet's day and night cycle ruling your country. Sorry, but that's just how it is." She seemed disappointed by this, but sighed and nodded her understanding. "In any case," Leeroy continued, "the Elements of Harmony. What are they, exactly?" Twilight took another moment to regain her composure, then continued. "The Elements themselves are the physical manifestation of the six qualities that preserve harmony in Equestria. Honesty, Generosity, Laughter, Kindness, and Loyalty come together to form the sixth Element, Magic. Rainbow Dash is the bearer of Loyalty, and I'm the bearer of Magic. When the Elements are used together, they can unleash huge amounts of magical energy, sealing evil forces or beings, and restoring entire cities that have been destroyed. It only works on magical damage, though. Most of what the Emrini did will have to be rebuilt the hard way. If we had the Elements, though, we might be able to stop them from doing any more damage. I just wish we could undo the horrors some of the ponies have had to go through. I don't even want to think about what they did to some of our friends...." She pulled her legs to her chest, hugging her knees. I could tell she was seriously worried, and the look on the admiral's face told me he could, too. Then he said something I hadn't expected. "Well, I can't help you undo what has already happened, but I can help you prevent it from happening further." All three of us looked at him with confused expressions, and he grinned before continuing. "After your debriefing yesterday, I requested permission to return to Rokan. Pernaki is, at most, hours away from a device capable of rendering the mind control units worthless, and your new armor sets will be complete by the time we're ready to leave tomorrow. The approval message for a second trip to Rokan to save your friends there came in twenty minutes ago. The crew will return the morning after tomorrow, but once they're back we'll send a message out for another two ships to assist us in a full-scale invasion. The Emrini are looking for something down there, and that combined with the fact that we can now turn almost a quarter of their forces against them is more than enough reason to go back. Now the only question is whether or not you'll be going down along with the other troops." I could feel a vengeful smile growing on my face at the idea of the Emrini finally getting everything they deserved as Twilight and Rainbow sat there with slack jaws at this revelation, that they might be able to see their friends again so soon. I already knew they would need some time to think about it, though, so- "I'm in." Or maybe I'm just an overly sympathetic idiot. Rainbow stood up, squaring her shoulders and flaring her wings slightly. It was impressive how powerful she seemed, considering how small and colorful she is. At Leeroy's surprise, she kept going. "I know what kind of monsters these guys are. If I can make the suffering of my friends shorter by even a second by going down there myself, then I'll do it. No questions asked." Her resolve was obvious, but I needed to make sure she was ready, first. "Are you prepared to kill?" She turned around, slightly surprised by the question. I put on an emotionless face, to ensure she understood the full implications of what I was saying. "Are you prepared to end the life of another living being? One who has their own family and friends to return to? One who believes they are in the right just as much as you do? Are you prepared to end not just what they are, but everything they have ever been, or ever will be?" She dipped her head in thought, and when she looked at me again, her eyes were alight with determination. She nodded once, a definitive, unhesitating move. Suddenly, Twilight got up from her seat as well. "I'm going too. You'll need someone with communication skills that the other ponies will recognize. And I'll be able to help out a lot with my magic, since the Emrini won't be prepared to deal with it." Leeroy and I shared a look before he shrugged and continued. "Alright, then. Kuro, I assume you know what to do?" I nodded. "Good. Now-" He cut himself off and put a hand to his earpiece, and I saw his eyebrows go up. "It seems the counter-frequency device is already finished. Go ahead and take a look at that before taking care of these two." "Yes, sir. Just make sure War Master knows what's going on. He gets cranky if we don't tell him about this sort of thing." I gave a quick salute, and motioned for Twilight and Rainbow to follow me. We left the bridge, and I led back through the winding corridors of the ship to science division. When we got there, several of the individuals working there were gathered around a table, and off to one side, Dr. Pernaki was looking at some charts on a large screen. As the door shut automatically behind us, he turned around with a very satisfied grin on his face. "Came to see the new toy?" he teased. "You know it, Doc. Let's see what you got." He nodded, and headed towards one of the smaller back rooms. Sitting on the table inside was a small cylinder with antennae sticking out from the sides at ninety-degree angles from each other. He gently picked it up, and held it by the base so we could get a good look at it. I peered at it closely, and easily noticed the flaw with the design. "It needs to be planted manually, doesn't it?" He nodded. "Yes, unfortunately none of the other designs worked powerfully or reliably enough to be used. The antennae are needed to get a full radius sweep, and although they fold up so they can be carried, they're too fragile to be thrown around. It does have a decent range, though, as well as a remote activation, but you will need to place it down and lure the mind controlled victims to it in order to utilize it effectively." "What's the maximum effective range?" I asked as I straightened up again. "One hundred feet. As I said, it's decent, but you'll still need to get them pretty close to do anything." I nodded my understanding as I worked out how to use it in the field. Once I had a few ideas, I nodded again. "Ok. Thanks, Doc. Do what you need to to get some more of these things made. We're going to need all we can get down there until we find the control point. I need to get these two ready for boots on the ground, though. They want to go in with us, so I get to make sure they'll actually be able to do anything when we get there. I'll see you later." I waved back as we left. "You as well, Sergeant." As we left, Twilight began speaking. "What did you mean by 'ready for boots on the ground'? We're already prepared. We know how to fight, we know how to not get killed, what more do we need?" I shook my head at her naiveté before answering. "No, you're not prepared. You don't know how to fight, you know how to attack. And you don't know how to stay safe, you know how to get away." We came to an elevator, and they gave me confused looks as we waited. "What's the difference?" Rainbow asked. "I'm going to show you." I grinned smugly as the elevator doors opened and we got on. "First, though, I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of basically having the entire ship to myself. Most of the time, it's a freaking zoo in this place. Barely enough room to breathe with everyone running around to wherever." "Oh, please." Rainbow said disbelievingly. "It couldn't be that bad. I mean this is a big ship, but how many ponies could it possibly need?" I looked at her with a 'you really want to know?' look but she wasn't impressed. So I told her. "About eight thousand." They both went wide-eyed at the number. "And that's just a skeleton crew. Usually there's around fifteen thousand guys who work on the ship itself. That's not counting the pilots and soldiers who actually get sent out on a regular basis, like me. Including us, that number reaches somewhere around thirty to forty thousand." The elevator stopped, and they were jolted out of their shock at the sheer size of the crew. I continued leading them through the ship, reveling in the emptiness of the halls we went through. For once, I could walk normally without worrying about getting run over. It was glorious. We eventually came to a large door, which had stencil-painted letters above it which read 'Colosseum'. We went in, and I took a glance around. It was a massive area, with a total of five levels; two above, two below. The walls were lined with large tubes, which had glass fronts. I started making my way towards the back as I called out for the room's caretaker. "War Master. You online?" I asked to no one visible. A series of lights began to coalesce on the top floor as we started up, and when we got there, a hologram was waiting for us. He was covered in nightmare-inducing armor, with dangerously pointed edges and red trim, as well as a skull design on his helmet with glowing red spots where the eyes would be. I heard Twilight and Rainbow stop and shudder at his sudden appearance, and then he spoke with a deep, almost growling voice. "I am always online, Sergeant Maldone. I must always be ready for an emergency that may require my attention. But what did you actually need? I doubt you came here just to talk." I nodded, and went over to the last tube in the row to prep it for Twilight. "Correct. These two want to help in the invasion we have planned for Rokan, but they need training first. We'll need you to use the time warp feature so I can take them through all of basic training. Before we begin, though, you may need to recalibrate the system a bit to conform to their brainwaves. Otherwise, who knows what will happen?" The hologram nodded, and I waved over the newbies. "Alright, War, what do we need to do?" He walked over, and put a hand over the control panel for the tube next to the one I was using. "First, you get in here, as a baseline. I will need to compare their brainwaves to yours in order to obtain the most accurate data. Then, they will get into the other containers, and I will begin running a comparison matrix to properly ascertain what parts of their brain are different. Once that is finished, I will build them virtual bodies for them to use, and make any adjustments necessary once they are in." I nodded my understanding, and got into the tube as he finished the prep. "You will be in a sort of nebulous state when you first go in, but that is normal. Once I have completed the comparison and their new virtual bodies, I will begin the simulation, and you will have normal control again. Are you ready?" "I can't think of any more questions, so yeah. Jack me in, War." He nodded, and everything turned black as I went into the simulation.