The elevator ride down to the Royal Science Division was normally a very nondescript daily occurrence for Lieutenant Swiftfeet. Up until recent months, it had been the same sort of experience for Bunsen Burner. Now, as with many other things in recent days, something was different. The tremors from earlier were stronger inside the mountain, and the compartment shuttered between each interval as it made its way further down.
“Whatever happens after this is over, I will support you in your trial, sir,” the Pegasus announced as he looked to his old superior, “I’ve seen what you’ve given for this country, and I believe one misstep is not enough to condemn a pony.”
“What happened was a colossal error,” Bunsen Burner responded, “Don’t pretend it was anything but that. I allowed my...obsession with containing radical elements like that human to get in the way of impartial logic. I was for a time a creature of habit, not of reason, and it put us all at grave risk.” He glanced to his once old but faithful subordinate, “And don’t call me ‘sir’: I am now merely a civilian consultant to you and the RSD.”
The Lieutenant nodded, “Understood Si- Mr. Burner.”
A particularly violent rumbled forced the two of them to hold onto the rails of the compartment, and the light above them flickered sporadically.
“What improvements have been made since my banishment?” the old stallion asked through gritted teeth as the quake hit its highpoint.
“We’ve mostly been-“ the Pegasus was slammed into the wall with a grunt, “-focusing on a massive upgrade to the Defense Grid: replacing rusted and out of service motors, hydrostatic pistons, and actuators, making sure the old spells will still operate if called on. We’ve also managed to boost the capacity and efficiency of our Auratech Reactor by 66 percent.”
“Excellent news all around it sounds like,” the old stallion gave a tiny smile.
“The praise should go to Miss Doo if anypony. She may not be a unicorn, but she’s a wizard with this technology through and through,” Swiftfeet paused briefly before affirming more to himself than anypony, “She’s an incredible mare.” The elevator stopped, and the extending shutter slid open with a ding. “In all fairness, we have the situation under control,” he continued as they stepped out, “but I expect that you wouldn’t have come here if you had already suspected that.”
Bunsen Burner paused for a moment in silent thought as he realized what those words meant.
The Lieutenant cracked a small smile, “Well now. It looks like you taught us too well. ‘Adapt and advance’; those were always the words you repeated to me, weren’t they?”
“I suppose I never expected you to move on without me,” the earth pony replied softly, and he sighed heavily, “I’m getting slow, senile, and attached. Still, I won’t allow myself to be useless.”
“What do you need?” the pegasus unconsciously stood at attention.
“Lab 009, and access to forty munitions grade chemical dispersal canisters.”
“Done,” the RSD ops commander replied with next to no thought.
With surely no time to spare, Bunsen Burner galloped for the lab he had requisitioned. All personnel were on high alert and at station with the impending attack, so the halls were devoid of any staff, making it easy for the old stallion to reach his destination in no time.
Slamming the door open, he immediately went for the nearest chalkboard, unclasping the lid on the container around his neck as he did. As he began to scribble as quickly as he could with the piece of chalk in his mouth, the Maiden’s many golden green particles coalesced into her equine facsimile. Using a small amount of her substance as an aural field, she took up four pieces of chalk and set to work transcribing her own chemical formula on a separate chalkboard.
As she wrote, she glanced over to her ‘partner’, “Pardon me, but-“
“Bunsen Burner,” he murmured around the chalk in his mouth, not stopping for an instant.
“Bunsen Burner, did I hear you right in saying you had met a human?”
“Yes. Why?”
The green fluorescent alicorn ghost continued to look at her board as she replied, “No reason. You can call me ‘Maiden’ by the way.”
“Pleasure.”
The both of them finally finished their separate formulae another three minutes later.
“There,” Bunsen Burner raised his voice from earlier as he spit out the chalk in his mouth and looked at the atomic model he had constructed, “The structure is a tad complex, but I’m sure we can find a binding point to link the two compounds..together.”
As he had talked, he had begun to glance toward the Maiden’s board. The compound he saw as he slowly approached was more advanced than any he had ever seen. His jaw continued to slowly drop as he looked further to the right. A quarter of the board there had been donated to a diagram of four interlinking helices, one set looking like a normal strand of DNA labelled ‘A’, with a second set perpendicular to the first named ‘B’ running through it. A long membranous strand ran through both of the sets, acting as hub for the both of the double helices. The genetic sequence looked like two coupled together intersecting spiral staircases, running up and down a segmented column.
“When a Changeling copies the DNA of another species, the primary strand ‘A’,” the Maiden pointed to that part of the drawing, “remains a stable double helix, while secondary strand ‘B’ shifts into the genetic structure needed to maintain its disguise.”
“Four helices,” the old stallion breathed in disbelief.
“For other metamorphoses, like into non-sentient gases, liquids, or solids, some physical properties like color and shape may change, but others like density and the Primary genetic code will not.”
“I’ve spent nearly my entire life fighting an enemy that I thought I knew,” Bunsen Burner exclaimed softly, “And everything I thought I understood has been completely turned on its head!”
“This compound of yours, does it kill?” the Maiden asked as she turned her facsimile’s head back towards her compatriot.
“Yes,” was all he replied.
“Reactor at 95% capacity,” an RSD scientist called out as he read the dials in front of him, “Final checks will be completed in 25 minutes.”
Ditzy Doo nodded her head as she stared down through a heavy glass shield with a tiny smirk, “Good work! We’re almost there.” The Auratech Reactor below, which was shaped like a giant sphere and held in a concave indentation by four pylons, pulsed serenely. Across its surface were many small ports which the unicorns below were firing their magic directly into. Through those ports, if one were brave enough to glance within, one could see a giant swirling multicolored ball of coherent arcane energy. Ditzy Doo turned as she trotted quickly out of the room, “Keep me posted, okay? I’m headed to the Defense Chamber.”
She only made it a little ways away from Reactor Control before she was quickly joined by her co-leader.
“How’re the ponies upstairs, Swifty?” she asked with a smile and a wink.
Lieutenant Swiftfeet replied as if he hadn’t heard her use that pet name for him, “They’re confident in us. Still, they’re justifiably nervous. We’ve only come close to doing a full launch sequence back when Nightmare Moon’s return was imminent.”
“If everything works by the models we’ll be fine,” Ditzy Doo replied reassuringly as they approached a flight of stairs. They each spread their wings and glided down, turning sharply as they descended both the landing and the connecting flight of stairs to the floor below.
The Lieutenant was having a difficult time coming up with the best way to break Bunsen Burner’s return to the grey pegasus. He couldn’t think of one that didn’t end with her irritated with him somehow. While good-natured and very mellow, Ditzy Doo had previously been a part of what Bunsen Burner had called his ‘colossal error’. Having seen his former superior’s less than stellar first impression, she probably wouldn’t feel as chummy with him as she was now if he told her. It would be worse if he didn’t tell her at all, though. Stuck between the rock and the hard place that he was, he still had to come out and say it, as hard as it would be.
“Miss Doo,” he tried to say, but he was drowned out by blaring alarms.
“CONTACT DETECTED. INBOUND HOSTILE FORCE!” a mare called out over the broadcast system, “REPEAT, INBOUND HOSTILE FORCE!”
Ditzy Doo quickly looked at her co-leader before shooting off down the hall, yelling over her shoulder, “Get the troops to the hatches! I’ll get them open for you as soon as I can!”
“Ma’am!” he yelled as he took off towards his own position.
Red lights blinked on, and alarms began to sound along every hallway of the Royal Science Division. The Maiden looked up as if she could see through the hundreds of feet of rock and steel that separated her from the outside world, “They’re here.”
“No,” Bunsen Burner yelled out to no one in frustration, “We still need more time!”
The lab doors slid open as two ponies, a pegasus and an earth pony, shoved a cart loaded with cylindrical dispersal canisters through.
“Just what the doctor ordered,” the earth pony, named Stock, declared as he wiped his brow.
“Figuratively speaking, of course,” Barrel added, “Welcome back, sir! We-“
“There’s no time for pleasantries right now!” Bunsen Burner blurted, “We need to get to the Chem Bank and load these with MRG-03 immediately!”
“Sir!” they yelled reflexively. They pushed the cart back into the hall.
“Can you come up with our recombinant chemical on your own?” Bunsen Burner yelled over his shoulder to the Maiden.
“I’ve already thought of the solution we need,” she replied as she slipped through the doors as they sealed shut around her.
“Give the formula to Barrel then! He’s a good enough chemist to handle this I’m sure!”
“To be fair, Mr. Burner, I typically make explosives,” the Pegasus grunted as he pushed the cart, “Is that what we’re making?”
“Not intentionally,” the old stallion replied.
The Maiden pointed to Barrel, “I’ll be the most helpful with him. I should be able to speed up the process of making our unified compound with my expertise and his hooves.”
Bunsen Burner shook his head, “I still have need of you. The plan I have is less of a high risk option with someone who doesn’t have a need for material existence. I’m more willing to wager just my life then I am to wager two. Since you don’t require a body, your survivability is greater than either of these two.”
“So who’s your friend?” Stock asked as he shoved, “Some kinda ghost or something?”
Bunsen Burner looked back at the green colored spectral alicorn. She shrugged a little, and cocked her mouth at angle. His eyes narrowed a little as he thought before he turned back to helping push the cart forward, “I have no idea. She’s pulling her own weight, though, and right now that’s all I care about.”
They stopped the cart just short of the door that housed the refrigerated Chem Bank. Stock and Bunsen Burner quickly swung the door open, and began to delicately take vials of the potent Marigold Option chemical agent from the vault, placing each of them carefully into a canister each. Meanwhile, Barrel was quickly scribbling notes as the Maiden explained the process and formula for the hybrid compound. Finally, but not soon enough in Bunsen Burner’s mind, all forty of the dispersal canisters were sealed.
“Now what?” Barrel asked.
“I need you to cook up our little cocktail,” Bunsen Burner ordered.
The Maiden interjected, “I’ve thought of a compromise.” Her alicorn form blurred and then reformed into a cloud, before it subdivided into two separate but identical smaller copies.
Bunsen Burner blinked twice in surprise. He then shrugged and placed his hoof on Barrel’s shoulder to get the pegasus’ attention,“Inform Miss Doo of your success when you’re both done. Go!” The old stallion didn’t have time to watch him fly off back to the lab, one half of the Maiden trailing off after him, before he returned the cart, “Stock, with me! We’re headed for R & D. Your brother Lock still works down there, correct?”
“Yeah. What’s your point?” the muscular stallion grunted.
Bunsen Burner looked at him ominously, “We’re activating Project: Dragon’s Bane.”
“It hasn’t passed the safety tests since its last round of upgrades!” the unicorn protested as he followed after the Bunsen Burner, “The ejection system still constantly jams, and the conversion sequence could end up crushing you. If you step into that thing, there’s a good chance it’ll be your armored, rolling coffin!”
“We’ve run out of options, Lock,” he replied as he moved a set of rolling stairs towards the side of a very large set of treads, “the enemy is at our doorstep, and anything at all that could delay them in order to allow our forces a coordinated defense is exemplary in my book.”
“It takes two to pilot that monstrosity,” Stock pointed out, “You need a gunner if you want to be half effective with it.”
“No, you are not offering yourself up for this,” Lock turned to his brother angrily, “Neither of you are getting in that thing!”
“There’ll only be one pony riding in this vehicle,” the old stallion declared as he meaningfully stared at the Maiden’s glowing form, “But I hope to still have some help.”
The Maiden quickly looked over the large vehicle and nodded, “So this is what you had in mind. I should be able to interface with its circuits.”
“Excellent,” Bunsen Burner declared as he lifted the hatch that led into the beast and jumped into the dark interior, “Let’s begin loading those canisters! There’s a war on, after all!”