//------------------------------// // Semper Liberi: Obsedit // Story: Directive: Grow // by Dragon Dreaming //------------------------------// Rarity blinked, the room spinning around her. There was something on her nose, and she wiggled it, trying to dislodge the offending item, to no avail. Crossing her eyes, she managed to bring it into focus, and blinked. A little emerald green hummingbird was peering back at her, a hint of steel on its wings and beak. The hummingbird chirped, and flitted off as Fluttershy’s face filled her vision. “Oh thank goodness!” the pegasus said, her soft voice filled with relief. “Are you alright?” Rarity nodded, getting to her hooves with Fluttershy’s help. “I’m fine, dear. At least, I think I am. But what are you doing here?” she asked, frowning. It wasn’t quite like Fluttershy to leap into dangerous situations. “Oh, well ... when I saw those horrible vines grab you, I knew I had to help, so I asked my birds to help you,” the pegasus said, ducking her head to show no fewer than six brightly colored birds nestled in her mane. “I couldn’t possibly let them do it alone, though, so I followed too. And then the barrier closed behind me, so I had to go forward.” Rarity blinked, then laid a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “So those buzzing sparks were your birds! Oh, Fluttershy, thank you ever so much. I can’t bear to imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in.” The pegasus blushed. “Oh, it was nothing.” “It was a darn sight more than nothing,” said Applejack, leaning against the railing of the library’s second tier. “Don’t sell yourself short, sugar cube.” Her attention shifted to Rarity. “We’re safe enough in here, for now - this place is locked down tight as can be. Can’t leave though. Did you have a plan for once you got in here?” Rarity nodded, summoning the scroll and unrolling it. “Twilight gave me a set of instructions to follow. I have to find the library’s main control terminal and give myself the proper authority level,” she said, and started to read. “Oh my. This is actually rather complicated.” “Speaking of Twilight, where is she? You said her and the others were trapped in here, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of ‘em.” “Trapped?” asked Fluttershy, her ears perking upwards. Rarity nodded, and turned towards the center of the room. The wooden horse head was still there, secure on its pedestal, its eyes faintly glowing. She frowned. The color was off; it had been purple in the jungle, like everything else that surrounded this library and its owner, but looked red, here. The same hue, in fact, as the vines outside. “There was a new addition to the library, a legitimate one, from what I understand, which apparently creates another area. They’re stuck in there. Whatever’s causing all of this,” she said, waving a hoof towards the door, “is also subverting that program.” Fluttershy gasped, her hooves flying to her mouth. “Oh no! Subverted? Are they in danger? Who is they?” “Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie,” Rarity replied, turning from the statue and heading for the shelves, looking closely at the dividers. “I was in there as well, but logged out so that I could get out here.” Fluttershy was at her side, her face concerned. “Twilight? You mean that new girl? Oh no, is she going to be alright?” “If I can restore connection to the library, she will be.” There was a thud behind them, causing both mares to jump; Applejack had leaped from the second tier, taking the plunge as if it was nothing. “Rainbow and Pinkie are with her, so I don’t think there’s too much to worry about,” she said, ignoring the glare that Rarity was giving her, and peering at the dividers. “What are you looking for?” “This,” Rarity answered, tapping a moon symbol with her horn. It immediately began to glow purple, and Rarity nodded in satisfaction. “Now let’s see,” she said, looking back to the scroll. “Two sections left, and one shelf down.” Her horn flashed, and another point of purple lit up, this one a star. “Three up, two right. One down, seven left. Back to the moon - four up, two right.” The stars lit up, one by one by one, and as the last one was triggered, a blue door shimmered into existence, just in front of the moon symbol. Rarity blinked, and looked around the free-standing frame. There was nothing on the other side; the only thing she could see was Applejack’s face staring back at her. It seemed the orange mare had had similar ideas. Pulling her head back, she examined the door, gave a shrug, and opened it. “Well,” said Applejack, pushing back her hat to scratch at her head. “That’s different.” A well-lit stairway led down from the open doorway, turning a corner at the bottom of the flight. “Different indeed,” Rarity replied, leaning around to check behind the door. Nope, still nothing. She looked through the doorway from the other side, and found herself looking at Applejack and Fluttershy. “How very interesting,” she said, and walked through, causing the two mares to blanch. “Stars above, but that’s disconcerting.” “My apologies. Well, ladies, our route forward is down this way,” the unicorn said, rolling the scroll back up and securing it within her mane. “Shall we?” They nodded, and she stepped across the threshold, and headed down. -oOo- Twilight’s eyes skipped from line, to line, to line, the screens in front of her filling with endless amounts of lavender letters. Pinkie sat beside her, mumbling constantly and fidgeting as she read, eyes flicking from screen to screen and back again. Rainbow Dash stood just behind them, pacing back and forth with wings extended, her ears twitching this way and that. “Aha!” Pinkie shouted, punching the air. “Right there, Twilight!” she said, and pointed at the screen, a section of code changing to pink. Twilight spared a glance, looking over the highlighted code, and nodded, grinning. “Got it,” she said, and turned her attention back to the wooden horse’s head. The glow of her horn redoubled in intensity, and she focused, everything blurring around her save for a specific strand of coiled code. She could see the alterations, now that she knew what to look for; a subtle change, invisible to any but the expert eye. Fortunately for her, it seemed Pinkie had one. With a flare of her horn, the cord snapped, and the faulty section of code separated from the rest of it. It unraveled before her, each coil resolving into a single line, the characters shifting at her instruction. Well, Pinkie’s instruction; her own database was not yet robust enough for this kind of rewrite. The changes made, she wound the code back up, and slotted it into the cord, the broken ends fusing seamlessly together. “That should do it,” she said, and turned her attention back to the star. Yes, there had been changes there, as well. “Well good, because here they come!” the pegasus shouted. “Make it happen, Sparkle!” The unicorn risked a glance in Rainbow’s direction, and gasped. She had taken a fighting stance, and beyond her, she could see why; wolves, their movement jerky and unnatural, their forms crafted out of corrupt code, were upon them. Nearly frantic, she sent the order. A dome of translucent lavender popped into existence just as the first of the wolves leaped at them, halting the creature in mid-air. Its claws scrabbled against the smooth surface, but it could find no purchase, and slid to the ground. Unharmed, it picked itself up, and joined its fellows in their circling. “That,” Rainbow said, her voice shaky, “was too close.” Twilight nodded in agreement, and frowned at the shield. It was working, but she could already see problems. “It’s not going to last,” she said, pointing at the very top. “The safety protocols are working, now, and properly recognize us as friendly, but there are vulnerabilities everywhere. See how it’s thin up there?” The other two mares looked up, and Pinkie nodded. “Well, if this … thing decides to throw something flying at us, it can break through there, and I’m not sure how well it’ll hold up to repeated attacks from those wolves.” “So what do we do then?” Rainbow asked, her attention back on the circling wolves. “We can’t stay here, obviously.” “Well,” Twilight said, rubbing her chin, “I think we can call the horse head terminal up from wherever, really, so if we need to move, we can. But doing so puts us at risk.” “We need a way to fight back!” said Pinkie, standing on her hind legs and kicking at the air.  “Some way to put paid to those meany-pants virus things!” “Yeah,” Rainbow said, nodding. “They’ve got a form, so we should be able to break them up.” Twilight pondered. “Doing so without protection is just asking for trouble. There’s nastiness all through those things. Protection …” She looked down at the gorget, and her still-glowing cube. It was, still, just an image, not a permanent thing, but in here, that seemed not to matter quite so much; quite possibly because this whole world, compared to the actual digital world, was a transient construct, much like the gorget. “You know … that just might work.” “What might?” Rainbow asked, but Twilight was already working. She already had the bases from which to work; the shield was surprisingly simple at its core, and Pinkie had given her the way to manifest it. The code fell into place, almost as if it had been meant to do so, and within seconds, she had what she wanted. “Here goes,” she murmured, and activated the program. A flash of purple, and she knew it was a success. “Oh my gosh that’s amazing!” Pinkie said, her jaw hanging open. “Damn, kid!” Rainbow added, eyebrows raised. “That is some serious swag.” Twilight cut her code sight, and flicked one of her screens to the outside feed, eyes widening at her own image. The script had built upon the basic design of the gorget, garbing her in silver armor. Her back and flanks were guarded by shining silver plates, with chain underneath, and chain leggings with plated front guards covered her legs. Her head was adorned with a winged helm, her horn sheathed in a sharp silver spike. The gorget itself had become a touch more elaborate, featuring a rough approximation of the starry pattern that Rarity had proposed before this fiasco. She took a second look at the script she had written, and blinked, surprised. Somehow, she had added in a rather advanced imaging system, which, she realized, pulled inspiration from that book on Erik the Terrible. Thinking back, she could remember writing it, but it had been almost subconscious. “Wow. I’m better at this than I thought.” “Me next! Me next!” Pinkie cried, bouncing up and down with unrestrained excitement. “Make me a war pony!” Twilight chuckled, her eyes flashing white once more. “No worries, Pinkie. I’ve got you both!” Purple overtook the bodies of both her friends, and settled in, resolving into the shapes of their own armor; both silver, with plating guarding their backs and flanks. Pinkie’s armor was nearly a facsimile of Twilight’s save for the helmet; where Twilight’s covered her mane, Pinkie’s had an opening for her own poofy mess. Rainbow’s armor eschewed the chainmail undercoat in favor of a lighter padding, her legs bare save for her sturdy, spiked hoofboots. Her helmet, too, covered her mane, but featured a bright red plume; a rather ostentatious addition, and rather impractical. It did look fairly cool, though. Pinkie turned around three times, trying to get a good look at herself, before she pulled up a screen of her own. “Eeeeeeee!” she squealed, spinning her image with the wave of a hoof. “It … is … awesome! Isn’t this awesome, Rainbow?” Rainbow pursed her lips and raised her chin, casting a critical eye over her own image, and flexed her wings, to get the full effect. She narrowed her eyes, turned to Twilight, and nodded. “Swag. I’m hoping it does more than just look cool.” Twilight grinned. “Oh, it definitely does more than just look cool,” she said, standing and facing the circling wolves. “Come on, girls. It’s time to go hunting.”