//------------------------------// // 6 - Gatekeeper // Story: Friendship is Software // by Rough_Draft //------------------------------// Despite Applejack’s initial concerns, Twilight was proven right when she’d estimated that they wouldn’t experience too much danger leaving Oldtown. According to the Sysadmin’s field data, the two hundred or so kilometers between the city and Access Point Omega were barren, devoid of human settlements or wild animals. It took the better part of a day for the Sweet Apple van to make its way southeast, kicking up small clouds of dirt and dust the whole way down. However, just to be on the safe side, Rainbow Dash had gone and borrowed her company-sponsored repulsorcraft from its warehouse in East Oldtown. At least, she’d told Twilight and the others that she’d borrowed it. The hasty grin at that remark left her feeling unsure, but the sight of Rainbow’s fixed-wing glider flying overhead was a real comfort to the whole group. Like having their own guardian angel, complete with blinking red navigation lights. It was a few minutes after sundown when they finally reached the access point. Applejack’s van came to a bumpy halt in the middle of a grassy clearing. Spike was the first one out, panting and barking happily as any canine outdoors could be. “Fresh air! Oh, thank you Celestia!” he cried. To see his tail wagging, one might suspect it was about to fly off in its own. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” While Twilight and the other girls stumbled out of the van, Rainbow Dash circled overhead for one more loop. She let out a deep “Wahoo!” and twisted the control handlebars to one side. Her glider emitted a soft but rising whine that echoed across the clearing as she dropped her legs and hit the ground running, barely losing any of her momentum. Twilight ducked out of fear—afraid of both the collapsing steel wings that threatened to take her head off and of the maniacal grin on Rainbow’s face. While the girls dusted themselves off and Rarity made several unflattering comments about the arid landscape, Twilight knelt down in the dirt. It wasn’t easy, having to piggyback off the source code of so many other Grid users while trying to pick out relevant data points, but she did her best. “I gotta say, Twi,” Applejack broke in, her boots crunching over the dried grass, “I was expectin’ something else when you showed me those coordinates.” She spread her arms wide. “None of this looks like it oughta be called ‘Access Point Omega,’ ya know?” Twilight paused her scan long enough to smile at Applejack. “Well, think about it. If you were going to build an entrance to the most secure location in all of Terra, wouldn’t you try to hide it from plain sight?” Applejack considered it for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I might.” “Security through obscurity,” Twilight concluded, feeling a wave of nostalgia at that phrase. She hadn’t used it since leaving the Institute. But it wasn’t enough to make her wish she was back there. Even kneeling in the dirt in the middle of nowhere seemed more important to the fate of Terra than all her exams and research projects combined. On her visor, a patch of dirt suddenly turned hot orange, followed by a ping inside her ear. Twilight grinned and cross-referenced it against Celestia’s records. This had to be the place. “Spike!” she called out, jumping to her feet and brushing the dirt from her knees. “I need you!” “At your service!” the uplifted dog replied. He was at her side in an instant, raising tufts of loose dog fur into the desert air. Twilight nodded at the patch of dirt, blinking her right eye to get a screenshot and transmit it across their private network. “I need to start digging right about… there.” “Digging?” Spike fixed her with a sour look. “Everyone else gets to go on awesome coding jobs and I get to dig?” Twilight was used to his petulance and she’d developed a number of responses to it over the years. However, this mission had given her a rare opportunity. She knelt down beside the dog and whispered into his ear, “Come on, boy. Rarity’s watching. Just think how brave and strong you’ll look in her eyes.” No sooner had the words left her mouth than a single line of blue text appeared in her visor. LadyCastellan: You know I can hear you, right? To which Twilight responded, just as quickly: StarSwirl70: Just play along. Fortunately, Spike wasn’t privy to the chat going on between the two coders. He was too busy glancing between Twilight and the patch of dirt she’d marked out for him. Finally, he let out a growl, which was the best approximation his upgraded throat could make of a human sigh. “Fine! Fine! I’ll do it.” And with that, he padded across the open ground, leaving a trail of fresh paw prints in the dirt. Twilight smiled and turned around to face the rest of her team. By now, Rainbow Dash had gotten her glider folded up into a heavy but convenient backpack. She fidgeted while Applejack took a rag to the implants over her eyes, wiping away dust and grit from the twin mirrors. Rarity and Fluttershy were standing off to the side, conversing quietly, and Pinkie Pie was… Missing. Twilight raced over to the van, immediately running a scan for foot and boot prints. She recognized everyone’s after a few seconds, only to find that Pinkie’s feet were headed in a completely different direction. Which, when she considered the bubbly-headed girl, was entirely too accurate a statement, but it usually wasn’t so literal. “Is something wrong, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked. “I’m not sure.” Twilight looked over at her new friends, raising her voice a little. “Did anyone see where Pinkie Pie got off to?” “Nope,” said Applejack, frowning as she gave Rainbow’s mirrors one last polish. “Nah,” added Rainbow Dash with a casual shrug. “That one goes where she wants, Twilight. Always has, always will.” “But…” Twilight clenched her fists, and when that wasn’t enough to express her dissatisfaction, she kicked her feet at the ground, sending off bits of dried grass and a cloud of dirt into the air. “But we’re supposed to be a team! We’re supposed to stick together!” “I’m sure she had a very good reason for wandering off,” said Rarity. She flashed a grin at Twilight. “And besides, how far could she go out here?” She had a point, but Twilight still didn’t like it. This was the closest anyone except for Special Services or Celestia herself had ever gotten to the Vault’s entrance. And that Vault was ground zero for the most devastating cyber attacks that the State of Arcadia had ever known. It was only reasonable for them to be on their guard with such network threats lurking underneath their feet—or in the air above their heads. And Twilight wasn’t about to sacrifice a single innocent life in the pursuit of containing those threats permanently. If I were that kind of person, she reasoned, I doubt Sysadmin Celestia would have chosen me to lead this team in the first place. She was in the process of writing up a quick message to Pinkie, asking her to be careful and report in soon, when she felt something shift inside the myriad stream of code running in the background of her visor. Twilight saved the message to her Drafts folder and pulled up the team’s code immediately. What she got in return was a set of azimuth readings and biometric readouts. And then, in big red text, a groupwide alert. Wonderblaze21: Everybody take cover! Twilight didn’t have long to process what it meant. All she could do was duck and run back toward the van. She heard a whimper from her left, and without even thinking about it, she held her arms out and let Spike jump into her embrace without even slowing down. Applejack held the door open for everyone as they piled in. She waved them in with a panicked expression. “Get in! Get in now! That’s it! Come on, now!” Then she looked over her shoulder, blanched, and jumped into the van herself, pulling the door shut behind her. “What on earth is going on?” Rarity exclaimed, crowded in somewhere behind Twilight and Rainbow Dash’s shoulders. Rainbow pointed out the back window of the van. “That!” Everyone peered out at the evening sky. Twilight cringed when she noticed a black silhouette cutting through the soft gray clouds and faint stars, plunging the land below into darkness. Its shape was too broad to be a service drone or a military bot, and too small to be a repulsorcraft. But it had wings and something like a tail, which trailed behind it like an flash ad banner. And she was pretty sure that neither drones nor repulsorcraft actually roared. “Fluttershy…?” Applejack sounded a touch scared, but Twilight could tell she was trying to keep it together for everyone’s sake. “You got any idea what in tarnation that critter is?” A high-pitched squeak was all she got in response. Twilight looked around the van, finally spotting Fluttershy behind Rarity and Spike. She was holding the dog to her chest, cuddling him with the terrified determination of a little girl holding onto her teddy bear after watching a horror sim. “Fluttershy,” said Twilight, gently pushing her way toward the other end of the van, “it’s okay to be scared. We just need your help figuring out what to do next.” “Wh-why me?” “Because you’re an expert when it comes to animals.” “No, I mean…” Fluttershy looked up at Twilight with large, quivering eyes. “Why did I have to get picked for this? I don’t like it out here and I want to go home!” “You an’ me both, Shy,” Applejack answered. Throwing her arm around the frightened girl, she added, “But look here. Poor Twilight can’t do it all by her lonesome. We’ve gotta stick together and see this thing through to the end. And that means putting all our skills together.” The moment Applejack had finished speaking, though, the whole van shook from the impact of whatever that beast was slamming its whole body into the chassis. A chorus of screams and panicked cries filled the vehicle and Twilight went tumbling against Rarity, who bit off a very unladylike curse. Fluttershy shook her head and squeezed Spike even tighter against her chest. The dog yelped in surprise and looked to Twilight for help. Twilight rolled her eyes and knelt down beside Fluttershy, cramped as the space next to her was. She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and stared into the nonspace of her visor’s display. StarSwirl70: QuietMouse, it’s me. StarSwirl70: Pretend for a moment that we’re at your clinic. StarSwirl70: Pretend that you’re faced with a critter who’s gotten out of control. StarSwirl70: How would you talk it down and stop it from hurting anyone? Outside, the flying beast let out another roar, this time much closer to the van. Its cry was strong enough that everyone could feel it inside the vehicle and huddled closer together. Twilight stared down at Fluttershy, who buried her head in Spike’s fur. StarSwirl70: Pinkie’s out there somewhere. StarSwirl70: Think, Fluttershy! In the real world, Fluttershy let out a sound halfway between a hiccup and a sob, muffled by the dog’s fur under her nose. Then she looked up, blinking back tears that made Twilight want to cry out of frustration and not an inconsiderate amount of terror. On her visor, she read: QuietMouse334: There’s a program I use. QuietMouse334: Go to my database! QuietMouse334: Run “Stare.exe”! QuietMouse334: Hurry! As soon as she saw the filename, Twilight didn’t even hesitate. She dove into the code stream from Fluttershy’s end and opened the right database folder on the first try. One picosecond later, she was jumping across streams to Rainbow Dash, using her own data to cobble together elements of her patented targeting software with the Stare file and a one-way channel from Spike’s network relay. The new hybrid program took only half a minute to assemble. She thanked Fluttershy with a pat on the head and gave Rainbow Dash a thumbs-up. The daredevil nodded and stared out the back window as Twilight activated the program. At the same time, green text flashed across everyone’s displays simultaneously. Anonymous has accepted your net request. Now running Stare.exe. Another roar split the din, but it came out as a cry of anguish and terror. Even Twilight felt awful when she heard it, but it was worth the effort to see that monstrous thing drop down from the sky and land hard on the ground several yards away from the van. Its wings flapped once and its tail shook like a reed in the wind before the creature let out a final whimper and went completely still. Inside the van, no one breathed, let alone said a word. Then Spike pulled his head away from Fluttershy’s shoulder and glanced at Twilight. “Did we get it?” “I think so.” Twilight looked over at Fluttershy, who was still shaking and sobbing. “Something tells me, though, that it’s not dead, only stunned.” Fluttershy nodded mutely in response. “Nice going there, Shy,” said Rainbow Dash, leaning back from the window. Her sudden confidence didn’t quite cover up the actual tremor in her voice. “I never knew you had that kind of power in ya!” At first, Fluttershy didn’t respond. Then, before Twilight could offer some more reassurance, she let go of Spike and bolted for the side door, all but shoving Applejack and Rarity out of the way. She ignored their protests completely and threw the door open, letting in the cool night air as she jumped out and ran straight for the fallen creature. “Wait!” cried Twilight. She leaped out and dashed after Fluttershy, almost catching up to her before she got any closer to the beast. “It’s too dangerous!” “No, it’s not!” Fluttershy called back, still moving at a desperate pace. “Look!” Twilight did look, then, and stopped dead in her tracks. Now that they were out in the open, she finally had her first clear view of the creature. It was broad and covered in fur, with a thick golden mane and long black whiskers sprouting from around its nose. But the part of it that resembled a lion ended around its back, from which a pair of giant leathery wings extended, along with the chitinous segments of a scorpion’s stinger. The tail and the wings seemed to move of their own accord, forming a protective barrier around the lion—although a quick scan of Fluttershy’s database revealed that the creature’s official name was manticore. And from this distance, Twilight could hear the manticore’s soft mewling. It didn’t sound anything like a wounded beast. It was the pained cries and purrs of a housecat. Even when Fluttershy knelt down beside the massive beast, and Twilight felt sure that it was going to bite her head off, the manticore didn’t pull back. It let out a warbling groan and cringed back from her outstretched hand. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Fluttershy said, loud enough for Twilight to hear. “Tell me where it hurts.” Another warble from the beast, this time with more force behind it. Fluttershy nodded. As she did, Twilight checked back into her data stream. New information came flooding in from the same anonymous source that Rainbow’s software had targeted only a minute ago. Twilight knew a little about biochemistry and how neuroware could react to it. She was able to pick out a few familiar lines of code from the blizzard of raw data that Fluttershy was now processing at lightning speed. Something about malware? And a black tentacle? It didn’t make sense, but then, Twilight didn’t have much experience with the thought processes of sub-sentient animals like this manticore. It was clearly an uplifted and modified creature, using a natural lion as its base, but whoever had engineered it hadn’t bothered with cognitive or language upgrades. Finally, Fluttershy added some input of her own. Some of the gritty code running through the beast’s system began to dissolve. Twilight recognized a command for sedatives and then watched in real-time as her friend took out a small gray box from her pocket. She held the device against the side of the beast’s neck and the manticore’s eyes rolled up into its sockets. Within a minute, the creature was purring and snoring and Fluttershy continued to stroke its mane, radiating love just like when she’d first met Spike. “He was scared,” Fluttershy said, turning around to look at Twilight. She seemed calmer now and wiped away her tears with her sleeve. “The poor thing got infected with malware and escaped the Vault. He didn’t know what he was doing.” Twilight nodded and crouched down beside Fluttershy. She gave her a comforting smile. “Then it’s a good thing it ran into you when it did.” “He,” Fluttershy corrected. “He. Of course.” Behind them, the ground shook as the rest of the team came running after them. Spike skidded to a halt next to Twilight and stared openmouthed at the slumbering manticore. “Holy guacamole,” he murmured. “You can say that again, sugarcube,” Applejack added, panting a little as she dropped beside Fluttershy. “You okay, Shy?” “She’s fine,” Rarity insisted, though that didn’t stop her from throwing her arms protectively around Fluttershy. “Just promise me you won’t run off like that again!” Twilight smiled at the reunion, but only for a moment. Then she froze. “Speaking of runaways,” she said softly, “we still haven’t found—” “You guys!” Everyone turned as Pinkie Pie came running up to them from the other side of a distant hill, right where the sun had set earlier. At the same time of her sprint toward the van, a message flashed over the group chat feed. Cupcaaakes: Oh, and you found a friend! Cupcaaakes: I made one, too! Twilight felt uneasy when she saw a blue light materialize over Pinkie’s shoulder. The light swirled into the shape of a small humanoid figure, albeit one that fizzled in and out of existence. Even without diving into its source code, she could tell that the AI wasn’t in the best condition. It was probably loaded from core to surface with all kinds of system faults and data corruption. Oh, Pinkie, she thought, what have you exposed us to now? Beside her van, Applejack had set up a portable heater and raised a dark blue tarp to keep out the bone-deep chill of the desert. Everyone was now huddled together for warmth and protection, basking in the reassuring glow of the heater—except for Fluttershy, who insisted on sitting beside the injured manticore and running a deep-tissue scan with her medkit. Not even Rainbow Dash, her oldest friend, could convince her to leave the beast’s side for a second. But the team was gathered around more than the light coming from the field heater. Sky blue light radiated from the floating hologram of the Vault-bound AI that Pinkie Pie had managed to locate out in the wilderness. “See, as soon as we stopped here, I had to take care of some business!” Pinkie explained with her customary tact. Her cheeks reddened for a second, showing more self-awareness than Twilight had ever given her credit for. “And then I saw something move and I thought it was a cutesy-wootsy jackrabbit that Fluttershy might want to play with! But then my little birdies”—six pink abstract holograms popped to life over her shoulder, only to fade with a wave of her hand—“told me it wasn’t a critter, but software and that’s way cooler! So I said hi and he said a bunch of gibberish, so I made him my friend and now here we are!” The AI nodded its small, human-like head. “In—in—indeed. My—my—my designation—nation is F-Flash S-Sen—Sentry…” “Howdy, Flash.” Applejack stuck out her hand, then thought better of it and nodded instead. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” “L-l-likewise…” Twilight knew a thousand little tricks about software restoration and was already cycling through her inventory for a handy solution. But as near as her scans revealed, the damage Flash had taken was pretty severe. “I’m sorry,” Twilight told him. “I’m glad you were able to escape, but you’re infected worse than that manticore.” She shrugged toward the beast, which let out a soft, sad warble. “If we were in Citadel, I’m sure the Sysadmin or the Institute could fix you.” “Well, I’m sure that’d be lovely, but we don’t have that kind of luxury nor the time,” Rarity added. She bent toward the blue AI, peering deep into his form. Or maybe into his soul, if AI could be said to have one. “Hmm. Tell me, Flash, what sort of work were you programmed for?” The AI’s voice suddenly dropped an octave, clearer than it had ever been before. “Retrieving data…” He paused for a moment, his image blurring into a blue haze before reasserting itself. Then he added in his normal voice, “I w-was re-responsible for the ad-ad-ad-admin-administration of O-O-Oversight Sector Q-3, ad-adjutant to Se-Senior Ad-Administrator Sun-Sun-Sunset Shimmer…” Rarity looked back at Twilight. “You’re part of the Institute. Does that name ring a bell for you?” Twilight shrugged. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a way to access Institute alumni records, but if this Sunset really is a Senior Admin, then I’d say she’s probably one of the best coders around.” “Not to mention,” Rainbow Dash said, crossing her arms over her chest, “she’d have to be pretty trustworthy for the Sysadmin to have her running the show…” She nodded at the ground beneath the AI. “Down there.” Twilight shivered, but it wasn’t because of the desert wind picking up. She thought she’d been ready to face whatever awaited her in the Vault, so long as she had friends by her side, but now she was having second thoughts. If taking on a crazed manticore and a virus-loaded AI was little more than scratching the surface, who knew what horrors and madness were still lurking beneath their feet? How many hundreds of thousands of Vault-bound, both organic and virtual, were now in Nightmare Moon’s thrall? Celestia had trusted Sunset Shimmer to manage the deepest levels of the Vault. Now, if Flash’s report was accurate, it sounded as though a high-ranking, security-grade coder was under the direct control of the Nightmare virus. So what did it say about the Sysadmin trusting Twilight and her friends to handle this crisis? Her thoughts settled once she felt a paw land on her thigh. Twilight looked down at Spike, who was giving her a cool, no-nonsense stare as only a loyal dog could. “You’re doing that guilt trip thing again, Twilight. I thought we talked about that.” “Whoops,” she said and grinned. “Um, right. No more ruminations. Back to the task at hand!” To her left, Rarity was still focused intently on the little AI. She waved her hand up and down the length of the hologram. Flash Sentry lifted his head in time with her hand, though the jerky motion of his body caused him to glitch out once or twice. Giving him a satisfied nod, Rarity withdrew her hand and stared off in the distance. As she did, the network node in the back of Twilight’s neck tingled and she felt—as well as saw—a basic net request from Rarity accessing her personal files. The sensation was a little odd, almost invasive, but because it was from a trusted source, she let the request go through. Another tingle came and went, and Rarity smiled. “Oh, I see. Rather childish, really.” “What is it?” asked Twilight, rubbing at her neck. Rarity gestured at the AI. “Nightmare Moon, as you call her, has loaded up our charming little friend here with several terabytes of crashware. I’d recognize it anywhere.” While this statement got an understanding nod from the rest of their friends, Rarity was gracious enough to lean close to Twilight and add sotto voce, “My nightclub, darling, attracts both Oldtown locals and tourists from all over Arcadia. You won’t believe how often some joeboy tries to phish for my customers’ private data once they’re on the premises. I’ve had to read up on all the latest security patches and antiviral literature just to stay in business.” Twilight looked at Flash Sentry, who glitched in and out of existence for less than a picosecond. “And where was Nightmare Moon sending you?” “T-to who-who-whom would be bet-bet-better,” the AI responded. His whole image twitched to the right as he added, clearly fighting for control, “The-the-the CAP-P-P…” Now that guilt was back, mixed with a dash of horror for a wonderfully dark churning in the pit of Twilight’s stomach. She didn’t need to look around to know that her friends were reacting the same way. Rarity, though, was fast to recover. She allowed herself a sniff of disapproval and smiled. “Well, we certainly can’t allow that to happen! Never fear, my good bot! We’ll exorcise that nasty virus from your core in no time at all!” Twilight blinked. “Uh, we will?” “Of course, darling!” Rarity added a sly wink. “Or did you forget the purpose behind your little accessory?” “Oh.” Then, as her meaning sunk in, Twilight grinned. “Oh, right!” She settled back onto the ground and closed her eyes. “Girls, if you wouldn’t mind pitching in? Rarity’s going to need all the help she can get.” Applejack and Rainbow Dash didn’t need any convincing. The two of them exchanged a look, nodded, and sat down beside Rarity, giving the same thousand-yard stare as she was. Twilight giggled as another, much stronger tingle hit the back of her neck. New lines of code poured through the infinite datafields of her visor, twisting around in an antiviral bulwark that could resist the worst of Flash Sentry’s crashware. The data stream only grew stronger once Pinkie entered the fray. Twilight didn’t see why the text of her code had to be such a nauseating shade of pink, but she didn’t have to worry. It disappeared into the bulwark that the other three coders were assembling. Looking over her shoulder, Twilight called out, “Fluttershy! Please hurry!” Lifting her head from the furry mound of the manticore, Fluttershy looked pained. “I can’t!” “Yes, you can!” Twilight grimaced as she felt Rarity’s code injection slip its way past the first layer of Flash’s internal defenses. Already, the hint of the Nightmare virus was leaving an awful taste in her mouth. Some hideous concotion of motor oil mixed with blood and bile, she decided. “One minute, that’s all!” Fluttershy hesitated for another moment, but Twilight refused to look away. She offered a prayer to Celestia that this would work, that they really could nip this threat in the bud— And then Fluttershy patted the manticore’s head, whispering something so soft that not even Twilight’s cochlear implants could pick it up. In one fluid motion, Fluttershy was on her feet and racing over to rejoin the team. And as she ran, her own code entered the mix, linking byte by byte into the shield wall that Rarity was weaving together with rapidfire shell commands. The back of Twilight’s neck tingled so much that she could barely stay focused on the antivirals. Meanwhile, Rarity was sweating bullets. She clenched her hands into dainty fists and scowled at the sky blue AI that cycled through several glitched-out images. Twilight glanced between the rest of her teammates, bolstering them with short-lived bursts of text. StarSwirl70: You’re doing it, everyone! StarSwirl70: Keep it up! And then, as she sank deeper into the network, Twilight’s eyes alighted on the root of the issue. StarSwirl70: Rarity, there! StarSwirl70: Open folder marked “Deep Virtual Storage.” StarSwirl70: Hurry! Rarity let out a victorious squeal, and the next thing Twilight knew, she was wincing as the back of her neck exploded—more or less. What really happened was a sudden surge of data being yanked free from the AI’s databanks—black, deadly crashware that only the most depraved of minds could even think of writing—and sent it into a quarantine folder, bouncing off Twilight’s network implant and straight into the deletion folder stored in one of Spike’s built-in processors. The uplifted dog responded to this intrusion with an unhappy growl, but at last, the deed was done. Twilight let out a sigh and fell back onto the ground. At the last second, she slid her hand behind her neck and kept the network implant from getting covered in loose dirt. The last thing she needed right then was a whole new set of infections to worry about. Relief flooded her from head to toe when she heard Flash say, “Th-thank you for your assistance. I am pleased to re-report that I am now eighty-ni-nine percent stable with minimal data c-corr-corruption.” “You’re most welcome!” Rarity answered, bowing her head like the keynote speaker at an Institute seminar would do. “Oh, and Spike?” “Got it!” Spike wagged his tail, giving the whole team a smug grin of satisfaction. “And… deleted! Say goodbye to that crashware!” Applejack laughed. Her hat tilted back to form a nice cushion for her head against the side of her van. “Well, ain’t that something! Fluttershy, when all this is said and done, I gotta bring Winona over to your clinic for an upgrade or two!” “It’d be my pleasure!” Fluttershy called back. Twilight craned her neck around, spotting her hasty retreat back toward the still-sleeping manticore. She blinked and sank into the data stream again, going for a quick peek at Fluttershy’s network. Nothing but medical diagnostics and her own transgene software. Nothing to worry about then. Well, except for the Vault. But Rarity had given them a hand with that. “Flash Sentry?” Twilight groaned and propped herself up onto her elbows. She fixed the AI with a tired smile. “Not that I wish to spoil your good mood, but do you think you could get us inside Access Point Omega?” “C-certainly,” the AI replied, zipping over to Twilight’s side in less than a second. “Please submit your credentials for legitimate entry.” “Credentials…?” Twilight had to stop and think about that. She dove into the data packet on her private server, digging past all the personnel records and Nightmare virus history that Celestia had provided. When she found the right data, she smiled and said out loud, “Here we go. Access Override: Hyperion Theta one-zero-two.” Flash Sentry’s image rippled. “Credentials accepted.” And then the whole ground shook with the might of a thousand earthquakes. Twilight scrambled back toward the van, as did everyone else, as a magnificent cloud of dirt and pearl-white smoke rose up from the ground several meters to their right. The air was filled with the terrifying clank of metal doors sliding open, followed by an equally loud hum of several generators coming to life for the first time in decades. The noise faded abruptly. In its place came a soft amber light from the hole in the ground that had just formed. Twilight got up from her spot and took a cautious step toward it. Her friends got up, one by one, though they stayed in a huddle behind her. Even Spike could only come as far as wrapping himself behind her legs. A second later, the air over the entrance fizzled. Flash Sentry reappeared over the gap, now looking a few shades brighter than before. He gave a courteous bow to everyone watching and said, “Welcome to the Vault. Please watch your step.” Twilight blinked. She’d expected worse than this. Then again, she’d didn’t know what to expect from the Vault. It was kept secret and out of public reach for a reason. Rainbow Dash shook her head and grinned. “Last one to the door’s a faulty core!” “You’re on, sugarcube!” Applejack said, laughing as she sprinted ahead of the daredevil. “Ooh, wait for me!” cried Pinkie Pie. She yanked Rarity by the wrist and dragged her along without much protest. Spike watched them run in with an expression that Twilight recognized as a knowing smirk. Then he shrugged—not an easy feat for a dog of his stature—and took off at a mad dash for the entrance, his tail wagging as if he’d caught scent of a rabbit in the woods. Twilight couldn’t be prouder. That little guy was getting more courageous all the time. She moved to follow, only to stop and remember that they were still missing someone. Looking back, she saw Fluttershy give a quick nuzzle to the now-awake manticore. The massive creature had lumbered onto all four paws, using its scorpion’s tail for balance. Fluttershy gave it one last hug and patted it on the shoulder. The manticore purred in delight as it let loose a mighty flap of its wings, and in a single bound, its broad shape went whoosh and retunred to the skies. Twilight couldn’t tell if its lack of speed had anything to do with the sedatives Fluttershy had given it or if the beast was just that much friendlier now. By the time she came running up to Twilight, Fluttershy was panting. And blushing. She doubled over and put her hands onto her knees for support. “S-sorry to keep you waiting!” Twilight patted her on the back. “It’s no problem. So long as we go in together, okay?” Fluttershy nodded, smiling but no less anxious. “Okay.” Feeling like a big sister—like the way Cadance used to treat her back in the day—Twilight reached out and grabbed Fluttershy’s forearm. As soon as Flash Sentry winked into existence over her shoulder, she put on a brave face and led her friend down into the Vault.