//------------------------------// // Making Things Right // Story: Radioactivity // by nucnik //------------------------------// A bright flash of light was all the warning Celestia and Luna had to hide their shipping cards before they witnessed a true sight for the gods. Twilight Sparkle stood in the center of the Throne Room, legs wide apart, balancing her swaying body. Huffs of breath streamed through her bared teeth at regular intervals and a frizzled mane completed the look Celestia had grown accustomed to. The wide grin and the perky eyes indicated that Twilight was here not due to another breakdown from her fear of failure, but from the sight of a giant carrot mentally hanging in front of her. The only question now was, what was it? “My dear and faithful-” Celestia began with her most regal voice, only for Twilight to intervene. “Princess!” she let out a shriek; her head twitched so hard it made the Guards wince. The more entrepreneurial among them questioned just how strong her vertebrae were to deal with that. And how that could be turned into a weapon. She was about to start blabbering about a possible exciting, fantastic, unbelievable, you-wouldn’t-believe-it- discovery that she urgently needed a luxurious apartment in the Empire for – Why, Cadence’s bedroom would do nicely, thank you very much! – when an annoying noise caught her attention. The Geiger counter was still chirping. With a swift move that caught everyone by surprise, Twilight snatched the Geiger counter and threw it to the side in a manner that would make AJ proud and Rainbow swoon. So she had brought some radiation back with her, what of it? All the ponies going to and from the Empire must have brought enough to make a small nuclear reactor by now. The main thing now was for her to focus enough to squeeze some more attention from the Princess. Celestia, obviously. The one that mattered. Only the counter didn’t stop chirping. It had been exposed to the radiation, but if there was one thing Twilight was certain about – and she was certain about two things, thank you very much! – it was that she had specifically designed the counter to measure the radiation around it, and to therefore ignore its own contamination. Magic tended to make engineering easier. And yet, the Geiger counter was making noises. Twilight slowly looked back toward the device. The cogs in her mind shifted with an audible squeak and a thud, and Twilight shifted her gaze back to Celestia, all hope washed clean from her face. Celestia scowled. Somehow, she had anticipated this. Not the device on the ground; that was something new. No, that sticky smudge of satisfaction crawling down her brainstem didn’t appear for that. It was the result of Twilight bringing something to Celestia she couldn’t figure out by herself and was now expecting the busiest and prettiest pony in all of Equestria to sacrifice her precious time for in order to explain. It was a masochistic feeling. “What is that?” Celestia asked, unsure if she should regret the question. “Huh,” Twilight sighed, confirming her mentor’s fears. “It’s a Geiger counter.” It was a grim moment. Celestia hadn’t heard of a Geiger counter before, which meant she had no quick answers to give. There was only one way she was going to get Twilight out of her mane and that was to take the dangerous leap of asking her more about it. The words were as painful to pronounce as they were calm on the outside. “And what might that be?” Celestia could practically feel the back of her tongue ripping in protest, but the deed was done. The answer wasn’t as dreary or as full of techno-babble as she had expected, though. It was anything but that. “A Geiger counter is a…” Twilight started talking, frantically looking at the device and back to Celestia, while performing ever more hoof-waving as the explanation unfurled. Celestia had understood what the device was by the end of the first sentence, but there was no way she was going to stop Twilight in the midst of her panic attack. It was way too awesome! Instead, she quietly nodded along in contemplation to hide the joy she was feeling at the sight in front of her. They say being a ruler is hard, but all Celestia did was delegate problems to others – usually Twilight, – eat cake and work on maintaining the magic that kept the Crusaders from getting their cutie marks. That was the stuff worth living for! Moments like these? Just perks of the job. “…and now it’s here too!” Twilight finally finished in a loud cry, almost catching Celestia off-guard. Although the way Twilight reached out with her hoof toward her, as if to touch her, would have been enough to snap Celestia out of her daydream anyway. Celestia chuckled. In part it was to make Twilight feel that she was worrying over nothing, which she was. Another part was to block out the thought of how creepy it would have felt had Twilight’s hoof actually made contact. There was being dependant, and then there was this. And a final, small part, was a genuine bout of laughter at what had just gone down. This was why Celestia never needed a court jester. But now it was time to calm Twilight, lest she throw a fit. “My faithful student,” Celestia briefly stopped mid-sentence and glanced around at the deja-vu of always saying those exact same words, “You’ve discovered an omnipresent radiation that glows across Equestria?” “Yes!” Twilight took her answer as added fodder for her panic, instead of the presentation of long-standing facts that it was. “If we don’t do anything about it, we could face horrible mutations across generations of ponies!” Luna narrowed her eyes. Celestia opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off. “The more time this radiation is here, the more damage our DNA will sustain!” Twilight started walking in semi-circles to wear off some of the panic. It didn’t work. “If we don’t stop this now, we’re going to end up with foals more mutated that those of the Apple family!” “And we at least know why those happen,” she was going to add, but held herself back as everypony’s eyes went wide. A strange silence fell in the Throne Room. Somepony had to do something, and who else could it be but the self-proclaimed ruler of Equestria? “Oh, my dear Twilight,” the happy, motherly voice hid the pang of pain and disappointment well, “It’s always been like that.” Celestia really did think that Twilight would have read about it in a history book. Or were those banned a few hundred years ago? Celestia couldn’t say. There were some huge bonfires around that time, though, but that was a problem for the past. “Huh?” Twilight grimaced, just to make herself look more incompetent; Celestia was sure of it. “Yes. There has always been this radiation, as you call it. What do you think I meant by the Harmony that permeates this great land?” Celestia outstretched a hoof at one of the stained-glass windows, only remembering that she wasn’t on a scenic balcony when she was already facing the window. It was a nice window, though, full of symbols and whatnot. She forgot what they meant, but they were ornate and therefore royal, somehow. She quietly gulped at the thought of how she would have looked like if she would have accidentally pointed at an image of Discord in the window further down. Now she could at least pretend it was deliberate, so she kept her majestic pose, passing the ball to Twilight with her silence. Twilight wanted to ask Celestia why she was pointing at a glorified planting calendar that must have been made in a time when most ponies couldn’t read and needed pictures to figure out that forks didn’t belong in one’s eye. Only she suddenly remembered that the Cakes had a whole bunch of paintings in their house. Twilight had never paid them much thought, but now she could distinctly recall the shape of a fork somewhere among them… “No time for that!” she quietly snapped at herself, forgetting it was rude to talk to yourself in public. Celestia finally noticed the lack of attention that Twilight was giving her. She was safe from having to come up with a plausible cover-up for her royal and majestic behavior, but now she had to keep it that way, which meant nipping any dissident thoughts in the bud. “I sense that you’re troubled, Twilight,” Celestia cooed as she took a few slow steps towards her favorite plaything faithful student. “What’s wrong?” Celestia leaned down to look Twilight directly in her sad, teary eyes. Luna’s hoof started twitching and her wings tried to spread. It took a lot of willpower to hold back the full-on hoof-pumping her body wanted to do as she mouthed “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Much to her disappointment, and to that of the Guards, who had been anticipating the same outcome for years, Twilight didn’t see the situation in the same way. She had never been very good at reading these kinds of moments, even if they existed only in the minds of the ponies behind her. So, instead of embracing Celestia, and getting thrown in the dungeon as a result, she shook her head in surprise. “I don’t understand,” she nearly whispered, “You’re saying that everything is radioactive?” Celestia bit the inside of her lip. She had given Twilight a fairly strong hint that radiation should be referred to as Harmony, lest the peasants start getting ideas about being poisoned due to Celestia’s indifference to the whole thing. She was immortal, after all. It wasn’t her problem the others weren’t. Celestia smiled softly, as a silent death-threat to Twilight went through her mind. “Yes, my faithful student. The Harmony is all around us, binding us into one!” she proclaimed as only she knew how. She stopped herself from adding, “And giving us those awesome glow sticks!” Rave parties just weren’t right until those things came about. “But…” Twilight started thinking again, which was always a sign of trouble. Celestia ignited her horn and sent a nearly invisible layer of magic onto her own face to stop it from contorting from the growing rage. What was it now? Why wasn’t Twilight happy? Was she going to pester her about the dangers of Harmony and how something must be done? Will she lecture her on the responsibility of leaders? Cause trouble and mayhem? Or - worst of all – continue talking?! All those questions and more twirled around Celestia’s mind until Twilight finally finished her question. “Where did it come from?” Serenity. Tranquility. Peace. Whatever you want to call it, that was what Celestia suddenly felt. Along with a massive weight being lifted from her chest, but that might have just been Discord. Where was he, anyway? Well, now was not the time to worry about that, because that question sounded wonderful. It sounded beautiful. It sounded like an opportunity to end the conversation. The vision of a Twilight-less Throne Room filled Celestia’s heart with glee, and for the first time in ages – or since the last time Twilight had panicked about something, so three days? – Celestia genuinely smiled, knowing that all will be well. She was almost too relaxed in her retort. She started talking like she was explaining her new weight loss routine. “Well, there was that whole war with those bipedals a few millennia ago, but I never quite linked it to radiation. What were they called, Youmans? Humounce? I can’t seem to remember.” Celestia looked at the ceiling for a second and trailed off, before she nonchalantly swept her hoof through the air and continued, “Come to think of it, they did keep threatening me with nukes, whatever those were, but I don’t know how I responded to that.” Twilight was looking at her, eyes wide open, her body turned at an angle, almost as if she was frozen mid-escape. “Twilight?” Celestia asked quietly, afraid that she had gone a tad too far in her answer. Twilight whispered, “Humans?” “What?” “Humans?” Twilight repeated in the same quiet tone, “As in, apes, only smarter?” “Y-Yes, why?” There was something ominous about this, and for the first time in her life, Celestia felt fear. “And we had a war with them?” This was definitely the kind of questioning Celestia was expecting to go through before being led to the guillotine, and her body responded by making the next answer as short and to-the-point as possible. “Yes.” There was another long silence. Finally, Twilight grew a gentle smile. Than a normal smile. That quickly became a grin. “Ha, ha, ha, ha…” Twilight started laughing ever louder, before bending one knee to the ground and tapping on it with her other forehoof. “HA, HA, HA!” Celestia recoiled in slow motion as she regained her composure and started preparing the restraining spell. “Oh, Princess!” Twilight cried in between bursts of laughter, “You really got me good!” Confusion. That was all Celestia felt now. Twilight had never talked to her in that way before, and Celestia didn’t know how to react. The annoying screech of radio static in her mind grew until it displaced all thoughts but one. Twilight wasn’t taking her seriously. And if Twilight – Twilight! – wasn’t taking her seriously, who in Equestria had any respect left to give? The single realization threw Celestia’s perfect world onto a path of disarray so well structured that it didn’t so much rival Discord’s chaotic way as it complemented it. Even as Twilight grinned and wiped at her tear-stained fur with her disrespecting hooves, Celestia already saw visions of burning towers and flaming pitchforks. But underneath the panic induced visions was an underlying truth, or at least it was in Celestia’s mind. Twilight’s complete and utter ignorance of the glorious ruler was merely the symptom of a deliberate crumbling of order that was already underway. She desperately needed to find the pony that started it. But before she could act on that, Twilight continued. “Humans were real? Come on!” Twilight clutched her belly for a moment in a moment of genuine laugh overdose. “Oh, that was a good one.” “It was?” Celestia replied, her mind jumping back and forth from forming an action plan and analyzing Twilight. “It was,” Twilight reassured her favorite ruler and picked herself up off the floor. “Who put you up to this – no wait, it was Lyra, wasn’t it? I should’ve known.” And there was the pony. Maybe. “So, Lyra knows about the humans, does she?” Celestia asked in an oddly monotone voice. “Oh yes, she just won’t shut up about them,” Twilight happily nodded. “I see.” Celestia pulled a scroll from a nearby wall and inscribed something onto it. “Why?” Twilight asked, as Celestia sent the scroll away in a puff of magic. “No reason,” her mentor smiled. “No reason at all.” Then she remembered something. Twilight might have been Twilight, but even she probably knew what she was talking about when it came to radiation. Because science! And who really knew what effects that had on the ponies? Now that the whole of society was at breaking point, Celestia needed to actually do something to prevent it falling apart. If that meant releasing an anti-radiation spell across Equestria, if only to put an end to a panic she was certain Twilight had already started, then so be it! “Now,” Celestia royally decreed, “Let’s fix that radiation!” Twilight was happy, but only for a split second. Her eyes suddenly went wide as she realized what she was about to lose if Celestia goes through with that. She quickly leaned into Celestia before the goddess could ask what in Tartarus was the matter with her. For a good minute, Twilight whispered something into Celestia’s ear, and when she was done, she looked at her idol with all the expectation of a filly expecting to be rejected for a dance but secretly hoping for a good answer. Celestia philosophically stroked her chin and looked at Twilight. She deliberately kept her gaze unfeeling, just to see how long before Twilight started shaking. But Twilight went into freeze mode instead. If she didn’t give her a reply now, she was going to be stuck with her for the whole night. And nopony wanted that. “All right,” Celestia playfully said. “Here’s what we’ll do.” She quickly whispered something into Twilight’s ear. Twilight and Celestia shared a friendly smile, each for a different reason, and walked out to the balcony, each building up her magic with every step. Two batponies flew overhead, on their way to Ponyville, spears in hooves. Far away to the North, Cadence dropped her wine glass right past the edge of the dinner table at a stark realization. And the disturbance she felt from the sudden appearance of a giant magical dome over the Crystal Empire was only a part of it.