Dear Princess Celestia,
I know I have already written to you twice with details of the most recent dopant we have faced, but I feel I should write a formal report in any case. You will be pleased to know that both of the fillies who were previously incapacitated by the Bird Memory have now fully recovered, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders have started repairing their clubhouse (again) and devoted themselves to trying everything possible to discover who they are and what they’re supposed to be. Thankfully, there has been no sign of another dopant appearing while we were distracted by their injuries.
It seems that the Gaia Memories have been enhanced somewhat since you dealt with them. I believe Nightmare Moon mentioned this during our encounter on Begins Night. In this case, it seems that a Memory can now be used by a filly with no cutie mark, granting a ‘faux mark’ which I understand lasts a day or two before fading. This means that there may be some temptation for the young to become dopants momentarily in order to make it appear they have gained their cutie marks.
In this case, there were three fillies known to have used the Gaia Memory. It seems that the Memory was capable of ejecting itself in the instant before a Memory Breaking attack connected, allowing the user to take the full impact as well as subjecting them to extraordinary emotional stress as the Memory disconnects from the body. In this case, the Memory could be broken either by defeating the dopant forms of all three users, or by separating the Memory from the first user. We do not know which of these was the decisive criterion, and this is one experiment I would be happy to never perform.
In any case, here is my usual report on this month’s dopant.
Gaia Memory: Bird
Harmony Techniques Used:Flutterdash / Rainbow “Ultimate Form” Double Dash (for once two of my friends seem to be in disagreement about the name of their combined form) – Lightspeed Ultimate Rainboom Stare Strike (Though if I come to document our experiences properly for the sake of history, I believe I may have to find more concise alternatives for some of the names Rainbow Dash has chosen)
Twinkie – Party Conjuring Cannon (Which scans better than ‘Magic Party Cannon’, although I am somewhat reluctant to demean unicorn magic with the name ‘conjuring’)
Flutterjack – As yet nameless attack (Possibly a name relating to ‘bucking’, the technique normally used by the Apple family to –
Twilight Sparkle stopped composing her report at the distinctive sound of a baby dragon coughing a small ball of flame. She looked up from the typewriter and turned around.
“Spike…” she said slowly, “Did you just send the Princess my shopping list again? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my report, because I’m still typing it. It better not have been one of the stories I –” she stopped suddenly as Spike held up a scroll bearing the distinctive royal seal.
“From the Princess,” he explained, “Want me to read it out?”
“Just the key points, for now.”
Spike broke the seal on the letter, and his eyes rapidly scanned the florid script.
“She says… she’s proud of you, glad the kids are okay. I guess she already heard about them being out of hospital. She thinks there might be a lesson to be learned from the way this dopant could be beaten by an expression of trust rather than by violence. Not sure what lesson she means there. And she says Applejack makes a good Element of Honesty, maybe even as effective as she would have been with the Element of Metal…” It was clear that conjured up some strange mental images from the way Spike’s eyes focused on the middle distance and he stopped reading. Twilight had something on her mind too, but probably not so enthralling.
“Anything else?” she asked after a few moments had passed, “Does she say anything we need to know?”
“There’s something about how a family needs to be close before they can fully trust each other, so close that something like being a dopant couldn’t stay hidden. But once they are that close, trust can be their best defence. And the Champions of Harmony need to be that close too, that you should check up on each other until you’re ready to trust that somepony has your back without even giving it a second thought.“
“We already know each other well enough,” Twilight seemed absolutely certain. “Although I’m sure I read a paper once suggesting that having proved your reliability can have a positive effect on morale, leading to more decisive action. That was for soldiers, though, not heroes. I wonder if it still applies?”
“That’s interesting,” Spike said, “Maybe you should do an experiment to… umm?”
“To validate the hypothesis!” Twilight beamed, her mind racing through new ideas faster than her mouth could keep up. “That sounds like an incredible idea. I did find some laboratory equipment in the basement when I moved in, among all the junk I had to throw out. I wonder if we can get a royal grant for the purpose of upgrading… no, we’re not a university. Yes, that’s an idea, we’ll ask the… Does Ponyville have a university, Spike?”
“I don’t know,” he answered diplomatically, stroking his moustache thoughtfully as he read the last paragraph of the letter again. He was already certain he shouldn’t read it out to Twilight, as she would stubbornly set herself against the idea if she knew what the Princess had actually said. All he could do now was to encourage this experimentation. For reasons of science rather than actual distrust, of course. And he was sure that if there really was something wrong with ‘that unashamed party animal’, it would become clear soon enough.
Spike would keep an extra eye out; Celestia trusted him to look out for Twilight’s best interests when she was too close to a problem to see the truth. The Princess had told him that for as long as he could remember, and he just had to hope that now wouldn’t be the instruction he had to prove it over. Pinkie Pie might be spontaneous and irrational at times, but she'd never let her chaotic nature hurt her friends.