//------------------------------// // Up And At 'Em // Story: Anima: The Creation of a Princess // by PortalJumper //------------------------------// Anima: Creation of a Princess Chapter 1: Up And At 'Em "Spike, could you go get my notebook?" Twilight called from the basement of Golden Oaks library. "Which one?" he called back. "You have, like, a jillion of them!" "The one that has my cutie mark on the cover!" "Okay, that narrows it down to about half-a-jillion!" With an exasperated huff, Twilight clomped all the way up to her study to find it herself. Spike was a very good assistant and a great friend, but there are some things that a mare just needs to do herself. "Nice to actually see you, Twi," Spike greeted." Normally you're only a vague purple blur in the corner of my eye that darts to the kitchen and darts back down to your lab again. Don't you have some official royal business to take care of??" "Spike, just because I'm an Alicorn doesn't automatically mean I have to run a country and do all the political wheeling and dealing that Celestia, Luna, and Cadence have to. I'm still getting used to this whole wing thing, too; what good would I be as an Alicorn Princess if I can't even fly?" "I'd prefer to see you failing at flying than not at all," Spike answered back dryly. "Spike, you can come down to the lab and see me any time, it's not like I'm keeping you out of there." "I'm just concerned, that's all," Spike said. "You haven't come up out of your lab for more than an hour or two a day for the past few weeks. Your friends have been asking around for you but you 'demanded to not be disturbed lest you lose your spark of brilliance', so I've had to keep turning them away. What could be so important that you'd shut yourself away like this for it?" Twilight felt her heart jump up to her throat. It had been absolutely killing her inside to spend so much time alone with her work, but if what she was working on panned out it could very well re-shape the course of history. Besides, she was getting very close to completion with her project, so it wouldn't be too much longer without pony contact before she could unveil it. "Spike," she began as she balanced her notebook on her back, "I'm really sorry about the position I've had to put you in these last few weeks, but you need to believe me when I say that this could be the biggest discovery of my life. It could even redefine the very meaning of life, and I'm very close to completing it, but I need your help to make sure this stays a secret until the time is right. Can you please help me out for just a little while longer?" "... Alright," Spike answered, "but if this goes past the weekend I'm gonna schedule you an intervention. You haven't seen the sun in so long your coat's starting to get pale." "Thank you so much, Spike! You won't regret this, I swear!" Swiftly Twilight scooped Spike up in a great big hug before cantering back down the stairs. With a thud and a click of the lock Twilight sealed herself down in the lab she had retro-fitted out of Golden Oaks' basement. The lab was littered with all sorts of devices, widgets and doobobs of every sort. Dimly lit screens displayed reams of numbers and letters, strange liquids bubbled away merrily in their flasks, and in the center of the room was a steel table where her masterpiece lay covered by a sheet. Twilight set her book down and flipped over to a page she had marked for just this moment. "Now if I can calibrate the MRC in just the right way so as to kickstart a self-sustaining reaction..." she muttered as she leafed through her notes. They had all been jotted down over the course of the last several months of theoretical and practical research and experimentation, and they would prove essential to her plans if it came to pass. Twilight gently floated her notebook away and readied herself for the first full activation of her experiment. Diligently she flipped the various switches and dials on her consoles, like an old watchmaker going over her crowing achievement. With a snap of the headband on her goggles she moved to the steel table and gently laid a hoof on her creation. "They're going to love you," Twilight mused, "I just know it." Determination filling her chest, she began the process of bringing her magnum opus to life. Methodically she connected all the attendant wires to their ports, taking care to make sure that each and every one was exactly where it needed to be. The coils of rubber and copper all led back to a machine that at the moment seemed inert, but would soon spring to life to fulfill its task. "This is it," she said as she faced the machine with horn aglow. "Do or die, Twilight." A loud zap and a bright violet light erupted from her horn, filling the machine with magic as it greedily drank the energy in. After a few seconds of sustained fire she let her own stream of magic die off to see how the device was holding up. Inside a glass vacuum tube and arcing between a pair of pylons was the magic she had drained into it, both contained and liberated at the same time. "The containment flask is holding up... so far so good," Twilight noted. It had taken her the longest time to figure out how to contain the magic she was going to use for this experiment, almost as long as it took to design and build her creation itself. The next step could ultimately prove her correct and make all this effort worth it, or put her long hours of work and study to waste and send her back to square one. The tightness she felt in her chest could crush steel. With a sigh of worry and a flip of a switch on the containment device, she watched all the magic flow down the wires and into the device on the table. Twilight could tell immediately that something was going wrong; the experiment on the table was starting to jutter with movement as the magic flowed into it, but far more violently than she anticipated. Would her newly granted Alicorn magic prove too powerful for it, or was there possibly some flaw inherent in it that she had missed. "No, no no no!" Twilight yelped as she checked her screens and printouts. "This isn't right, there's too much power! I need to shut this dow—" A blinding green flash and a resounding explosion shook the lab and knocked Twilight clear off her hooves. After a few minutes that seemed to be years her ears stopped ringing and she could see again, but it wasn't a pleasent sight. Her lab was in shambles, the containment device a twisted hunk of scrap metal and melted glass, and her creation still lay on the table, just as motionless as when she had started. Blearily she got to her hooves and made her way through the wreckage to the table. The sheet had blown off of her creation and the table was still warm to the touch, but there wasn't a sign of life to be found in it. "Oh no," Twilight murmured as tears sprang to her eyes. "It was all for nothing. All those months, all those excuses, everything I put my friends through... all for nothing." Before she knew it she was face down on the table, head in her hooves and wracked with sobs. She had tried so hard for so long to make this work, and now it seemed that all of this was just a pale dream. So hard were her sobs that she didn't even notice the tiny whir of a cooling fan, the warm pine green light that her creation was giving off through its eyes, or the fact that it had just sat up by itself and was looking at her with a worried expression. "Are you okay?" the creation asked, its voice soft and nurturing with only the slightest mechanical flange. Twilight's sobs stopped with a few hiccups, and slowly she turned her gaze upward to the dull white face framed by a bobbed black mane staring back at her. Her hair was done up with a hairband the same color as her eyes and she wore a small heart shaped locket around her neck, all to Twilight's specifications. "You seem upset; is there something I can do to help?" it asked with a reassuring smile. Twilight's sadness melted away immediately, replaced by an ecstasy so powerful it was almost certain to burst out of her chest. "You're... You're alive," Twilight gasped. "You're alive! You're alive!!" Quickly the door to the basement flung open and Spike bounded down the stairs as fast as his little legs would take him. "Twilight, are you okay?!" he asked. "I heard an explosion, and while I'm certain that you can take care of yourself I just wanted to mak—" Spike!" Twilight said with glee "It worked! The experiment worked! Everything worked!" "Uh, what worked?" he asked back, still in mild shock. "She worked!" Twilight answered back, gesturing to the unicorn on the table. "Listen, I know this might seem weird, what with the lab a smoking crater and me giggling like a schoolfilly, but this is easily the most important thing I've ever done in my life!" "Well, what did you do?" Spike asked "I created her! Send a letter out to Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash; tell them it's urgent and that they need to get over here now!" "Uh, okay, sure!" Without a moments hesitation he pattered his way back upstairs to start writing while Twilight went back over to her crowning achievement. "Are you alright, miss?" the unicorn asked. "I'm better than alright Anima, I'm ecstatic! You're alive, and that means that all those months of work and research weren't for nothing and this could change the world! You could change the world! Don't you see, you are the best thing to ever happen!" "Um, what did you call me, miss?" the unicorn asked. "Oh, right, sorry; I got so caught up in all of this celebrating that I forgot to do introductions," Twilight said with a slap upside the forehead. Straightening herself up and brushing some of the dirt and debris of herself, she continued. "Ahem... My name is Twilight Sparkle, and your name is Anima. Your name is an acronym that stands for Artificial Neural Intelligence Mindscape Actuator, but I shortened it down to Anima for common use. I created you, right here in this room. Do you understand me so far?" "I... I think so," Anima answered. "You are Twilight Sparkle, and I am Anima, and you made me here in this room." "Very good, Anima," Twilight replied with barely contained enthusiasm. "Is there anything you'd like to ask me before I do some diagnostic work on you and make sure everything is running smoothly?" "Yes, please, Ms. Twilight," Anima replied. "If you created me, then what was I created to do?" "You? You were created to live, to go outside and experience things, to learn and to grow and to make friends." "To live and learn and grow..." Anima repeated. "I would like that, I think." "Trust me Anima, you will like it. Now," Twilight continued as she made her way over to one of the less battered computers in the room, "I need to run a few tests on you and make sure that everything in you is running alright; waking you up did a number on the lab and it would be better to be safe than sorry. This'll take a little while, so feel free to ask me whatever you want in the meantime." "I'd love to!" * * *