//------------------------------// // 15. As Experiments Go // Story: Final Mission // by Sharp Quill //------------------------------// I counted out six pieces of candied alfalfa and hoofed them into a small bag. As I pushed the bag to the far side of the counter, a blonde-maned and gray pegasus counted out two bits. A unicorn filly bounced in anticipation beside her. The mare grabbed the bag with her mouth and lowered it to the floor. “You can have one,” she said. Two pieces floated up out of the bag. As soon as she noticed her mistake, the filly adjusted her telekinetic field and released one of them. The other piece flew straight into her open mouth. I gave a smile as mother and daughter departed. After swiping the coins off the counter and into the cash box, I gazed about the empty store. It was a good time to take a lunch break. I trotted out from behind the counter and to the door and put up the “closed for lunch” sign before anypony else could decide to enter. At a more leisurely pace, I made my way to the kitchen. Beyond was waiting for me. Off to the side, I spotted the open Gate. I reflexively looked up at the ceiling. No crystals or runes. “We won’t be using that spell—or any other spell—on you,” she assured me. “There’d be no point.” Whatever that meant, it probably wasn’t good for me. “Are you here to debrief me?” The rabbit shook her head. “No, not my department.” Deciding it was safe enough, I approached her. “Then why are you here?” “To ask you to join us. You still can, so long as you fully cooperate with your debriefing.” I eyed the Gate, looking through it to a familiar room on the other side. “What, like right this instant?” “Twilight will be here soon.” Her whiskers twitched. “We can come back for your stuff later. We’ll even help you move all this.” She waved a paw at the kitchen. What in Celestia’s name is going on? “If I wanted to join you, we wouldn’t be in this situation, now would we?” That made the rabbit grimace. “You have no idea how true that is.” I was getting fed up with this. “You could try just telling me. Why don’t we start with the reason you don’t want Twilight talking to me?” A bell rang in the distance. The front door had opened. “Bon Bon?” Twilight called out. “It’s now or never,” Beyond forcibly whispered, her eyes pleading with me. I had never asked for this. How dare they presume I had any fealty to them. “I choose ‘never,’” I likewise whispered. I leaned my head back and shouted, “Back here!” Approaching hooves got louder. I calmly stared at Beyond, wondering what she’d do. The rabbit leaped through the Gate. “What the—” I heard Twilight say behind me as the Gate closed. “I’m not at liberty to say,” I simply said. The alicorn walked past me to where the Gate was, her horn lit up with what I assumed was analyzing magic. After a few seconds of this, her horn went out and she turned to face me. Her eyes held determination. “As your Princess, I command you to explain what I just saw.” I did not flinch. “Not even Celestia has that authority. I don’t think you got the memo.” “Oh, I got the memo,” she retorted, “but there’s been a development you ought to be aware of.” Without warning, she grabbed on to me and teleported. We went far. I knew because I collapsed upon arriving, onto a crystalline floor as it turned out. Once everything stopped spinning, I opened my eyes. I was in Twilight’s throne room. Hovering in mid-air, in the center of the circle of thrones, was a translucent image of our world. At both the north and south poles, something floated above the surface. I moved closer for a better look. Using her magic, Twilight enlarged the image. The something first resolved itself to a cloud of dots, then the dots resolved themselves into runes. The cloud was expanding towards the equator, slowly but surely, as more copies of those runes popped into being. Twilight was studying my reaction. “I looked up those runes in that secret library in the vault. It will take years, but this world will die. Our magic is being drained.” She came up beside me. “So you see, the time to obey their rules has passed.” Beyond’s impromptu visit was starting to make sense. When had they planned on informing me that us ponies had been declared a failed experiment? But more to the point, why had they decided that? I didn’t think it was because of me. Why would they’ve offered to save me if I was the cause? With growing horror, I looked Twilight in the eyes. “What did you do?” “I-I don’t know what you mean.” “Damn it, Twilight, if the rules had been obeyed, this wouldn’t be happening!” “And they had no right to do this to us! Everything I thought I knew was a lie!” She turned away and began walking around the image. “I’ll figure something out,” she said, mostly to herself. “I always do.” I wasn’t so sure that was possible. The cats hadn’t. Maybe they didn’t have a Twilight Sparkle, but they seemed far from clueless. “What’s Celestia doing about this? She’s negotiated with them, successfully, in the past.” Her former pupil snorted. “Like how she shutdown your Agency, our best defense against monsters, and allowed for the return of a ‘reformed’ Discord?” “Considering the alternative, yes, I think that was a small price to pay.” Twilight pawed the ground, her head hung low. “I don’t know,” she muttered. “She won’t talk to me.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; but whatever Celestia might have been doing, it wasn’t enough. I had to do something. “Just tell me Discord isn’t a stone statue.” “Ha ha,” she droned, “very funny.” I interpreted that as meaning he might still be around. I headed out of the throne room. “Where are you going?” she demanded. “You still haven’t explained what I saw in your kitchen.” I paused at the open doorway. I did not look back. “First, I’m going to find Discord; and second, I’m not going to explain. I want to fix things, not break them even more.” Twilight knocked on the front door. “Fluttershy! We need to speak to you!” I didn’t particularly want her to have accompanied me, but if I was going to talk to Discord then by golly she would be a part of the conversation. If that was okay with him, I had no real reason to object. Maybe I’d be the one munching popcorn. There was no answer. “She’s probably out in back,” Twilight offered. There we found her, by the chicken coop, tossing out seed to a flock of happily clucking birds. Twilight got down to business. “Fluttershy, do you know where Discord is?” The pegasus tossed out more seed, as the chickens continued pecking the ground. “He, uh, doesn’t wish to be disturbed.” “Something very bad is happening. We need to convince him to help us.” Fluttershy put down the bag and turned away. “He told me,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “He offered to save me, to take me somewhere I’d be safe, but I… I can’t leave my f-friends… these animals… who’d look after them?” Discord was willing to do that? The whole being reformed by the magic of friendship wasn’t entirely a cover story? “This isn’t over yet,” I said as, on a hunch, I headed towards the back door of Fluttershy’s cottage. Twilight was right behind me, of course. When I reached the door, I didn’t bother knocking. I opened the door. Oh yeah, he’s here. The interior had been subjected to one of his “redecorations.” Not zig zags of bold colors, nor plaids of discordant colors, no, not this time. Everything had been bled dry of color. I saw nothing but drab shades of gray. I stepped inside. Twilight bounced off an invisible barrier that suddenly formed behind me. Regaining her composure, she tried again, to the same effect. Her horn lit up and she disappeared. She did not reappear inside. The door closed on its own. No popcorn for me, then. I found Discord in the living room, lying on a sofa. The room was a riot of color compared to him. “Projecting your emotions onto this cottage isn’t going to fix anything,” I said. He did not remove his lion’s arm from his eyes. “I had a good thing going on here, you know. It’d never been tried before, me not being the archvillain.” I approached him. “King Apollo knew you for what you truly were.” “A professional relationship only, same with Celestia and Luna.” I did not fail to notice that he had used their actual names. “As experiments go, this one showed much promise, enough so that Celestia was given another chance; it was her idea.” He exhaled. “Then Twilight had to go and ruin it. Maybe we can try it again in a different realm.” I stamped a hoof. “What did she do?” He uncovered his eyes and looked at me. “She experimented with the runes that had been used on you. She successfully pushed an object into Nexus time, not that she realized that. To her, the object simply vanished.” He laid his head back once more, his eyes staring at the ceiling. “Why were those runes even there for her to find! Beyond had removed them the first time around!” “No, she didn’t,” Discord corrected me. “She didn’t have to. That first reset removed them.” “Which…” I gulped “…never happened because I undid the spell.” I turned away. “But why didn’t she notice the reset had failed to happen and remove them then?” I realized I already knew: “Because she’s on Nexus time. From her perspective, over a week has passed since she cast that spell on me. By the time she had realized what happened, it was too late.” “I’m out of gold stars at the moment,” he said without enthusiasm. “Would you like a gray star?” “Whatever. It’s not Equestria’s fault you didn’t have a contingency plan. There must be some way to fix this! Take back those crystals and runes. Don’t pretend you can’t. Destroy those secret vaults while you’re at it! Why haven’t you?!” Discord floated off the sofa and onto his mismatched feet. “It’s too little, too late. Miss Photographic Memory has already memorized enough of that library, and has made it perfectly clear she intends to put that knowledge to use.” “You didn’t answer the question,” I said, glaring at him. “Why was that vault even permitted. This wouldn’t be happening if it didn’t exist!” Discord scratched his head with a talon. “I don’t know, actually. I wasn’t around at the time.” He shrugged. “I suggest you ask Princess Sunbutt.” He snapped his talons and I was suddenly outside with the chickens. When I got back to my store, I found Twilight inside my kitchen, waving some scientific gadget about the spot where the Gate had been. “Twilight, you have to stop this.” She did not stop, continuing to examine the readings, as she said, “What did you learn from Discord.” “If he wanted you to know, he wouldn’t have kept you out.” “Did a good job of it too,” she angrily said. “He redirected my teleport back to my castle.” How I wished I’d never shown her that vault. “Twilight, I mean it: the only chance we have to save ourselves is for you to stop doing this.” Her jaw hardened. “Celestia couldn’t convince me, and neither will you.” I watched her for a few more moments, as she gathered data and took notes, then I grabbed my lunch out of the refrigerator and took it upstairs. As I ate my sandwich, I wondered what I was going to do. One thing seemed clear. Twilight was a lost cause.