“Mmmmm… New cologne?” Affi smiled when Edez, Kor and Max entered the laboratory and wonderful aroma of mountain meadows filled the air.
“Aren’t this too harsh for your sensitive smelling?” Karin asked Kor with wide snide grin on her face.
“What else could I do if my reek of alcohol can be used as biological weapon?” officer answered.
Frowning Edez ordered everybody to fall silent with a gesture and turned to his fellow curator.
“We had already explored the features of alicorns,” he said. “We took Celestia, the best possible choice. Why do we need her sister?”
“Sorry to interfere, but…” Max broke in. “But does anyone know what happened to Tryviež and Čarnabor? I’m kinda worrying.”
“They are fine,” Affi answered.
“More than fine,” Oma added. “I heard when they returned from the forest they brought five tons of firewood to Sweet Apple Acres. This firewood was made of timberwolves.”
“And then they had been selling necklaces and amulets made of teeth and talons of manticores, cockatrices and hydras.”
“And rheumatism therapeutic belts made of lupi’s fur,” added Sheim.
“They earned lot of bits and decided to celebrate this dancing on the roof of the town’s mill and singing “I like to moo-moo” and… a-khem… “Golden balls”,” Bluve finished. “Probably they still are sleeping in its attic.”
“Oh…”
“Returning to where we started…” Affi broke in. “I ordered to execute another taking to find the reason of the anomaly of the structure of her mind.”
“What anomaly?” other researchers surprised.
“For sentients of the same level of development the oldest have the greatest total volume of the mind,” telepathist began to explain. “But Luna’s mind somehow is much greater than Celestia’s. Many parts in conscious block and memory block are not active. At first I didn’t pay too much attention to it – knowing her past, I thought these are fragments she wants to forget. But now, when I started to explore the scan more carefully, I noticed that these inactive parts are not just additional material, which can be easily deleted, they are imbedded and sealed. I have never seen anything like this, so I want to learn what it is.”
“So, you are going to scan her on the deep-level mind reader?” Zet’rar asked to precise.
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you able to hack these seals yourself?” Sheim wondered.
“There is high probability of rebound effect,” Affi answered. “I don’t want to risk.”
“Well, then do it,” said Edez.
Affi stood at the main control panel and started to give the commands. First one activated the gravitational capture mechanism, and dark-blue alicorn slowly floated to the mind reader – big device that looked like ordinary medical tomograph – and put her in it. Second command activated the reader. Parts of the machine began to move, but unlike similar devices created by locals, it made almost no sounds. Then Affi activated the identification program. Myriads of fluxes of the smallest particles pierced alicorn’s head and began to capture the sealed fragments. When the scanning finished, the fragment was reproduced in the ASI’s memory, and only then hacking subprograms began to do their job.
The process was difficult and, thus, even hacking of the smallest sealed parts took considerable amount of time. And, nevertheless, it was only the beginning.
After five supramoments first results were finally showed: ASI displayed them on the large holoscreen right above the main control panel. Researchers looked through them and shuddered with terror.
“Oh no…”
It was princess’ memories of being Nightmare Moon.
Soon identification program managed to hack some behavior algorithms. Patterns uncovered could belong only to ruthless, insidious, cruel and obsessed person. Person like Nightmare Moon.
“…how?” Kor uttered when he came to his senses.
“Nightmare Moon is still in her?” shocked Bluve exclaimed. “I thought Elements of harmony destroyed this entity!”
“They can’t,” said Oma. “From ancient books we learned that Elements are not a weapon. Their magic influence isn’t able to kill anyone, no matter how powerful the influence is.”
“That means…” Max began to think aloud. “That means sealing was the only way how they could defeat Nightmare Moon… And Nightmare Moon was fully formed personality!”
“It’s one-and-a-half soul syndrome…” Affi spelled.
“What? This?” other researchers surprised.
“It can’t be!” Zet’rar exclaimed. “This can be caused only by primitive unsuccessful teleportations, but the ways equestrians use doesn’t have such drawbacks!”
“Not only by this,” telepathist responded. “This syndrome can be a result of failed telepathic experiments. But here…” she suddenly turned to her colleagues. “Think of her past. For very long time she had been angry with her sister and envied her. She had been trying to cope with this for decades! And, knowing that all this happened with incredibly powerful being… I can’t even imagine how big and severe the storm of her emotions was. One day the limit was reached, it caused massive burst in her ETS, emergency mechanisms of the organism were triggered and… the rest you know from the legends.”
“Goodness.”
“Okay, we got it, but what we should do now?” Kor wondered. “It’s the First Level Threat, according to our set of rules we have to intervene, but we can’t just go and say ‘You have to do something with your princess because Nightmare Moon is still in her!’ We can’t let everyone know about the mission!”
Researchers fall silent.
“It is impossible,” said Edez.
“What?” Kor and other researchers were ready to protest, but curator continued.
“It is impossible to do something without letting everyone know about the mission and our true identities. Our technologies able only to diagnose the syndrome – in order to cure it we have to take princess to Soul Architects, but, I suppose, they will reconstruct and complement both souls. It will take a dekad at least! Just imagine what will happen here if princess suddenly disappear for such long term!”
“We could set something up,” Karin offered.
“What about replicant?” asked Zet’rar.
“There is a special group that watches royalties all the time to make sure that they are all right. Even with all our technologies, it will be damnably hard to deceive them. And replicants will not work – those guys identify princesses by their magic signatures, and we can’t imitate them now. It may take twelve years to create exact imitator.”
“So…”
“Yes. In order to save the princess in shortest terms, we have to reveal ourselves and our mission.”
Affi sighed and gave a nod. Other researchers looked at each other and said no words.
“There are no other ways?” Bluve quietly asked.
Edez shook his head.
“Zet, bring her back in the castle,” curator ordered the technician. Then he turned to Max “When the alicorn’s remedy will be ready?”
“If nothing will interfere us – in forty three days.”
“Good. Now get ready, my friends. We are going to have a long talk with the HQ.”