Sometimes They Call Me Super

by KorenCZ11

Persona XXIV: Revelations - Persona

Applejack

---

When we arrived at the castle, it was very clear that everypony was eager. Pinkie and Scootaloo were playin’ a game together on the projector, another one of Shy’s fighters by the looks of it, and she was coachin’ from behind. Ah’m sure it would be difficult fer her ta play games now that she’s down a hoof. Rainbow was teachin’ Twi how ta play her card game, and Rarity and Celestia were nowhere ta be found.

“Where’d Rarity go?” Ah asked.

Heads turned, but Shy answered. “S-she’s with the princess in the library. T-they said they needed to s-speak in private, so we’re just here k-keeping an eye out for Luna. No, no, no! Y-you use the anti-air when you s-see them coming in like that! A-and that’s not even safe on b-block, you could’ve gotten away with a huge punish!” She’d clearly lost interest in me at this point and was much more focused on the game. Probably wanted ta be the one playin’.

Twilight got up and approached us. “Hey um… c-can I talk to you after this?”

Ah frowned. It was weird fer her ta not be more direct. “Uh, sure? Any reason ya can’t tell me now?”

Twi looked away and scratched at her ear. “Oh! Well, um, you know, it’s uh… personal, yes, that’s the word. We, uh… should discuss this in private. J-just the two of us.” Then she leaned in and whispered in my ear. “It’s about your blood test. It’s important, but not super urgent.”

Well, that’s even more concernin’.

“Ah guess, Twi, but Ah don’t know how much longer Ah’m gonna be able ta stay up tonight. We were about ta get ta bed before Rarity called.”

Scoots snorted. “Ha! Newlyweds ‘getting to bed.’ Sure, Mrs. Carcharodon, that’s what you were gonna do.”

Flustered, Ah nearly recovered enough ta snap back, but Goose beat me to it. “Nah, this whole arrangement has been pretty backwards as is. There’s been more than enough of that already.” Oh my Goddess, why. He wrapped a hoof around my neck and leaned on me. “Besides, most of us were pretty trashed yesterday. I don’t know that I would’ve had the energy. We moved from the couch maybe... three times today?”

Ah was about ta punch this idiot inta next week, but Pinkie broke in before Ah could. “Wha- oh, damn it.” Game lost, she set the controller down and turned back ta us. “Well, whatever. I still can’t believe Celestia, of all ponies, encouraged it. You would think one of the Princesses would follow her own laws. Either way, I am never drinking that much again. I spilled my guts to the Cakes and spent half the night crying on them and my parents. I’m still mad at you for that, by the way.”

She shot a glare at Goose, but he took it like an achievement. “As you should be.”

Pinkie rolled her eyes and picked up the controller again. “So, do we still call you Applejack, or do I need to learn a new name? I learned that Mrs. Cake’s name was ‘Chiffon Swirl’ before she got married, so apparently, ponies will change both their names if need be.”

And there’s that question. Remove it completely, or keep it and add ta the name? If Ah don’t make the decision ta get rid of it, Ah’m likely ta be ‘Applejack’ fer the rest of my life. But, then again… even though the process may’ve… felt almost magical, Ah’m really not a different pony. Ah’m gonna keep bein’ ‘Applejack,’ but now Ah can be Applejack Carcharodon. A little bit of where Ah came from and where Ah went.

Noddin’ ta myself, Ah looked back at Pinkie, sure of what ta say. “Ah’m still gonna be me no matter what happens, so Applejack is fine. ‘Sides, what kinda pony would Ah be if Ah just threw away the nickname my mother gave me back when Ah was a filly? That just ain’t right.”

“Well, I for one applaud that. I know how much you hated your extended family, so this is a welcome development,” Rarity said as she came from the bedroom hall, Celestia draggin’ her hooves behind. She looked like shit. Her multicolor mane wasn’t flowin’ in that nonexistent wind, but in tangled strands and draggin’ along the floor like a weight. The bags under her eyes suggested she’d been awake fer several days, which was entirely possible, and even her coat seemed less shiny than usual.

“Damn, what happened ta you?” my mouth blurted before Ah could stop it. Motherfucker.

The princess glared at me, then rolled her eyes and fell inta Twilight’s seat at the main table in the livin’ room. “You… this is your fault.” As if that’s all she could think of, she crossed her forelegs, a pillow appeared in front of her in gold magic, and then she let her head crash inta it. Ah’m not sure how or why, but clearly, Celestia was in a poor mood and very tired. Somehow, Ah didn’t see this impromptu meetin’ goin’ well. We all looked ta Twilight fer an answer.

She fidgeted in the spotlight and tried ta avoid the stares. “Don’t look at me! I was sent back home as soon as Luna caught me saying something dumb to one of the guests. I’ll admit that I had quite a bit to drink, but uh… well, yeah.”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes and made her way over ta her foldin’ chair. “At least you got to drink. I’m like, part of the group now and I was still told no.”

As if this was the thing that got her attention, Celestia moved, though slightly, and said, “You’re seventeen. Military personnel are allowed to drink on base regardless, but you’re not even old enough to be military personnel. There’s your reasoning, Pinkie.” She didn’t even take her face outta the pillow, but Ah could feel the sour glare she was pointin’ at Pinkie.

“Sometimes I wonder if she really can hear everything,” Twilight mused aloud. We all waited fer a moment, but Celestia never did comment on that. The disappointment only lasted fer a few seconds before a blue ball of lightnin’ started ta form just over the center of the table. A bright flash, an annoyed groan from Celestia, and then Luna had arrived. Two different coffee mugs in her magic, wild eyed, mane in a similar state of ‘actual hair’ that was frizzy, frayed, and frazzled, and four different stacks of paper balanced on her wings.

“I AM HERE!” she announced as loudly as possible. A fanfare played off in the distance, and Ah wasn’t sure if that was from a spell she cast or a game somewhere off in the castle. Either way, it stopped as soon as she climbed down and started settin’ papers by each of the seats at the table.

Celestia sat up slightly, took her pillow from under her face, then promptly stabbed it onto her horn and pulled it down to cover her ears. “Why are you always so loud?” she moaned.

The blue alicorn, jittery ta the point the things in her magic started shakin’, put a hoof on Celestia’s shoulder and drank deep from one of her cups. “T-this conference is for you though, is it not sister? You wanted your explanation of my involvement in this predicament, then you hit me, you melted the castle, and now I am ready! Is this not what you wanted? I am certain the punch to my face meant that you wanted this, did it not?” One sister glared, and the other strained ta keep her eyes focused on one spot fer a single second.

Twilight stepped between them and shoved Luna back a bit with her magic. “Oh-kay, this is going to go nowhere until both of you sleep.” The two elder alicorns turned on the smaller one.

“W-what? Why would you say that my dearest, darling, doting niece? I am prepared, yes! So very prepared, because I have finally gathered all the things I need to say what must be said!” Luna half said half shouted in a stream of word vomit.

“Bold of you to give me orders,” Celestia spat.

Yikes. Ah am one hundred percent with Twilight on this.

Even Twi was reelin’ from her mother’s attack, but she recovered quick enough ta hold her ground. “I will not have my castle destroyed because you two are in no state to actually discuss something reasonably! You’re both on the opposite ends of sleep deprived, and I don’t care how ageless you are, you still need to sleep from time to time.”

Good Goddess, if looks could kill.

Celestia’s glare was somethin’ ta be feared, but after a moment it softened and she sighed. “Fine. Even I can tell that I am not… of the right mind to do this now.” She gave Luna a side glance, who returned it with a jittery half smile. With a flick and a flash of Celestia’s horn, the blue alicorn dropped ta the ground like a sack of bricks. She loaded the now snorin’ Luna on her back and looked at all of us.

“Sleep here tonight. We will discuss this in the morning once Luna and I are… rested.” She popped that gold slab she calls a phone out of nothin’ and sent off a message somewhere, then grabbed Twilight and her pillow in her magic while she headed toward the bedroom hall.

“Gah! Why me!? You have your own bed!”

“Hush now, Mommy’s tired.”

“You can’t just-” A flash of golden light, then two ponies snorin’ filled the hall until a door opened and closed.

A beat.

“Um… apparently we’re holding this meeting in the morning, and that is not up for discussion,” Rarity stated. Everypony nodded and those that typically live here started ta collect their things and make their way ta their rooms.

“Well. That was… a thing,” Goose said.

Ah nodded and then followed the herd inta the bedroom hall. “Yeah… let’s uh… not upset the monster.”

---

“I must apologize for yesterday. I may have… said some things, and I likely didn’t mean them, probably, so please, um… forget about it, if you will,” Celestia said at breakfast. She’d gotten up early, lookin’ much, much less like a zombie, and even made a very elaborate breakfast. Each plate seemed ta be catered ta the individual pony; whatever happened, she must’ve felt real bad about it.

“I can’t believe you put me under a sleep spell. How did you even do that? Magic doesn’t even work on me!” Twilight complained before fillin’ her mouth with pancakes.

The blue alicorn rubbed at her eyes some more, then took another sip of her coffee. “You ‘cannot believe?’ That should be my line. Sleep is like, my thing. Goodness. I do not even remember how many days I had been awake. Had I even slept since Sunday?”

Celestia pulled out her slab again, then flicked around on the screen until she passed it to Luna. “You sent me a text about your progress on the hour, every hour, for nearly one hundred and twenty hours straight, only taking a break to attend the wedding. Had I not been attending to-” she gave me a sour look, “Other matters, I likely would have put you under by day three of this pattern.”

Luna scrolled through the device, becomin’ more and more shocked with what she saw as she did. “Oh my...”

Celestia took her phone back and nodded. “Indeed.” She turned ta Twi, “As for you, that was hypnotic suggestion mixed with a signal flash. I didn’t necessarily target your person with a spell, but showed you something that tricked your brain into ‘shutting down,’ as it were.

“Your powers, as Luna found, target and absorb things cast at and around you within a certain radius, which can be larger or smaller depending on your awareness of the situation. Move past that, or target something else, and suddenly your magic absorbing shield no longer works.”

Luna shied away. “Oh. You uh... you found out about that?”

Twilight raised a hoof, unable ta look at her aunt. “That uh… that was my fault. She wanted to know how I learned the spell, and you know how she is, so I, um… caved. That was like, two weeks ago though.”

Luna put her hooves on her temples. “You feather promised me.”

“I’m sorry!”

Celestia shook her head and crossed her forelegs. “Whatever. Look, that’s not important. We’ve had our discussion and my frustrations with you have mostly been aired.”

“By planting me in a wall…” Luna grumbled.

Celestia raised a brow. “In any case, what’s done is done. Today is Friday, which means we have two more chances to train before the fight ahead of us. Let’s get this whole ‘You and Persona’ business out of the way so we can get back to it. It’s not as if this fight is avoidable, considering he has us by the teats as it is.”

Plates emptied and dishes cleaned, ponies gathered around the table in the living room. Luna took Twilight’s chair, while she stood and everypony waited eagerly ta hear what she had ta say.

---

Luna Iscandor of Equus

---

“Well then, I suppose we’ll begin this by giving some context. The year is 2010. Celestia often disappears for days at a time and I get suspicious. I tail her one day only to find that she’s been dimension hopping. Accusations fly, I nearly attempt to force it out of her, and eventually she tells me the truth. She gets sick the next morning, we try to figure out why that is happening because we have only ever been sick once nearly a millennia ago, and that turned out to be a curse that was put on me and not any actual illness.

“She was pregnant. You thought Celestia was angry the other day, you should have seen me that spring. I wanted to kill her, but I was actually going to do it. Ponies had nightmares about my true form, a rumor started and spread across the nation like fire in a cotton gin, and now our harvest festival is called Nightmare Night.

“Point is, I was so angry with her that I made her hide away with this stallion she consummated with and ruled in her stead for nine months. Also, they had apparently married, which I found out later, to add insult to injury. I was more than hurt.

“I thought I was angry then. When she came back through the portal, barely alive and with a bloody crying foal, I was half tempted to go to that side and conquer Lystacr myself. But, in my fury, I took a different route and shattered the element crystals. For clarity, I never hated Twilight for being born. I was furious with her mother for making her, but the foal herself was not at fault, and I knew that.”

Ah snickered. “So, uh… that whole ‘ill begotten niece’ thing was just a slip of the tongue, right?”

“Well…”

“Oh, she said that to you too?” Rarity said before Luna could answer. “I thought I was the only one she ever showed her ‘nasty’ side to. Of course, I’ve been around for a while. Lavender bastard, mare’s folly, regretful kin, ‘that which should not exist,’ not to mention all the ones where she used curses to prefix them.”

“I said no such-”

“Wow, that’s crazy. And here I thought she just acted awful toward Twilight.” Pinkie added. “What kind of aunt just… walks away after her niece says ‘thank you’ just for being there? That moment the other day really solidified for me that she totally hated Twilight. Stone freakin’ cold.”

Celestia giggled. “Oh, and let’s not forget the ‘tsun’ part of her treatment of Twilight. She threw one of Twilight’s drawings away right in front of her back when she first moved to the castle back in 2018, but as soon as she left, she rescued the page and added it to her collection on the fridge in her room. She has-”

Luna slammed the table. “That is enough! It is not important to the story right now, will you all just- ugh!” Everypony was laughin’, and the poor blue alicorn was about as flustered as she could be. That dark blue coat around her cheeks was a nice shade of light violet right about now.

Twi brought her hooves ta her mouth and stared at Luna with big eyes. “You saved my drawing?”

Luna glared at her, then turned her head away. “I did no such thing.”

Celestia took her phone out and pulled up a picture for everypony ta see. It was a black refrigerator in a low lit royal blue room, covered in drawin’s and art pieces by a child. One ‘T. Sparkle’ if that’s what those signatures said. At least, Ah think they did anyways.

“Why do you have this!? When were you in my chamber!?” Luna yelped.

Celestia waved a hoof at her. “Oh please, as if you could keep me out.”

“Aww, she really does care,” Goose teased.

Luna crossed her forelegs over her chest and pouted with her face turned away from everypony. “Fine! Have fun with your pictures. Fight Persona blindly, see if I care.”

Celestia put a wing across her sister and brought her close. “Alright, alright, we’ll stop. Please, continue.”

Luna glared at her sister, then shook her head. “Whatever! You ponies, I swear…” She cleared her throat, then started up again. “So, after destroying the gate and the elements, I hid the shards away from Celestia to keep her from going back to that awful place, and we found a trusted servant family to take Twilight for her. It was… only right that our own blood grew in a complete home, so at the very least, she might have a father in her life.

“While I still think this was the best course of action, the idea that Twilight might be among the infected still hung at the edge of my mind. Her father had the virus, it was one of the reasons Celestia even got to know the stallion in the first place. This… thing affected ponies, no matter where they were, and though we are not normal ponies, there was still a chance it could affect us. I needed to know, so I attempted to find out.

“That was easier said than done, however. I picked up where Celestia left off and continued to try known medicines and treatments on patients. Nothing worked. At all, really. The virus varies so wildly from pony to pony that it was difficult to even isolate and find matching DNA that would even confirm whether or not we were looking at the virus in the first place.

“After years of testing and research, we find very little, but what little we do find is concerning. One; the virus embeds itself strongest within the gametes, from there it is ‘relatively’ easy to isolate. Two; of all the mutations done to ponies, nearly all of them left the genitals intact, or even caused ponies to be more fertile than previously believed.

“Why? Why in the world would this thing, because we still were not quite sure of the nature of the virus, inspire reproduction? The answer is obvious a few years later when reports of foals having powers started to become widespread across the country. The virus itself is a waterborne contagion, but to ensure it continues on, it reproduces within the host and the host’s offspring.

“Chances are high that the virus also affects puberty, but that remains to be seen. A time-controlled test would be required for that, but something as easy as a registry or survey could give us numbers to determine the truth of it.

“So, I hit a wall here. Medicine wasn’t working, but we could at least determine whether or not the virus was the cause of something. This is obviously easier to do so in males, but the problem with that is that it also needed the host to come of age before we could even look into the issue, and the virus activates the moment puberty begins.

“Of course, this is provided the host isn’t a mutation type, which was a whole other can of worms. Looking for a cure was a pipe dream. I just wanted to figure out how this thing worked, and even still, we were only discovering the classifications of how the virus affects a pony.

“The year is now 2018. Our minimal discoveries had been published, the ponies now knew that the virus was genetic and is passed on through breeding, and there was effectively no way to stop its spread. We can’t even keep our soldiers from screwing each other, let alone the general populace. It was then that I was approached.

“While presiding over Night Court one evening in… I believe it was April of that year, Stannum Argent came to me personally to give me information about the virus. He had learned many things through experimenting, and he was willing to share his information if I shared my resources. He’d come to the conclusion that magic was the way to solve the mysteries of the virus, and so long as I could supply a ‘power integrator’ of some kind, there was a chance he could make an idea he had work.

“Naturally, I was curious, but skeptical. I agreed on the condition that he show me his research first, and so I was invited to his lab the following week. What he learned is that the virus operated on a particular frequency that can be interfered with by magic. He had gone so far as to create something that he could get to interact with the virus one hundred percent of the time, but how it interacted with it was never certain.

“Some accidental discovery his son made playing in the lab had turned into a potential band-aid for this mess. I was enthralled. Even if it was not me, somepony was making progress in figuring this thing out. The power generator he needed was something that could constantly apply the magic needed to create the disruption frequency that affected the virus. Nothing would ever ‘stick,’ so to speak, if the frequency ever stopped being applied, and it needed quite a bit of power to do so.

“After helping him with a test, we managed to relieve a victim of some of his symptoms for a little while as I supplied power to this frequency myself. It was… miraculous. I had hope that the cure was not out of reach just yet, and maybe we could do it. However, I was still skeptical about his ‘mirror project’ because I did not like the idea of an object merging with a host. If not the virus, then what were the long-term effects of something like having a mirror magically embedded in one’s chest?

“I did not want to risk lives in the pursuit of knowledge. I was… mostly over, but still very bitter about what Celestia had done, so I attempted to avoid going down the same path. In Fall of 2018, Celestia informs me that Twilight has been accepted into her little school. We argue about this for some time, but after seeing her capabilities myself, I knew that there was no way any basic magic program could hold such a prodigy.

“Something else that concerned me was that my seals were weakening on her. Those were made to last, and it hadn’t even been a decade yet. Placed on your average pony, the seals would likely break only after their natural life ended. Something was very wrong for them to already be slowing in their function that she needed to be monitored. If the seal ever broke in full, an alicorn would be exposed to the world, and that would be disastrous.

“Of course, we already know what a cavalcade of fuckery that ended up being, but I had my suspicions that Twilight might be a carrier because of this, so I started to take more drastic measures in using power sources.

“I get back with Stannum the next day and start testing artifacts, one after another. Some work better than others, but the only consistent methods all were derivatives of the elements. If anything could be a cure-all, it would most certainly be the Goddess’s own magic, would it not? Sure enough, it worked, but to an even greater degree than we ever imagined.

“Not only did it remove the negative, or undesired, effects of the virus; it enhanced the abilities it gave. The pony who wore it could choose what effects the mirror cured or even go so far as to boost their own powers to limits unknown. The mirror was a strange thing imbued with the Goddess’s magic, and it was almost as if it had a will of its own…

“However, that was an accident. A mere chance encounter. We tried making a second and a third and a fourth, but never to any avail. They never worked, and sometimes even made the effects of the virus worse in ponies. They ‘interfered’ with it alright, but never in good ways.

“Finally, I get the bright idea to try and extract the virus from a pony wearing the Original. What a good idea that was. Surely a cleansed, super-virus would be able to cure the basic virus, right? No. Not in any way. Tragedy strikes early September when the emergency alarm goes off in the lab just after I arrive at the Trade Center that night. Silicon always had a way of sneaking in there, and he’d done so again, this time breaking the vial we’d kept the super-virus in and getting it on his skin.

“When we found him, he was bleeding everywhere and his bones had moved different directions and found new shapes to take, ignoring whether or not skin and muscle was in the way. Quick, panicked thinking on my part managed to keep him alive and even stabilize his condition, but nothing stopped the virus from further twisting his body. More quick thinking, I took the Original mirror and strapped it on him. It was all I could do, and thankfully, it worked.

“It did not, however, reverse the effects, it just temporarily halted them. We weren’t quite sure what had happened to him or what his powers could do, just that they had a price that was far too high. Both Stannum and Silicon changed that day. It was… almost as if their personalities had been altered. The boy was always so sweet and kind around me before, but after, he was… cold. Cruel. There was a rumor going around the hospital not to be left alone with him because he would terrorize the nurses. It could never be proved, but each and every pony that attended him needed psychiatric therapy afterward.

“Stannum, who had always been so forward and strong in the ways he carried himself, became… passive and depressed. I would even go so far as to say that he died that day. That stallion is a shell of who he used to be.

“But, as the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. I get a call a few days later and am told that the mirror was stolen from the hospital. Silicon’s condition remained stable, thankfully, but somepony had walked away with the only thing that could potentially cure the virus. That wasn’t the only place they went either. Somepony had entered the lab and destroyed all the hard drives too.

“We weren’t dealing with just some random pony, this was somepony who knew what we’d been working on. But, nevertheless, we did not find anypony that even had traces of the Original on them. It was lost, and with no way to find it, I almost lost hope that I would ever see it again. This would not be a fun story if things did not keep getting worse, so the next week happens, and now there is a rumor going around about a hero killer in Manehattan.

“In the span of a week, he killed sixty-one Power Ponies, all acting as suited heroes, and that was the last time anypony would ever see that mirror. He took the Trade Center and the rest of our lab with it, and… he took our hero as well. The ‘Mirror’ might even still be alive out there, for all we know.

“So, from here, all I can do is start over and try to go back to square one. However, even that proves useless because what do I find out in November? The Element crystals are slowly losing their power. No idea why or how, maybe the Goddess was abandoning us, who knows. But the shards were useless now, and all they were was a pretty splintered decoration.”

Celestia held up a hoof. “Pause. Two questions.”

Luna turned and nodded. “Yes?”

“One; you still have the crystals?”

“I do.”

Celestia let out an irritated sigh. “Okay, two; what do you mean ‘lost their power?’ how does a theoretically infinite power source just stop working?”

Luna threw her hooves up. “What a wonderful question Celestia, I’m sure somepony will figure out an answer for you some day!”

Celestia gave Luna a death stare. “If you had let me in on your little scheming, I-”

“You were busy with your daughter!” she countered. “Do you think I never thought you might be useful to me in this project!? I made many attempts to get you to listen to me, but you were too busy with her! Every waking moment, every free breath, you used them all to pore over her as if she were the only thing in the world! Eventually, I stopped bothering with you because there was simply no reasoning with you!” Luna shook her head and sighed.

“Maybe there was some truth in my hatred toward her. Before the tower fell, Twilight was Celestia’s world, and very little could penetrate that. Perhaps I was… jealous of the attention even, but still, the fact remained that there was no reasoning with her. After the tragedy of the Trade Center, Celestia only guarded Twilight even more stringently, and I was… alone. I could not tell her that this was all potentially my fault. I had already lost all the progress I made that year, and I could only retain so much information alone. Restarting my project was a lost cause.

“A few months go by and I hear not a word from Argent. I was worried something was wrong, so I decided to find them and see how they fared. The world was a scarier place now. Thousands of ponies were killed in that accident, heroes and Power Ponies had an even harsher stigma, but the value of having somepony like Red Hoof around was even more apparent than it had been. In the absence of a force for good, what takes its place but the very thing it was fighting against? Manehattan had a hole in it now, and evil filled the vacuum of what was lost. Going into the south district was more or less a suicide mission with the rampant crime, and it was hardly enough to divert some of the infantry to the police force there.

“Marshall law had to be put into effect for a few months, and even then, the problem only receded so much. This destruction was my fault. Even if by accident, I was the one that created that blasted thing and now… I have seen the fruits of my efforts.” Luna took a breath.

“I was… not received warmly when I visited Argent, to say the least. They’d made a set of wheels to strap Silicon’s legs too and he was up and walking around now, but he was constantly on pain medication. There was more morphine in that boy than there was blood half the time. Stannum was broken last I had seen him, but after I arrived, he went off on me. This was my fault, I was to blame. I brought this upon them, I practically killed his son. ‘Look at what you’ve done to my boy.’ It still haunts me.

“The years go by and I still work to try and fix my mistake by looking for an organic solution to all this, but nothing ever seems to get me as close as the element crystals did. It seems as if Argent never did stop looking for a cure though, only now he did so more desperately. I would not have even thought to look at disruption crystals like they apparently did, but in retrospect, that makes sense. A crystal prone to shattering into granules but easily holds large quantities of magic, in hindsight, we likely should’ve tried them earlier.

“I have kept tabs on Stannum and Silicon over the years, but what I found so strange about all of this was that Silicon became something of a genius. He didn’t… seem like a very bright boy before the accident, but he became something of a scholar. Unrivaled academic achievements, graduating high school and college before age sixteen, and going on to write papers even I found informative about magic. They are both earth ponies. Whatever the virus did to his body, it seemed to have the opposite effect on his mind.

“Now, flash forward to 2029. A monster is sighted in Manehattan forest. I was skeptical of the reports at first, but when I noticed the words ‘mirror like object,’ I made a concentrated effort to hide everything and make sure all information was directed to me and me alone. There was little chance Stannum ever gave up on saving his son, and not long before that year, he’d finished his tower over by the Lower Spine mountains west of here. Something was going on, and I was going to figure out just what that something was.

“I made numerous attempts to infiltrate the tower, but I never could get in. The surveillance was something to rival our own, or perhaps even better. I eventually had a few guards work their way into the company, but none has ever managed to get the security clearance necessary to use the lower floors. The monsters still came, seemingly at random intervals with varying temperaments, but no meaningful progress whatsoever. There was the idea to have Rarity investigate early on, but Celestia kept a close eye on you and your activities, so I wanted to be certain before I let her know of my moves.”

Celestia looked to Rarity, then she shrugged and leaned back. Goose eyed ‘em both. “Hold on. I saw that. Tell us what?”

Celestia clicked her tongue. “Damn it, I knew somepony in here had espionage experience, but I had forgotten who.”

Luna blinked and turned ta Celestia. “What? What is this about?”

The white alicorn sighed. “I suppose you all might know. Rarity… is more than just a hero for Harmony. I‘ve actually been using her as a spy for over a year now.”

Now Twilight blinked. “I’m sorry?”

Celestia turned a hoof ta Rarity, who then leaned back in her chair. “Very well then. That day Celestia visited us shortly after I joined Twilight’s little outfit, she approached me alone later to talk about a pay increase. My powers are beyond unique. Magic like this has been dreamed of for the versatility it offers, and ten minutes, all alone to myself against the rest of the world, is much more time than one would think. Naturally, my personality and cutie mark all lend itself to being social, and with a power like mine, it only makes sense that she would want to use me for tasks that involved… dirty tricks.

“Truth is, my boutique was failing when I joined Harmony, and I needed the money to make sure Sweetie had a place to live. We hadn’t decided what exactly I would get paid for working for Twilight, but… Celestia made me an offer that I simply couldn’t refuse. I don’t go very often, but sometimes I take week-long trips out of the country to do things for her. I’ve learned… Oh, goodness, four languages since then? I keep tabs on everypony for her, I report to her once a month, and I am often given information nopony else has. It wasn’t so much that Celestia didn’t know about your moves Princess, she just didn’t interfere with them.”

The mare in question nodded. “Yes, she’s very useful, as you realized, Luna. But, all that is to say that yes, I do hear everything, Twilight. It’s just not always with my ears that I hear it.”

Luna and Twilight scowled. “You are the dirtiest player of any game I have ever seen, sister.”

“Also that, but what the hell? Why wouldn’t you tell me about it? I put off jobs because Rarity was gone on vacation or whatever, and that’s what was going on instead?”

Celestia nodded. “Pretty much. Now, I wasn’t sure what was really going on here and I hadn’t looked into it very hard. The talks with Zvyr had been running me ragged before all this Persona business started up. I had you go after Goose on a hunch, actually. Rarity had sent me a report about what Luna was doing next, and I started thinking about it. What would be the easiest way for a bad actor to get something into the city? Well, pass it to a gang and sell it like a class one substance. Somepony who had access to a distribution hub, or something like that. Then I saw that report about the harbor, and that gave me the idea.

“Either way, it would make Manehattan a nicer place, so why not? Marevelous Red was on the team, so I was willing to trust something dangerous to you, so long as you weren’t physically involved anyways. If all my time on this earth has taught me anything, the player who wins is the one with the best pieces or the most information. My philosophy is; why not both?”

Luna crossed her forelegs and shook her head. “Dirty, dirty, dirty tricks. What do you not know? Specifically about this; I would refrain from hearing what the general is, I imagine that one is a relatively short list.”

Celestia rolled her eyes. “Oh, stop it. I only have most of the cards, not all of them. I didn’t know most of this actually, I only really learned about what you were doing behind my back when you started having Harmony do things for you. If anything involved Twilight, do you really think I wouldn’t look into it? Though, I will grant you points for the elements, I never did figure out what happened there. Very convincing lie.”

Luna pursed her lips. “I cannot tell if that means you believe me incompetent enough to lose the elements or not. I will accept the compliment regardless. Well, all of these revelations aside, when I finally did get enough evidence to suggest Argent was behind this, I had you investigate. Of course, it did not actually take that long. While I would have preferred the infiltration to have been done sooner, a certain black-cloaked blood-powered pegasus paralyzed my precious little pony, so I decided to do what I could on my own. I happened upon one of those ‘emitters’ in Canterlot by accident one day.

“While I was out for a patrol at night, just to get away from the castle for a moment, I dropped my favorite pen. When I reached for it with my magic, I found two things; one being my pen and the other was something buried in the sidewalk. It had a power source, and thinking it was a bomb or something dangerous, I disarmed it and dug it up. It was clearly very advanced, something bleeding edge, or a prototype of some kind, and I wanted to know what it was doing in my front yard, so to speak.

“This was the very same emitter that went off last Sunday. Filled with a virus dispersing gas that spreads easily and is attracted to heat sources; this was clearly meant to target ponies like a bio-weapon. While heinous, I could not shake the feeling that this object was familiar. Searching through my files yielded distressing results.

“It was one of the ideas I had discussed with Stannum years prior when we were looking for a way to distribute the cure after we found out that the mirror worked. So long as the virus could be extracted, we could just send little pen like devices to release it over the populace. This could only have come from him, so my suspicions were proven.

“The new problem was where this thing was connecting to. It was transmitting and receiving signals, though they were weak, in all directions. Why? The answer; these things are buried all around Canterlot. Removing one was simple. Removing them all could trigger them. Where the signal leads though… was Argent tower.

“Rarity came back with her video a few days later, and then Persona made his announcement. It was like having every horror realized all at once. I was trapped, the game was already his, and I was not a piece on the board. Naturally, I was rather panicked. Of course, you all then decided to dive right into my sharing spell without guidance hours later only to further interrupt my frantic mind.

“While irritating, the fact that you had already taken what you knew about the situation and decided to play the game without my influence was reassuring. To be quite honest with you, it really did give me a great deal of hope when you called that first Sunday morning to have the city evacuated. I did not have to intervene, and I had hoped that my role in all this would not be revealed. Then… he started sending messages.

“So, that brings us to the heart of the matter. Who is Persona? Why is he doing all this? His messages directed toward me after your battle with Ramiel told me everything.

“Persona is Silicon Argent.

“Because of me, because of the incompetents displayed that day all those years ago, his body was ravaged by the virus I created. He… surely thought the world of me, back then. I told him what a wonderful pony he was for showing us how the virus worked, how he would save the world, how we would do it together. Honestly, I likely put him in place of Twilight in my heart back then just to… cope with my loneliness and my jealousy.

“So… so very many things all gone wrong at once created him, and each and every one of them stems from me. He hates me with every fiber of his being, and he intends to go down with as many as he can take, so long as he can beat you first. He likely knows I have a hoof in this little group, and he sees you as my ‘champions’ for him to overcome. He wants to make me suffer in any way he can, even if it means destroying his own soul in the process, as last Sunday would prove.

“If I had told you sooner, I… I simply don’t think we could have done anything about it. I learned what I did too late, and now… all we can do is hope that you win your next few fights. I did manage to infiltrate the tower again, in hopes of finding anything out after Ramiel, but all I learned was… likely just what he wanted me to know.

“His body is deteriorating at a rapid rate; he has about a week and a half to live at best. The emitters are set to a timer that adjusts based on his health. Tied magically to his life, were it to end prematurely, they would all stop receiving the signal to stay dormant, and we would be seeing Cantermore all across Equestria. That… is where we stand.”

---

Applejack Carcharodon

---

“Really? Him? That frail little… schmoozer is Persona?” Rarity asked, clearly some kinda distraught.

Luna raised a brow. “Hmm. Did you meet him when you went to the tower? I don’t remember that in your report.”

Rarity rolled her eyes and huffed. “Well, it wasn’t, but that was before I’d started ‘working,’ so to speak. I didn’t really think it was all that necessary to mention since you had a full file on him. There were also… family matters I’d been dealing with, and Silicon ended up showing me around. He’s so… tiny. And his legs, good Goddess, what a mess that was to look at. That little colt is the source of all our problems?”

“Well, the only pony here who can confirm anything would be you, Ms. Dash,” Celestia said.

We all looked ta her, then she groaned and said, “Alright, let me get permission…” She turned away from us, then came back and nodded. “First off, I need to know that you aren’t going to do anything. I mean, even if you believe her, you should know that you’re in deep shit right now anyways so I don’t think you will, but my partner wants your word on it.”

Celestia sighed and nodded. “Yes. I swear on the crown that I will not make a move on Persona, one way or another.”

Rainbow seemed satisfied with that, so she went on. “First off, yes, that’s him. The green colt with the silver mane who’s actually older than I am, is Persona and Silicon Argent. You know a lot of it, but not the whole of it. Since it’s all up in the air now, my other boss said it’s okay for me to tell you what I know about all this.

“A year and a half ago, I found a weird ad on my usual merc job-sites looking for ponies who could ‘pacify’ potentially dangerous subjects. Now, normally, this is code for ponies looking for an assassin, but the thing that was weird to me here was the ‘potentially dangerous subjects’ part. That meant that whoever was looking to give the job didn’t have a target in mind. When you want somepony dead, you usually only refer to the subject or the group involved. Asking for a kill without a target is super sketchy.

“I was getting low on cash though, and the reward was supposedly a steady stream of work and a pretty paycheck every week. Consistent work in the mercenary world is rare, unusual, and often out of reach for most ponies, so that was enough to get me signed on. Funny enough, the job I had then and what we do now is basically the same, really.

“Persona hired several of us, and when we were shown what we were doing, a lot of the others ducked out. Wild monsters that may or may not be extremely dangerous? We were even shown video of one of the ‘pacifying’ attempts, and that was… gruesome, to say the least. You all know me by now, so when I saw the chance to go all out against whatever might happen, it was like a dream come true. I could indulge my worst habits, do the job, and keep a clean conscious because I didn’t kill the guy first.”

Ah gave Rainbow a pointed look. “Do… do Ah even need ta point out the flaw in yer logic there sugarcube? ‘Cause, it’s pretty big.”

The one-winged mare rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. I know better; that was just my reasoning at the time. It wasn’t good reasoning, but it was enough for me. So, I watch a few experiments, I have to fight sometimes, I… see a… gross, gross death most of the time, and once, only once, I saw it work. When Ramiel happened, I was… amazed. That was a pony. All that destructive power… and he would just… obey any command Silicon gave him.

“Before then, I didn’t think Silicon was really all that dangerous. After seeing Ramiel though? The game had changed completely. He had a unit that could level anything he set it on in seconds. This wasn’t just some kind of one-use nuke either, he could destroy anywhere as many times as he wanted.

“By happenstance, I was on my way to the tower one day, and I spotted my old caretaker. I approached her carefully, and after a few attempts she finally took me aside and spilled what she knew, roping me into this whole mess. I figure you guys knew what my motivation was before I joined up here, and she knew too, so it wasn’t hard to convince me to turn on Silicon, as dangerous as I’d already figured he was.

“It was then that she told me about the plan and the emitters. Shortly after Ramiel was created, Persona set out his emitters across Equestria. In the span of a week; every town, city, and village in the country had these things planted in them, and nopony was the wiser. They don’t come up on sensors, they have no metal in them, they use a unique magical frequency that would be next to impossible to stumble upon, and they don’t use enough of any kind of energy to be seen as anything but background noise by some kind of instrument.

“You can only find one of these things if you happen to see it, and that too is difficult thanks to the ‘chameleon’ properties of the polymer plastic they were made with. We were fucked before Silicon declared war. The fact that you found one by accident is a miracle in and of itself, and I’m just thankful that you did so I didn’t have to challenge the Rad-”

Celestia gave Rainbow a death glare, so she quickly found another word. “the… Immortal Pony Sun Goddess myself.”

Celestia huffed and shook her head. “Ageless, not immortal. If we were immortal, there wouldn’t only be three of us left.”

Rainbow cautiously nodded. “Uh… right. Anyways, another thing you don’t exactly know but I guess just figured out by intuition; Stannum Argent is dead.”

Luna blinked. “I… I’m sorry?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, dead. D. E. A. D. No pulse, no heartbeat, dead. Been that way for a few years now.”

Luna reared back. “A few years!? You mean to tell me that the CEO of Argent Industries, the very same stallion that was at the summer gala not but a few months ago, has been dead for years?”

“Yep.”

Luna brought her hooves to her head. “How? That doesn’t make any sense!”

Rainbow nodded again. “Right. So, Silicon Argent. He has powers, but you never figured out what they were, right?”

Luna nodded. “Yes, I suppose… is that it? Is Silicon keeping his father alive?”

“Uh-huh. Basically, Silicon has the power to animate a corpse. We’re not super sure of all the details on this because there’s some kind of time limit on how long a soul stays in a dead body, but Silicon can kinda… extend that, and also restore the body to the point of it ‘working’ again, so long as he keeps his powers on it.”

Celestia brought a hoof to her chin and furrowed her brow. “A necromancer, is he? Even magic that could accomplish the same feat has been lost for a very, very long time. We haven’t had a necromancer in Equestria in… nearly as long as the country has been unified.”

Luna scratched at her mane. “That is… very unsettling. The power of necromancy without spell work, in an earth pony no less… though, I suppose the price of those powers is exceedingly steep. Had the Original not reversed some of the initial effects, he would likely have died years ago. How long has Stannum been dead?”

“Uh… three years now? So like, the project was ‘started’ when Stannum died. The old man had been in decline since the Trade Center fell, but in 2027, he took a real dive. He wasn’t the healthiest guy around and he had pretty bad cholesterol on top of everything else. He had a stroke and didn’t survive it. That’s when Silicon figured out what his powers were exactly. He was desperate to do anything to bring his dad back, and he just kinda… did.

“He started testing his own powers in hospitals with terminal patients, which is also how he met Sahaquiel, coincidentally, and after some time, he got a good grasp on it. So long as the body is repaired to the point it can sustain itself after Silicon revives it, he can take his powers off and have effectively brought a pony back from the dead. Problem is, Stannum’s issues from the stroke were just a small part of several bigger issues that caused him to have it, like an aneurysm that broke a blood vessel in his brain, and an artery being so clogged up that it would take some serious surgery to get him fixed.

“Dude’s a literal zombie right now, and to fix his issues, his body would have to actually be functioning, which Silicon’s powers kind of ignore. The clot is still there, the vessel is still broken, but his functions are magically sustained by Silicon, so Stannum is cold to the touch. It’s pretty creepy, to be honest. He doesn’t look like a dead pony though, he’s kept in a state near when he died. That’s how they all are until the get doctors on them anyways.”

Celestia tilted her head. “They all?”

Rainbow nodded. “They all. Mortality rate for the job was pretty high, all things considered, but they can usually put you back together so long as you don’t get eaten or melted. Which I’ve seen. I’ve seen some shit, guys. Some serious… serious shit.” Rainbow stared off inta space fer a bit there, then shook her head and got back ta it. “Uh, anyways, the way it works is: you die, Silicon gets his powers on you, you’re kinda dead but not unsalvageable… most of the time, and then the doctors get your body restored while they can just get in there and fix everything without having to worry about keeping you alive in the process. They can’t always get the heart restarted though. Silicon’s powers ‘stop’ as soon as the body is functioning on its own again.

“I was lucky and never ‘died’ while I worked for him, but I know a few ponies that did, and they are all diehard loyal to Silicon now. They all told me that it changes you, to see the other side. Something about, ‘helping out this poor lost soul’ any time they talk about Silicon. All of ‘em ended up very, very religious afterward, I never did find out why. But uh… point is, I’ve seen it happen. If Silicon could get the Original on him, he could effectively keep himself, his dad, and literally anypony who dies alive indefinitely. Course, this is all in a world where there are no side effects to his powers.

“Using them twists his bones little by little. His legs have been ruined for years, and they keep getting worse as the days pass, but recently, more of his body has started to do the same. It’s worked up his back and in the last few months, and it got into his ribs. With the way that is twisting, it’s going to pierce his heart by the end of October 20^th, and then it’s game over.”

Luna had found a thoughtful pose and nodded. “Yes, of course he would be desperate… for the one pony who can delay it, what does he fear more than death itself?” Luna shook her head and sighed. “But, something has been bothering me about all this. Whatever did happen to the Original? It was effectively a perfect substance. I could not even break it when we did the stress test.”

Celestia reared her head back. “You couldn’t break it?”

Luna shrugged. “I could not. Something about the charged bond it formed with the mercury made it so stable that we couldn’t even cut it with a diamond. There is very little chance it was ever destroyed, so I can only imagine it’s still out there somewhere…”

Rainbow raised a hoof. “Yeah about that… It uh… probably isn’t.”

Luna blinked. “How?”

“Well. We’re not super sure on the details and all, like everything about this mess, but the mirror itself is most definitely gone. But uh… to confirm that, we would have to bring my partner and… somepony else, here.”

Somepony else? Suddenly, it all made sense as ta why she would say it like that. There is only one pony who would know the truth of that happened ta the Original, and that would be the last pony ta have it. The Mirror. Ah felt my blood start ta boil.

“Do ya mean ta say that ya know who had it last? Because that sure is what it fuckin’ sound like, Dash!” Ah slammed a hoof inta the table and stared ta stand, but Ah was very quickly forced back down inta my seat by a weight so heavy that it felt like the world was comin’ down on me.

“You will not so much as move from that seat. Keep your mouth shut and keep your temper in check, Major.” Through the gold aura of magic over my body, Ah met Celestia’s eyes. Ah already knew, she didn’t have ta say anythin’, but nothin was gonna quell the rage in my heart. With everythin’ Ah had, Ah pushed back against the wall of weight.

“She knows who he is! He’s finally in reach, damn it!” Ah managed ta yell through gritted teeth. Ah’d just about made it back ta standin’, but then the pressure increased and Ah was forced back inta the crystal.

“Do not defy me, Jaquline Carcharodon!” Now it was Celestia’s turn ta stand, and if Ah didn’t know any better, Ah would think somepony turned the heat on. “If anypony here deserves to justify a vendetta here, it’s me, but we do not have that luxury right now!”

Grindin’ my teeth harder, Ah fought against the pressure again. Somehow, it felt easier. “He killed my father! He made my life miserable!”

Celestia had some kinda horrified look on her face, but just as soon as Ah found my hooves again, the pressure became unbearable and Ah was glued ta the chair. “You and your family are still alive! The ponies Persona murdered are not, and this pony may help us prevent any more from dying the same way! Is your vengeance more important than innocent lives!?”

Like tearin’ a small hole in a balloon, Ah deflated. Ah know that, damn it! But… what am Ah supposed ta… do with all this hatred? The pressure relieved and just as quick, Celestia offered me a hoof. “I understand how you feel, but now is not the time.”

Ah suppose if anypony could, she would be the one. Ah took the hoof and she pulled me back up ta sittin’ in the uh… me-shape dented crystal chair. Ah sighed and said, “Yeah, yeah. Ah’m… sorry. Who the fuck is this guy, anyways?”

“Applejack…”

Her hoof tightened on mine, and suddenly Ah realized Ah was still in trouble. “Ah’m sorry, geez!”

Celestia let go, but the scowl never came off her face. “As you should be. Anyways, I assume this other pony’s identity also needs to be protected, but for more obvious reasons, correct?”

Rainbow waved a hoof and laughed. “Oh, Goddess, you have no idea. If you think Luna and Silicon’s relationship is fucked up, just wait for them to meet up. That’s gonna be one hell of a day.”

Ah blinked. “What?”

Rainbow let out a deep breath, and then put a hoof on my shoulder. “I am so sorry. You are just… in for some shit, my dude.”

“Huh?”

Celestia broke in. “Well, whatever the circumstances; I would extend an invitation to anypony who can help solve the mystery of what happened. Until the actual fight comes, information is all we have to go on, and it seems as if you still much more of that than I do.”

Rainbow nodded. “Oh, yeah, totally. I uh… wait, wait. Pause.” She turned her head, and then came back after a minute. “She uh… wants to talk to you.”

Celestia blinked, looked ta Luna, then back ta Rainbow. “She as in… this ‘partner’ of yours?”

“Yeah. Just uh… touch my hoof. Fair warning, ya can’t keep her out once she’s in. She’s trustworthy, but uh… she can see everything.”

Celestia shook her head. “Absolutely not. Give her to Twilight, then Twilight can broadcast what she says. There is far, far too much that I know that nopony should ever know. Luna too, for that matter.”

Rainbow looked up fer a bit. “Uh… that works, I guess. Here. You take her.”

Grumblin’, Twi took Rainbow’s hoof, sayin’ somethin’ about ‘gettin’ all the crappy jobs here’ under her breath. Not a second went by before a new voice found its way inta my head.

“Wow. Now that’s a communications array. This web is almost as complex as the one I made when I was ten. Props on you for being able, this must take a lot of work to sustain with magic.”

Though there was no ‘sound,’ so ta speak, still, Rarity’s ears perked up. “Now hold on just a minute! I know you. You’re that mare from the tower…”

“Astute of you, Ms. Belle. I would restore your memories and tell the rest of you who I am, but I must confirm that my identity remain anonymous. Somepony… oh, never mind, most of you seem to know him, and he can’t find out.”

“So long as you’re sharing secrets with us, we will keep yours. You have my word,” Celestia said.

“Good. My name is Brightness Slate.”

Immediately, recognition clicked. “Sweet Goddess, you’re Star’s sister!”

“And that is exactly the pony who doesn’t need to know anything about this. Keep it to yourself, ‘kay thanks.”

“She will. Now then, what can you tell us about the Original? The Kaiju? The emitters? Anything that could help us get out of this mess,” Celestia asked.

“Right. I can do pretty much all of those. I guess I’ll start with the Original. First of all, it is no longer part of this world for fact. Kinda. So, like, back in the day, I could trace the Mirror. Well, I suppose that could be confusing, so the thing and the guy. It had a weird signal, and it gave off this feeling like it was alive, right? Had a lock on it for a while. For almost two years after the incident with the tower, actually. Then one day, it was just… gone, back in 2020.

“Spoiler alert because you’re gonna be pissed about it anyways, I can see through the eyes of ‘Wings’ over there. I know where you are, but I don’t know how to get in. It makes sense though, really explains why I could never figure out why my signal just disappeared one day.”

Celestia made a slow head turn toward Rainbow, who very quickly turned away from her. Ah don’t blame her though. “Wonderful.”

“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that chief. Needed to confirm some things. Point is, I think you guys are currently standing on top of the Original, or at least where it was buried.”

Twi’s ears perked up. “Buried?”

“There used to be a cabin here. There was…” A pause. “There was a grave here, too. I was… really concerned when the signal just up and disappeared, so I went to check on the grave back then. Couldn’t find it. The trees didn’t match anymore, it was like the whole area around that old cabin was just gone. I was fourteen at the time, so I didn’t even consider magic at play, I just thought I was going crazy. I was also slowly going blind, so maybe it was just more of my powers messing with my body. Had no clue.

“Either way, it was gone, I couldn’t find it anymore. When you brought Wings in though, I found something… way, way bigger. It has a similar signal, but it’s different by a large margin. It’s also very, very strong. I’m sure that field around the place has something to do with why I can’t trace the signal unless Wings is there, but if it wasn’t, I’m pretty sure any magical detection instrument in the world could find this place.”

Celestia brought a hoof ta her chin, deep in thought. “No… Could it really…?” She shook her head. “I see. What about the Kaiju?”

“Oh? Something on your mind Sunny? Whatever, I’m sure I’ll know later. Zeruel is no threat to you. Wings was lying on my orders, that project does have details on it, but I wiped ‘em to keep him safe. Truth is, Zeruel was the code name for ‘The Mirror’ project when Silicon went on a rampage twelve years ago. Little bastard was some kinda blood thirsty, wanted to ‘cull the false heroes’ in Equestria, but his little test subject went rouge before he could kill Moony, which was his ultimate goal.

“The Mirror was originally a mental patient he plucked from Manehattan Asylum back in the day. Not even a carrier of the virus, so he was injected with it and the mirror at the same time. What resulted from that was a ‘controlled’ virus that spread in the subject according to Silicon’s wishes. He could copy the powers of anypony he came in contact with and he could find Power Ponies with a sort of radar like ability. He was nothing but a broken guy with a grudge at first. With a little training, they found that he could only have one power copied at a time, but said power would just come naturally to him, like he’d had it all his life. This guy has since lost his copy powers, but he retained the radar thing. He is… not the same pony anymore.

“As for Sahaquiel, that’s the one you need to worry about. So, much like our dear old loverboy, Silicon, in the event you didn’t catch on, Sahaquiel was nothing before. Just a kid that got dealt a shit hoof by genetics, and had a not so fun life. Hollow boned Earth pony, very frail, doomed to a short life. He was bullied… pretty aggressively when he was a child, and he grew up into a seething little ball of hate with no way to release it.

“Hates ponies unlike anything in the world. Except for one. As Wings told you, Silicon started exploring his powers shortly after reviving the old man by visiting hospitals with the terminally ill. He had a few successes, but one day, he came across a kid who was on borrowed time. His name was Velocity, and he had about a year left to live. His bones were exceptionally thin and getting thinner. Sometime around when he was set to turn eighteen, he could no longer walk because he couldn’t sustain his own body weight. Eventually, as he grew and his bones didn’t get any thicker, his muscles would rip them apart and kill him.

“Not an uncommon fate for his kind, but he was determined to see it though. He didn’t want to die, not without taking his bullies with him. Silicon, feeling some kind of… twisted kinship with this guy, decided to have him tested. Not only did his genetics suck, he also was a virus carrier. Probably why his bones weren’t getting any thicker, so another thing Velocity had to curse.

“Seeing an opportunity, Silicon offered to take him and see if he could fix him. The mirror project was still in infancy at the time, but so long as he could hold out until Silicon succeeded, he promised Velocity that he could give him the power he wanted. And by the Goddess, did he deliver.

“Just after the success of Matarael, Silicon went to tweaking the mirror recipe again, and then he got a call. Velocity was dying. A few of his legs had already snapped, and it wouldn’t be long before more of his body caved in on itself.

“Silicon arrived just in time to see Velocity reach out for help, when his last leg snapped, along with a few of his ribs. They stabbed through his lungs and he drowned in his own blood in seconds. With precious time left, Silicon revived Velocity before his heart stopped, and applied his first third generation mirror to the kid.

“By some miracle, if you can call it that, the mirror worked as intended, and Velocity is reborn as Sahaquiel. As it turned out, his initial powers allowed him to fly, as if by magic. Adding the third gen mirror to the mix strengthened his body almost in reverse of what it was before, and now he was strong too. Newly revived and in a body that works, what does he do first? Go on a killing spree. He found and murdered all the ponies he had on a list, doing more so to the mares of course, and then he had Silicon use his connections to make sure nopony ever heard about it.

“Dude is… a piece of work alright. Outright demonic, really. Even Silicon is disgusted with the guy, but Sahaquiel is unflinchingly loyal to him. If he told Sahaquiel to kill, Sahaquiel would ask how many, when, where, and what to do with the bodies. When the day comes, you guys better not fuck around. He looks like a kid. He is a kid. But he will kill you after he’s done playing with you. He has power, he knows it, and there’s nothing he enjoys more than torture. Keep that in mind, ‘kay?”

“I mean. I know that; I told them that, just in less detail,” Rainbow said

“You did, but you didn’t mention the fact that he’s a necrophiliac. He’ll fuck your corpse. He is the sole reason there are no prostitutes in Tin anymore. Anyways, he’s bad news, and he’ll die before he disobeys Silicon. You kill him if you get the chance.”

Pinkie gagged. “Ugh, gross. What is with these guys and their… ‘thingies?’ It’s never enough just to kill somepony, they always gotta… ya know…”

“Oh, you have no idea the kind of ponies we experimented on. There were far, far worse in the gen 2 subjects, let me tell ya. Anyways, also kill Sahaquiel because he’s biologically tied to the Emitter System. So long as you do that, I can turn it off.”

Celestia stood. “You can?”

“I can! You’re quick on the uptake, aren’t cha? So, here’s the deal. The only two ponies with any real control on the situation right now are Silicon and Sahaquiel. Stannum has tried time and time again to get Silicon to let him die. He would rather have let Silicon live and pass on, but Silicon is the only one who can take his powers back. As he is now, Stannum is effectively indestructible thanks to Silicon’s powers, and he can’t even off himself. He’s tried. A few times, actually.

“However, Stannum, is also one of the admins of the Emitter System, and he trusts me. After Silicon pushed the button the other day, Stannum finally gave up any hope of Silicon ending this madness. He hates to see this, but he can’t bring himself to try and stop Silicon either. He’s stuck, and the only way out is Silicon dying, or the rest of Equestria going with them. He turned to me for help, and now I have access to the system.

“I can turn it off, but two things have to happen. Silicon needs to be preoccupied. That used to happen often enough, but lately he never leaves the main control room. Second thing is, obviously, Sahaquiel dying. What I think will happen here is that on the final day, Silicon will come after you himself. When he does, I can get in there and we’ll be in the clear. Sound good?”

“I suppose. What about meeting here? How soon can that happen? Confirmation on the Original is… very important,” Celestia asked.

Is it? Why would it be?

“Ooh, you figured something out, didn’t you, Sunny? Well, I would come as soon as I can, but the issue again, is Sahaquiel. He watches all the employees very closely and kills the ones he thinks are suspicious. He found a Lunar Guard in our ranks once and broke his neck on the spot. I can’t so much as leave Tin without being watched right now.”

Luna tilted her head. “How is it that you are contacting us now then?”

“Oh, not even you guys would know if I was talking to anypony else if you could see me. If he is watching me right now, he probably thinks I’m asleep. I’ll talk to Zeruel and see what he thinks. I’ll get you an answer by Saturday at the latest, but I’m sure we’ll be ready after Sahaquiel is dealt with.”