It would take a few hours to get enough Twilonium, so I decided to do something else while we waited. After a few minutes Chrysalis noticed and walked over to where I was sitting.
“What you're doing?”, she asked.
It was hard for me to say it out loud because of its implications. I took a few deep breaths before I answered.
“I’m writing a letter to Twilight… in case I don’t make it back to her.”, I whispered just loud enough for her to hear.
“Oh…”, she just replied. There was a full minute of silence between us and I stared down at my papers, I didn’t dare to look at her.
“Can I borrow a few pieces of paper as well?”, she silently asked.
“Sure.”, I answered and offered her a few, once again I avoided looking at her directly.
She took them and sat down at a table a few feet away from mine. I felt guilty for accepting her help…
Of course, my chances of succeeding were far better with her helping me, but the possibility of her dying while we tried to close the portal troubled my conscience.
I looked down at what I had written so far.
‘Dear Twilight,
I hope you never have to read this but I wanted to tell you one last time how much I love you.
Chrysalis and I will go to the portal and we attempt to close it forever. I’m sorry for doing this against Celestia's will and without your knowledge, but the possibility of you or my friends dying because of what I have brought to this world is more than I can bear.’
Tears started to run down my face as I continued the letter.
‘Well, if you read this…’ A tear fell on the paper and blurred the last word I wrote, I used my sleeve to clean it up and quickly wiped my eyes.
‘I guess I must have died. I'm sorry for leaving you alone. I just hope I was able to close the portal to save you and this world. I'm so sorry, please forgive me.
Love you forever
Stella’
I turned the letter upside down and pushed it away from me while I buried my head in my arms. I just wanted to stop thinking for a few minutes.
But after only a few seconds something dawned on me. Twilight must have felt all this sadness through our connection and surely was worried now.
I lifted my head and looked over to Chrysalis.
“Chryssi, I need a favor right now. Could you please use a sleeping spell on our marefriends and Spike? I fear they soon will check on us if we're alright and I can't face them now, I don't think I could hold back my feelings.”
She just nodded, put down her quill and walked to the door. She had just exited the lab when I heard Twilight's voice.
“Hey Chrysalis, how is Stella doing? I wondered if you noticed anything…”
*Thud*
After a moment Chrysalis’ head appeared at the door.
“I will bring her to your bed and take care of the rest.”
“Thank you.”, was all I was able to reply.
…
The Twilonium production was complete and I carefully closed the lid of the bottle I had filled it into. I had also brought some liquor I used to flambé before and was explaining the concept of a molotov cocktail to Chrysalis.
“... opposite to a standard molotov cocktail, the flame has no access to the inner bottle here. The bottle will be closed tight and the burning cloth it only attached to the bottle, the bottle breaks and the Twilonium gets ignited. I think it’s our best chance to use it in an effective way.”, I closed my explanation.
“So we only have one chance.”, she stated.
“Yeah, that's correct.”, I answered and looked at the colorful bottle in my hand, I had glued the cloth to its lid. “Could you use this sleep spell against the soldiers as well?”
“I could, but only one at a time. I need line of sight to their heads and I need a few seconds to cast each spell. Twilight wasn't surprised to see my horn glow, we both use our magic all the time for little stuff, but I'm afraid for these soldiers it would only be a brightly lit target.”
“Yeah, I guess you're right about that…”, I replied and thought about other approaches to our problem. “Can you turn into a human?”
She smiled. “That shouldn't be a problem, but it's been quite a while since I had been bipedal.”
Her horn lit up for a few moments and suddenly a perfect copy of myself stood before me, to say it felt weird would be a huge understatement. She had problems keeping her balance and held on to me.
“Your big udders are throwing off my balance.”, she complained.
“They're not that big!”, I replied, it had been more a reflex than a complaint.
“That shouldn't be a problem if you would be copying a soldier, I have hardly seen any women amongst them.”
“Well in that case…”, she mumbled and suddenly her breasts were gone. This was an even weirder sight to me and without thinking about it I touched my own to check if they still were there.
“That much better.”, she continued and took a few shaky steps but soon got more confident.
“Practice a few more minutes.”, I addressed Chrysalis-Me while I carefully packed the Twilonium into my backpack, together with some other stuff. I placed my letter next to the one of Chrysalis on one of the tables and watched her practice to look natural.
…
It was long after midnight as we silently moved through Ponyville towards the Everfree Forest. I felt the same mix of feelings from Chryssi as I felt myself, fear and determination.
Since I had enough Twilonium in my backpack to erase the whole town I moved very carefully. I still didn’t know enough about this element to be sure it wouldn’t explode for some other reason than I was aware so far.
For that reason, I felt relieved when we had left Ponyville far behind us.
when all else fails GET BIGGER EXPLOSIVES or nukes they work too.
8815515
No kidding. Wait until they get see what that'll do. Hopefully Stella's former employer didn't maintain off-site data backups so they could save money.
The letter and the reasoning behind it poked me in the feels. I got pulled in so much that I too forgot about Stella and Twi's empathetic link. Nice update and I look forward to reading the next one.
8816107
Even if they had the data elsewhere, since it only works with this one portal there is no way of getting to Equestria if they can destroy this one.
8815804
Sure, lets make a truckload of Twilonium and blow up earth as a whole
8816257
hey it might work!
an if it did problem permanently solved
8818764
To kill 7.6 billion people could trouble her a little bit.
some how i can see this going side wise in a bade way.
8841599
There are a lot of good points. I'm not going back to book one to look it up, but I remember her having access to all data an wiping them completely. She would have known about backups and erased them as well, she wrote the test program and set the parameter changes in it, so if that's gone you can't re-run it. Lets also say she knows where cameras are and is able to turn the keyboard so she can't be recorded.
But that all doesn't matter anyway since the data was somewhere she didn't expect.
She thought this to be a easy and clean solution back then, but she was wrong.
So now we're going for overkill
8841710
There's a better solution, of course.
Are you familiar with cordyceps? It's a fungus that infects an organism, hijacks its mind, and feeds on the dying body to produce spores.
If they created a mock-up body so it looks like Stella was infested by a mind-controlling body horror and died, and left it for the soldiers to find, then they would leave. Some illusion magic to make them unwilling to take it back as a sample, such as tendrils that grasp for them, would ensure that they would destroy the portal themselves. If Chrystalis could make them burrow into the soldiers flesh and 'vanish inside that would be perfect.
The soldiers would be killed and dissected, going by how things apparently operate in that world, but it would ensure no further attempts would be made.
8843827
Wow, you have a dangerous mind
8843827
You really don't know humanity, do you? Next time they'd just come with flamethrowers and in chem wests. Access to the whole new plant full of resources is way more important than potential lots in personnel. That may stale them, but definitely won't stop them.
Well, that escalated quickly.