Chapter 18
—Sweetie, I have to take Rainbow and Sunset to Equestria. Can you look after 'Bee and Byte until I get back. And if I don't get back,— Rarity sent to Sweetie Belle.
It took the girl a few moments to pull her phone out and wake it up. From the lock screen she saw the alert had been from ChirpNet and specifically from Rarity. She was already getting ready to head to Rarity's house to take over from Rainbow, but when she saw the actual message her adrenaline kicked in. "What the heck, Rarity?!"
—WHAT HAPPENED!?!?!?— Sweetie Belle sent to Rarity.
As always, Rarity's message was back before Sweetie's thumb had even finished rising from the send button.
—Suri attacked. Sunset and Rainbow are hurt. I'm going to Princess Twilight for help. I don't know how the portal will react to NotABug.—
When Sweetie was done scooping her jaw off the floor, she grabbed her purse and rushed for the door. Pushing the door open, she quickly navigated her dorm while she typed and sent the resulting message to both Rarity and NotABug.
—Both of you had better come back. I'm not cut out to be a mom,— Sweetie Belle sent.
—I love you, Sweetie.—
—Your client will remember this, so please don't delete this until I tell you. The crypto key for the server is dbe1a77224bae667cfc6625fb345ac5 1f5d600cc503948d208bfbc2cb04742 9f6db69cf4333e5ee6b4d6805fbea19 2db48748f792051d17ce383910634fd 0e6f and that has access information for ChirpNet and my accounts. Do what you need to, and trust Twilight Velvet and Coco Pommel,— NotABug sent to Sweetie.
Sweetie vaguely recognized the key as what seemed to be random data. "Damn damn damn!" Unlocking and climbing into her car, Sweetie turned the key in the ignition and sped to her sister's house.
Her phone was quiet for the whole drive, which in and of itself was odd. Normally NotABug was messaging her, asking questions she was too embarrassed to ask Rarity, but nothing came up until Sweetie pulled in at Rarity's house.
—Auntie Sweetie's here! HI!— Byte sent.
As she turned the engine off in her car, Sweetie noticed that the front door was slightly ajar. A touch alarmed, she hastened inside to find Byte and 'Bee waiting for her.
Getting her two nieces settled was, however, going to be easier said than done. Just as Sweetie Belle got Byte and 'Bee busy playing a video game, she heard the sound of cracking plastic.
Byte was the only one who had heard the particular sound before. Her little ears perked up, and she completely ignored the game in progress to examine the two new eggs. "They're hatching!"
The world was far too bright. Closing her eyes, the nymph shoved her snout out of the egg only because she'd looked up hatching and getting out of eggs is what a newborn is meant to do. She recognized Byte and Bumblebee by their digital signatures, but there was one person in the room that she had trouble recognizing.
Sending a flood of data requests, the nymph felt lost until the person picked her up. Her first real meal was the best thing she'd experienced in her short life. The love that poured into her from the nice person overwhelmed her own happiness.
—That's Sweetie Belle. She's our auntie. Here's her node information, but don't send too much as she processes slowly.—
Information poured into the nymph. She experienced love and data in equal amounts and chirped like her two big sisters.
"What about the other egg?" Sweetie Belle asked.
The other egg was starting to crack, but no little snout had poked out yet. Byte, 'Bee, and the newborn nymph poked at the egg digitally and got scared chirping back.
"She's scared, Aunt Sweetie," Byte said.
Three knocks sounded on the front door. Sweetie Belle started to get up to answer it when a panicked chirp from 'Bee stopped her. "What's wrong?"
"Windigo," 'Bee said very softly, barely above a whisper.
Hugging the three nymphs and the egg to her, Sweetie Belle shrank back into the couch and stared at the door in fear. All of the things NotABug had told the girl spun in her head. The Devourer—Monster.
Changelings, of course, could pick up emotions readily. Byte, 'Bee, and the recently hatched nymph were shielded from Sweetie Belle's fear by the recent buffer of Love they'd all gotten from her, but inside her egg, the yet-to-be-born nymph was trapped in a terrified place she had no desire to be.
Using her tiny (but sharp) fangs, the nymph ripped at the inside of her egg and tore herself free. More fear enveloped her. She needed somewhere to get away from it. Her target was the big colorful thing that seemed to call to her.
Bounding forward, the nymph evaded all the objects in her way and leapt into the television set. The transition from the real world to digital was freeing. Noise and data—the same thing to a newborn nymph—surrounded her and poured past her. Diving into the noise took her further away from the fear-laden room.
Router to router, node to node. She swam about and felt happiness grow in her.
The first moment the nymph realized something was wrong was when the router she'd just swam through immediately stopped sending data. Where there should have been noise flowing around her, it was quiet—silent.
Cold fear filled the nymph, but this time it was her own. Launching past the router as quickly as she could, she found each hop she took had the same result—a moment after she reached somewhere new, everything went quiet.
Windigo enjoyed itself. This new game was more fun than any it had played before. Attack, exploit, consume, chase—but it could never get around the prey it chased. Then, just as Windigo was getting bored of its game of devour the routers, its quarry was gone—the same gone that NotABug had managed when it had chased her into Rarity's head.
Moon Dancer had been working on her programming for her Computer Language Engineering class when she noticed a slight flicker of the screen.
Fearing for her work, the multi-major undergrad moved her mouse to the save icon and punched the mouse button repeatedly. "C'mon! Don't flake out. Don't flake out. Don't flake—" Peace came to Moon as the little red computer disk picture (that bore no resemblance to modern disks in any way, shape, or form) turned from red to grayed out. "Oh thank you so much! I don't know what I would have…"
Moon Dancer trailed off as she looked at the blue wash of color on her screen. It was a little confusing, and her hand was reaching for the power button when a terrified (and terrifying) face appeared.
There were few humans who would find the panicked nymph's visage anything but shocking, and Moon Dancer wasn't among them. She rocked backward in her seat and tried to get away from the image on the screen. "What are—"
"Help!"
In all Moon Dancer's life she'd never heard a perfect culmination of terror and pleading. Her heart melted (so far as the nymph was concerned) as she realized that the true terror was for what would scare such a creature.
The blue light grew brighter, and Moon Dancer watched as the black form with bright blue eyes stretched itself out of the screen.
Something was wrong.
The nymph should have been able to pull herself from the screen with ease, but she felt the silencing presence catch up and reach for her. Pain exploded in the nymph and she reached out to the human looking at her. "Please help!"
A powerful flash of blue light erupted and then there was darkness.
The power was out, and so was Moon Dancer.
"I can check the cameras and see if they're gone," Byte said.
"No. Ugh, I need to think. Who am I meant to call if I know a monster is outside and I need—" Sweetie Belle shook her head. "Duh, I call the people NotABug said I should. Twilight Velvet… Byte, do you know Twilight Velvet's phone number?"
Picking up her mobile, Sweetie noticed there was no signal and barely stopped herself from saying a bad word in front of the nymphs. "Scratch that. Phone's out."
"Our fiber link is still up. Who do you want to call?" Bumblebee asked.
"Uh." Sweetie Belle looked down at her phone. "Can you get my phone to make a call to this Twilight Velvet?"
On Sweetie's phone, ChirpNet blinked and showed a voice call starting—she pulled the device to her cheek.
"Twilight Velvet. This is a private line, how did you get this number?"
"M-Miss Velvet! I'm calling from Rarity and NotABug's house, I'm Rarity's sister. I was babysitting her nymphs when Windigo attacked!"
"It's true, Mrs. Velvet," Byte said over the digital link. "Mom got in some kind of trouble at work and had to take her friends somewhere. Now Windigo is outside and we don't know what to do!"
"Listen to me, Sweetie Belle?"
"Y-Yes?"
"Stay there. Don't open your door even if it's the police, okay? I'm sending some friends around. They'll knock on the—where was this Windigo?"
Sweetie choked back her worry a little easier with the calm voice of Twilight Velvet on the other end of the line. "Front door."
"They'll knock on the back door and say Aardvark. Understand? If you don't hear Aardvark, you don't come out. Don't say the word out loud now."
Because Windigo could be listening to us somehow, Sweetie Belle thought. "Okay, only when someone says that word."
"Great. These men are going to be big, and they're probably going to shout. Do what they say and keep as quiet as you can be. I'll be waiting for you when they get you out, okay? Now I'm going to hang up."
"Okay." The phone went dead the moment Sweetie said the word.
"What happened to our other sister?" Bumblebee asked.
"Sh-She ran. She ran away really fast. When Mom gets back, she'll find her," Byte said.
Sweetie Belle wished she had as much confidence in this as Byte seemed to show. She held the three nymphs as close as she could and counted out a minute, then she counted out another. She got to ten before the sound of screeching tires sounded out the front.
Only twenty seconds later there was a knock at the back door.
"Aardvark!"
"That's what Mrs. Velvet said!" Byte said.
Like a spring, Sweetie's legs unfolded and pushed her forward. She staggered to the back door and looked through the window to see two big men with dark glasses on. Each carried a compact gun of some kind that looked like a toy. Her hand shook as she turned the deadbolt and opened the door.
"We're leaving. Bring your—Is that all of you?"
Sweetie Belle nodded.
"Come on and keep quiet. Do what we say, and don't get in front of us."
Telling herself over and over that this was all by someone NotABug trusted implicitly—and not a well-timed kidnapping—Sweetie Belle climbed into the typical-looking suburban minivan with the men.
"We're taking you directly to Mrs. Velvet. You got any idea how dangerous this thing is?"
Sweetie Belle shook her head, but Byte lifted her head out of the jumble of bodies in the girl's arms. "Really bad. Mom showed me pictures of it. Fast and nasty. Remember that office building that got trashed at the start of the week?"
"Yeah?"
"That was just a warm-up." Byte's voice held seriousness her size didn't back up, however the two men were professional enough to take it for the warning it was.
"Fuck. Okay, John, let's go fast."
Moon Dancer struggled through an odd fever-dream. She had twice as many memories for two days, and half of them were completely alien to her. Blinking at the darkness in her room, she only realized she wasn't blind (and that the lights were out) when her heavy curtains fluttered and let a few stray flickers of day in.
She blinked some more, and slowly the room came into focus. Sitting up, Moon reached for her glasses like she had every morning for years, but they weren't on her bedside table and she wasn't on her bed. "What the actual—There they are!"
Grabbing her glasses, Moon pulled them on and let out a little breath (the type everyone near-sighted did when they could see again), only she couldn't see properly. The room was now dark and blurry.
"What's wrong with these things?" Moon Dancer yanked her glasses back off and could see perfectly once again.
The extra memories came to her in flashes. Flickers of patterns of data. At first it all seemed so random, but shapes and patterns formed, then more distinct things started to emerge from the gloom of what shouldn't have been.
"This is insane."
Sitting up, then standing, Moon Dancer walked to the window and threw the curtains open. Her eyes adjusted quickly, but not fast enough to stop her from wincing at the bright light. "Ugh! Daystar! My one true enemy!" The old saying brought a chuckle from her. "What time is it?"
Everything Moon owned was digital. Her alarm clock, phone, computer, and even the display on the microwave in her dorm room were digital—and hence dark in the current blackout. It took her brain nearly ten seconds to remember that while all those devices might be digital, one also had a battery.
Reaching out to her desk, Moon grabbed up the phone that sat to one side of her keyboard. The mobile phone, to Moon Dancer, felt slimy and a little like soft plastic. Her eyes narrowed in on it, and she froze as a blue glow enveloped her arm.
Staring in shock, Moon watched as her phone melted onto her fingers and seemed to soak into her skin. It was unreal to her, completely flouting all the laws of physics and anatomy. When the blue glow stopped, however, Moon Dancer was left staring at her empty hand.
There was a tickle of something in the back of Moon Dancer's head, and then she distinctly felt something try to get her attention.
Memories rushed at her, and with the fever-dream recollections she unlocked the phone and read the text message.
—Moon! What's going on? Is your power out too?— Lemon Hearts.
11:38.10001
11:38.10002
11:38.10003
11:38.10004
11:38.10005
It was fascinating and terrifying. Moon Dancer's whole world slowed to a crawl as she watched time tick forward—slowly—millisecond by millisecond. Nearly a hundred of them fluttered away as she started to fall backwards, and a few more came and went as indistinct concepts before darkness wrapped around her.
"And the other newborn is missing? Are you sure Windigo chased her?" Twilight Velvet was standing in her office with two young women and three of the most adorable (once one had gotten to know them) monsters ever. Outside her house was some very big men—not the ones who had picked up her guests—who were being paid a lot of money to ensure nothing broke the peace of the neighborhood.
Sweetie Belle nodded. "'B-'Bee said. Right 'Bee?"
Bumblebee nodded.
Twilight resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. Her day had gone from calm to shattered glass in the space of fifteen seconds. "Do any of you know where she might have gotten to? Do you know how to follow her?"
"You could follow the path of broken routers, but that would be hard. What you really need to do is find the last one, right?" Bumblebee asked. She didn't wait for anyone to do more than nod, "I'll need some time, but I can try—"
"No. None of you are to go online. I'd rather not have the gentlemen outside earn a combat bonus if I can help it. Ms. Pommel, do you have anything to add?" Twilight Velvet turned to look at the third woman in the room.
"R-Rarity said she was taking a friend with her to work to find out what Suri was up to. She and NotABug were concerned over what Suri was doing with her newfound talents."
"Newfound talents? Are we sure she wasn't working with Windigo?" Twilight watched shock register on everyone's face face except the newborn nymph. "We'll have to assume they are working together somehow. That would certainly explain who it was outside Rarity's house."
"Can I connect to our server at home?" Byte asked. "I don't think Windigo could get into that. I couldn't even get into that if I didn't have an access key."
"How easy would it be for them to trace your connection here?" Twilight Velvet had exchanged some messages with NotABug, but NotABug's big presentation on internet threats was scheduled for Monday. She struggled not to sigh at the timing of everything.
"If she uses my mobile for the connection, really hard. Uh, right?" Sweetie Belle asked and looked at Byte.
Bumblebee cleared her throat (something she'd learned watching television online). "She could get our general location—it's accurate to about a quarter of a mile."
Twilight Velvet tried to weigh the risk but didn't have anything to weigh it against. "And what will connecting with home give you?"
"Cameras around the house, a way to hide any extra internet connections from there. Maybe a chance to find—to find her." Byte's voice wavered toward the end as she realized her littlest sister didn't even have a name yet.
"Do it."
Moon Dancer woke up to a thud. The sound was easy to identify as her door. The milliseconds ticked by under her watchful eye. Milliseconds, Moon realized, were a horrible unit of time measurement. As they ticked past, she reached into the phone that was somehow part of her and turned the clock to just show 24h time without seconds.
Gasping in relief, Moon sat up on her bed. Her mind still raced, but nothing was as bad as when she had millisecond precision on the clock.
Another round of thumping on the door got her attention. "I-I'm coming!"
Moon Dancer almost stumbled as she got to her feet. Wading past pile after pile of books, she reached the door and pushed the nearest pile back so she could open it.
"Are you alright? I was about to get the RA to open your door!" Lemon Hearts was used to the sight of Moon Dancer's room and had long-since given up trying to talk her friend into cleaning it up.
Mind racing—literally—Moon Dancer had an entire second to work out what to say. "Well, I was trying to write some code for one of my classes, but then I lost power and I think it—it must have been a surge, my phone died too."
"That doesn't explain why—"
"I tripped over some books in the dark and hit the floor." Admitting she was a klutz wasn't the most fun thing for Moon to say, but it was so much easier for her friend to understand than I absorbed my mobile phone and passed out because I couldn't handle the world in super slow motion.
Lemon rolled her eyes and reached a hand out to boop Moon Dancer on the nose. "You're such a klutz, Moon. Come on, it's not like we can do anything here anyway. Let's go get tacos!"
Looking back at her computer and fighting the strangest urge to jump into it, Moon Dancer sighed. "Alright. Let me grab my wallet."
12:03
Meeting up with Minuette, Lyra, and Twinkleshine, Moon let out a little sigh of relief. Despite being a shut-in by her own admission, she enjoyed being with her friends. It made her think back to her time at Canterlot High and the last student from the honor roll—Twilight Sparkle.
An itch started in Moon's head while they were walking to the nearby Mexican restaurant. It was just a tingle at first, but she felt it like a cord seeking out a socket to plug into. Mentally—digitally—she pushed the cord aside and closed up.
"I found her. She'd already gotten a ChirpNet client, and while I could start to handshake with it, she closed the connection. I know it's her—it felt like her!" Bumblebee was annoyed at herself for not managing to make the connection, but she was more proud of her little sister for shutting her attempt down.
"That's the secure link, right?" Byte asked.
"Yeah."
"Have you tried Mom's new code?"
"That hasn't rolled out yet—" Bumblebee's eyes narrowed in shock as she realized something. "Except to anyling using an alpha version. What version did she get?"
"Enable the TOR server protocol and see if she connects through it," Byte said, chirping triumphantly.
While she started logging into the developer side of ChirpNet, Bumblebee lifted a little hoof, held it up to Byte, and got a sound clop sound from her big sister.
Almost a minute after Moon Dancer managed to swat away the cord from plugging in, she felt one thud home without warning.
—Are you alright? Did Windigo hurt you? Let us know where you are so we can come and get you.— Bumblebee.
Tensing a little, Moon tried to focus on the message that had come up on her phone when she didn't even remember installing the app. ChirpNet? Moon Dancer thought, What even is that?
—Wait. You're not her. How did you get this chat client?— Bumblebee.
Intuition and a logical mind saved Moon from fumbling at the device for hours.
—What do you mean? I don't know what's going on, I was just sitting there and— The message, of course, she hadn't finished. Moon Dancer was too caught up in the memory that filled her head. She was staring into terrified blue eyes, and she looked into her own eyes reflecting a blue glow.
They touched.
—She's inside me?— Moon Dancer hadn't meant to send the message, but there was something about this Bumblebee that seemed legitimate. She wanted more information, but knew she'd have to give some. —Something was chasing her.—
—Windigo. Please keep my little sister safe.— Bumblebee.
Little sister. Moon Dancer felt more empathy than ever. Then worry hit. Moon closed the chat client and pulled back from the mobile phone in her head. Everything was too fast, yet less than two seconds had passed in the real world.
"You look a little pale, Moon. Something wrong?" Lyra Heartstrings asked when her friend had slowed down.
"I'm just—You know how it is when you get really into something, like coding, and you can't switch it off?" Moon Dancer wasn't lying. Whatever was going on in her head (either insanity or something really freaky) she had to keep her head about her.
"All. The. Time! You should see how much work I'm doing on JS right now. My prof has me working my fingers to the bone trying to get his pet project up and going." Lyra Heartstrings put her arm around Moon Dancer's shoulders. "I got your back, sister. Chick coders! Wooo!"
"Yaay…" Moon Dancer didn't feel like partying, and her halfhearted response drew a sharp look from Lyra. "I'm still a bit out of it, okay? Maybe a taco or two will get me out of this funk."
But it didn't. All through her meager meal Moon Dancer fussed and poked at the memories in her head—the ones that shouldn't be.
By the time she said her goodbyes to her friends (and turning down the offer to go out partying), she had a plan. Moon Dancer had studied a lot of topics. She had so many electives and class credits that each undergrad degree only took her a year to a year and a half of study now.
Moon's current course was Computer Science, and if there was one thing she'd learned from the programming side of things it was order. Order was required for computers to work—they thrived on it. She opened her door and slipped into her room before closing and locking it behind her.
Moon Dancer got all the way to her bed before she realized that though the power was still out, she could see perfectly—and without her glasses on. If curiosity had killed the cat, Moon should have meowed.
Pushing aside (with much difficulty) the conundrum of her eyes, Moon Dancer sat on her bed and started putting things into order. The memories were confusing at first, but as she sorted through them bit by bit, Moon could start to pick up that some relied on others. Concepts, problems, and solutions could be built into a line.
There were some left over. Some of the memories were just silly or cute things, but they were few compared to things that had meaning derived from them.
Moon was doing fine until the hatching. Her sisters (an odd sensation since she was an only child) had tried to protect her, but she was too scared. She'd run in terror and the monster had chased her.
Living every moment along with the poor creature, Moon Dancer ran in terror with her. These memories were all in a row—chained together by the emotions—and she could follow them easily. She fled the monster trying to kill her right into a single university dorm computer.
"Help!"
The word had come from Moon Dancer's lips, though it was writ large in her mind. Help. When she'd seen the fear on their alien face, Moon couldn't have done anything else.
"Are you inside me?"
There was no answer.
The memories stopped as the blue light grew between them. Moon lifted her hands up to her face and cried. Might-haves and could-have-beens circled Moon's head as her tears poured free. If she'd only reached out sooner. If their siblings could have calmed them. If the monster wasn't chasing them.
Moon Dancer's head snapped up and her tears stopped. The monster. The monster was still out there, and the monster knew where she was.
Snapping upright, Moon ran to her door and tried to put the key in the lock with a shaking hand. "Stop. Focus." One deep breath later and she got the key into the lock and opened the door.
There was no monster there to greet her, nothing waiting to attack, but the lights snapping back on did cause Moon to almost jump out of her skin. A glance back into her room led Moon Dancer to grab her wallet and pull out the memory stick her computer was meant to save a copy of all her work to.
Focusing her thoughts, Moon plugged into that system again: ChirpNet. —Bumblebee?—
—Hello? Who are you? Is our sister safe?— Bumblebee
—No. The monster was chasing her and she asked for my help and now she's in me. Her memories are.— Moon Dancer
Moon waited for a reply. It hadn't occurred to her how fast she were conversing, but mere milliseconds were passing before she was getting responses. This time, however, Bumblebee took several seconds to reply.
—Was Windigo (the monster) in your computer? Did it find out where you are?— Bumblebee
The question cemented in Moon's mind that she needed to leave and hide somewhere. She nodded, then remembered she was using a chat program running in her head. —Yes. I'm leaving now.—
In her dorm, the hallway was tiled to make it easier to clean up when messy students spilled something. Moon Dancer heard clicking heels approaching her open door from outside.
Turning to the window, Moon pondered how much it would hurt to dive through the glass and down a story to the ground below.
"Moon? Yoo-hoo! Hey Moon Dancer! I am soooo drunk!" Lyra Heartstrings' voice sounded like she'd had a little too much to drink.
Fear turned to relief. Moon walked to her door and, finding Lyra wobbling and listing to one side, put her arm around her friend.
—You need to get away from where Windigo last saw you. It will suspect you merged with my sister.— Bumblebee
—What do you mean, "merged"?— Moon Dancer's replies were lightning fast, though the world around her seemed slow. —Also, how am I even talking to you? Is this my mobile phone?—
—Byte thinks you're just like Mom. She wants to know if you touched a mobile phone just after you merged with our sister?— Bumblebee
—I should just ask her myself. Hi! I'm Byte.— Byte
Moon had to mentally shake off the confusion of having two "sisters" talking in her head. She led Lyra back to Lyra's room and slipped inside with her friend.
Slurring a little, Lyra smiled in the direction she thought Moon Dancer was. "You're such a good friend, Moo—" Falling backwards, Lyra was asleep before she hit her bed.
—Okay. I'm in a different room now.— Moon Dancer looked around Lyra's room. Apart from the lack of books everywhere and a computer that sported three screens, it was more or less the same as hers.
—Different room isn't enough. You need to get out of your house. Windigo is dangerous!— Byte
Moon began to panic again. Locking the door with Lyra's keys, Moon dancer pulled the door closed behind her and was back in the hall. —Okay, where should I go?— Before she even managed a step an address appeared in her head. —Right. Sure. Trust the voices in my head to not lead me to someone who is going to kill me. I'm an idiot. OMW.—
—We're not going to kill you!— Bumblebee
—You're not helping, 'Bee. Good luck!— Byte
"We gave her directions to get here." Bumblebee looked up at Sweetie Belle. "I think she was suspicious."
Sweetie looked from Bumblebee to Night Light. "Are you sure we can stay here?"
"Twilight said you four needed somewhere cozy to spend the night, or even a few nights, and it's not like our Twily is using her room."
"We, uh, have a friend coming." Looking askance at Byte and Bumblebee, Sweetie let out a sigh. "Sorry, but—"
Night shook his head. "No buts. Twilight already said there might be another. Leave security to her, and leave comfort to me. You focus on each other and wait for your sister—and mother—to come back. Okay?"
Sweetie Belle sat back down on the bed and put the nymphs down.
"Feel free to use her computer." Night Light left the little group to their own devices, though as he closed the door he saw Byte climbing his daughter's computer chair.
The computer, Byte discovered, wasn't the latest generation, but it was the absolute top of the line desktop machine of the previous one. She started it up and jumped up on the desk to inspect the back of it. "Hardwired? Why don't they use wireless?"
"Speed, probably. Spike was big into vlogging, at least he was when Twilight realized he was making enough to cover all the stuff he was buying. Rarity wouldn't shut up about how smart he was." Sweetie stood back up and walked over to stand behind the computer chair that Bumblebee was climbing onto.
"Vlogging?" Byte only asked out of courtesy and because she'd learned that you could find out a lot about someone by asking them questions. She got the info she really needed from the internet itself. Routed through Sweetie's phone to their home server, she discovered a whole world of people talking about themselves and characters they played in their vlogs.
"Video blogging. It's where someone makes regular videos about themselves or something they do." Squeezing the still unnamed filly in her arms, Sweetie could feel her feeding slowly.
"So I can see. Wow, there's a lot of them. Thanks!" Manners, Byte had also learned, earned her a surprising amount of goodwill from those she conversed with. "I wonder if I could vlog?"
"It might be best to wait to ask Rarity—your mom—that one. Or Mrs. Velvet." When she looked down at the nymph snoozing in her arms, Sweetie let out a sigh. "And here I hoped to get some work done on my project tonight. What would you vlog about, Byte?"
"Games." Byte hadn't found any wireless networks she could get into, but she had found and broken the security on the wireless keyboard and mouse attached to Twilight Sparkle's old computer. "Look, there's a lot of people vlogging games!"
"That's called streaming, Byte, but I guess you could do that. What games would you play?"
Sweetie's questions were almost better than Sweetie's answers, at least in Byte's estimation. Her aunt's question had prompted her to open a browser and start looking for games to play. "Why didn't Mom show us all these games?!" Jumping up and chirping loudly in excitement, Byte stared at the screen with both forehooves braced on it.
"Don't go in!" Sweetie said.
"I'm not going to. I promised I wouldn't, remember? I just wanted a closer look and—and I got a little excited." Byte drew back a little and tried to calm herself—she was still chirping though.
Sweetie left Byte and Bumblebee to the computer and lay down on the bed. The nymph in her arms let out a soft chirp and opened their eyes. "Sorry I woke you up."
"It's okay. Did you find our sister?"
"It's complicated. She's on her way here, though she looks a little different now, I think," Bumblebee said.
"Can I sleep a little more? I miss her."
Sweetie's heart almost broke. She wasn't completely sure what the deal was with her wayward niece, but the nymph in her arms needing snuggles was something she could take care of. "I'll wake you when she gets here." Her words earned some soft chirps.
Barely closing her own eyes for a second, Sweetie Belle heard the door opening. Blinking in bewilderment, Sweetie heard a chirp come from the nymph in her arms before they galloped across the bed and jumped right at— "Moon Dancer?"
"Sweet—" Moon didn't get any further with her own question as a freakishly adorable and alien-looking creature jumped into her arms. A sharp pull from her memories—from the lost creature's memories—caused her to wrap her arms tightly around her first sister.
"Sweetie said you'd look different, but I can tell its you."
Shocked at the familial bond that seemed so strong with the tiny creature, Moon Dancer got a chance to have a good look at them. Cute little ears that twitched around at the slightest of noises, huge eyes that seemed to glow in the dark, and adorable little fins that crested their head and spread down from their rump. She also had fangs that looked like they'd go through a tin can as easily as an arm, but Moon couldn't find any fear within her directed at the creature.
The memories of her sister bulged and took root in Moon Dancer's head. She felt those odd memories seem to bind tighter with her for the shared emotional bond. She buried her face against her sister's shoulder and started crying again.
"I don't get it. I mean, everyone at the college knows Moon Dancer, but why is she here?" Sweetie looked to the older nymphs for an answer.
"You remember what happened to Mom?" Byte asked, and with Sweetie's nod she continued. "It happened again, but I don't think our little sister is a separate entity inside her head."
"Was she just too young?"
"Or Windigo hurt her too much," Bumblebee said.
Sweetie put together what she was seeing along with what her nieces were telling her. "So some of her is in Moon?"
"I can hear you, you know?" Moon Dancer felt complete with her sister close to her. She felt right in a way that she never knew she could feel. Looking at the other two creatures only increased that feeling.
"Well?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"I think I got her memories. There wasn't a lot of them, but one theme is strong: family." The word caused Moon Dancer to perk up even more. "She knew who her sisters were, even knew who her—"
"Mothers?" Byte asked, filling in the blank and giving Moon some information.
The word invoked more of Moon Dancer's alternate memories. She remembered chirping—lots of chirping—and touch. It was the first touch that her other side had ever felt. Focusing her attention on that one memory, Moon could feel a hand pressed against her, and she could feel the love radiating from it.
The quality of the chirping was curious to her, and Moon found herself picking apart the memory to find two sources. "Th-Three?"
"Yup!" Bumblebee buzzed her little wings in excitement at finding her lost sister remembering more and more. "There's Rainbow Dash, NotABug, and Rarity."
Rainbow Dash. The words invoked a dichotomy of feelings. Moon Dancer remembered the girl from Canterlot High School as being the jockiest jock that ever jocked. But when she heard the name, just now, she felt a link form between it and that hand. A shiver ran down Moon's spine at the realization that she was so loved like that.
Rarity. Another clique of high school was the fashion girls, and none typified them better than Rarity. Moon knew Rarity had also gone on to a fashion college, but had lost all touch with her from there. The shiver came again—one of the chirps belonged to Rarity.
NotABug was the oddest of the bunch. Moon had heard some news around the computer science department that some odd stuff had happened on their networks not long ago, and there were two names that kept coming up in regard to it: Windigo and NotABug. The second tone of chirping, however, matched up with an image of blue that her strange memories held.
Always with the blue. "Three mothers."
"Yup!" Bumblebee said again.
"Don't you normally wear glasses?" Sweetie Belle asked into the silence that the conversation had become.
"It's too much. I'm just a student trying to get by. I didn't ask for this!" Moon's legs started to wobble as her emotions let go completely. Anger, panic, and fear all combined to wring more tears from her. She managed to reach the bed and flop down on. "I just—I just wish—Why couldn't I have been faster in helping her?"
In her arms, almost forgotten, oddly comforting chirping came from the little creature Moon held. She looked down at them through tear-streaked eyes, and choked back a sob. The little face looking back at her reminded Moon of who she hadn't saved.
"What was her name?" Moon Dancer asked.
"We didn't get our names yet. None of our moms were there." The unnamed nymph chirped a little more in distress at the situation. "Your name's Moon Dancer?"
Moon just nodded.
"That's a pretty name. Would you give me a name?"
"Well. Your sisters are Byte and Bumblebee, so I guess there's two themes there." It felt to Moon like she was alone with her little sister. "You're smart, and you're the smallest of the bunch, so I think Bitwise."
"Bitwise? I like it!" Bitwise chirped her appreciation and nuzzled against Moon's arm. "What's it mean?"
"Well, in computers you sometimes don't want to deal with chunks of data as data, you just want to work with it on the most basic level. A bitwise operation treats everything as the most basic of data-types." For the first time in her life Moon Dancer wished she had insectile wings just so she could chirp them together to fully express herself. "And I think it's cute."
Chirping in happiness, Bitwise snuggled more firmly into Moon's arms and yawned.
"So what, we just hang here until they c—" Moon's mind skipped a beat as she put some things together. "They went through the portal at CHS, didn't they?"
"The last thing Rarity sent was she took Sunset and Rainbow to Princess Twilight." Biting her lip, Sweetie thought about saying the rest, then decided. "NotABug left an extra note. She said to trust Twilight Velvet and Coco Pommel."
"This is too much. If you need me, you'd better be able to enter my dreams because I'm out." Slumping on the bed, Moon Dancer was true to her words. She curled up around Bitwise protectively. "Wake me when this insane ride ends."
Rarity: are you planning to talk with Thorax and learn more about changelings?
"Honestly? I don't think he'll be able to give me too many tips. Taking Ocellus as an example and extrapolating how—ahem—repressive their society is, I doubt he would be able to help me much at all. There is only one changeling that I believe could answer my questions, and from what I understand she wouldn't be overly supportive," I said.
Lifting a hoof to the side of my head, I recalled something else Twilight had mentioned.
"And he definitely won't be able to give me any fashion tips. At least black goes with everything."
So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.
Support me on Patreon or fuel my writing on Ko-Fi!
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*squees with delight*
Wow, this chapter was unexpected. I LOVE IT.
Loved the update! I am almost certain that other Nymph is hiding in/on Moon Dancers Data stick.
Oof, it feels kinda like a rough deal for Moon Dancer. She never asked for those extra memories to get dumped into her head. And above that, the Windego killed a hatchling.
9422080
I really hope so. It's looking really grim right now. Maybe when the little one can be extracted from the memory stick, it can properly interface with Moon Dancer and fix the memory corruption in Moon's head. (Fairly certain Moon Dancer doesn't want to turn into a changeling like Rarity)
9422069 Thanks!
9422080 Curious.
9422094 It is. She was the right person in the wrong place.
Very interesting developments.
Though the conditions were similar, it is unlikely Moony will transform into a Queen like Rarity. For now it seems the unnamed's Ghost was not complete enough. Unless perhaps she managed to make a hibernation tools file? But that is extremely unlikely. In any case, welcome to chaos, Moon Dancer!
A swift extraction, did Velvet have certain plans ready to enact at a moment's notice?
Let's see how quickly the hacker community notices what happened...
It almost seems like Bitwise was intended to be twinned to the unnamed. That will prove an interesting dynamic in time to come.
Wonder if Twilight knows about Sunset's Journal? Re-establishing contact is a moderately high priority.
To Twilight Velvet: what's our next move?
Keep going! ;)
9422160 Being a trial lawyer, Twilight Velvet has seen moments when she's had to defend clients who while they were definitely innocent at the time, might not always be. She has some chaps who take payment in cash to do things without many questions. She makes a point of not getting them to do anything illegal, though they may sometimes do such for other employers. She called them and told them a number, and they acted accordingly.
Oh? So digitally-born changeling can merge with the human? Welcome to the club, no Hive, Moon Dancer. Does this mean she will transform to technoling like Rarity?
Ask Princess Celestia: Do you know about the new changeling queen that currently stay in your former student's castle?
So Moon Dancer has joined the family, that sucks for the poor hatchling that was lost but at least some good MIGHT be able to come out of it.
9422249 So far it seems a little risky to want to do willy-nilly. More tests are needed.
9422251 I'm reminded of the wonderful scene from Snatch (the movie) where Bricktop gives his definition of nemesis. I won't link it here for reasons of language, but you are free to look it up on the youtubes.
while i like whats happening here the paceing is breakneck, you might want to slow it down a bit in the future.
9422299 Frantic indeed. I don't want to dwell on the 3rd person chapters.
9422370
theeeeen why did you even bother writeing it?
i mean there gonna have to explain all this to rarity when she gets back anyway you could have just as easily covered all this thru an exposition dump via The B-bug gang [bit byte and bee]
9422418 Show, don't tell.
I use a variation on this where if the thing I'm expositing on is more interesting than what scene I am actually writing, I stop and write out that exposition as content instead.
some how i have a feeling the new Nymph or small part of her memory's that made it threw the attack from Windego will forever be a part of Moon Dancer.
in a way this is a sad chapter and at the same time it is fast moving and exciting.
9422504
its a full merger but since the nymph didnt have much of a personality yet Moondancers id overwealmed what was there, so basicly you could say she is dead, but her soul lives on as part of MD
9422504
9422510 That was literally, almost word for word, what I was shooting for.
I should have replied to your previous comment before you deleted it. Maybe I screwed it up. I was trying to go for a rushed and panicked setting here. I'll be brutally honest and say that while I have Slice of Life stuff down to an art form, action and adventure still trip me up sometimes. This is being exacerbated right now due to an unbearably hot Australian summer that is cutting into my focus every chance it gets (reached 44C/115F yesterday, my air conditioner actually couldn't keep up).
So what I need to do is learn and grow. Your advice was warranted, and I will try to take it on board. Maybe it's time for me to write a few (terrible) action stories to really beat me into shape?
Oh my! The plot thickens!
Oh, Moon Dancer... Like it or not, you're part of a family now. The ride never ends!
9422537
the devil is as always in the details damaged and thats largely what this chapter lacked, but on the flip side now that i've had time to think about it and process everything in my head if i shift it around a bit and consider the narative lense youd been useing up to this point it 'kinda' works...you had writen most of this story as though we were reading thru rarity's diary entries, or her biography of sorts
if we see this thru the same lense but from the lense of sweety and MD doing the writeing it actualy kinda makes sense, when your panicked your attention to detail becomes shot, it could easily be said that when they finaly got the chance to put all this to pen this is all they could remember of the shit that went down.
9422611 Too many Cooks!
9422616 I pondered doing this part first person from Moon Dancer's PoV, but my support pointed out that would have been a confusing wreck and wouldn't have followed the narrative structure as it already stands.
9422622
anywho off of the critque bandwagon onto the analysis one so we have answered one of the questions regarding the eqg changelings unique abilities, they can indeed all pull of the fusion trick, weather they can do so when 'not' under durress is a question for later when sweetie finaly decides shes had enough of being left out of the digital loop, RD will probly stay fully human for good if posible as queen's gotta eat and rd's love is the most plentifull source of food for her
on the other side another question is, when rarity finishes her transformation will she be able to data dive like the nymphs can?
being able to fight windego directly on its home turf with those programs she has created would be imensly helpfull after all.
9422635 Being able to fight Windigo, and being able to be completely and utterly destroyed by it with no trace left behind.
9422640
true, but sometimes you have to take risks to win, unless takeing the core in suri out causes all the shards to die the only way to permenently deal with windigo is to hunt down every frangment and destroy each and every one, if even one survives it could evolve further and start the whole damn thing over again.
whats worse heaven forbid a hacker with less then postaitve intentions get ahold of one of them and reverse enginere the damn thing....a new generation of smart computer viruses is 'not' what the world needs
second edit: on the flip side the creation of such a threat would give any government agency that might otherwise be a bit...concerned with the changelings existence a reason to not bother them, once at a sufficent strength level and hive size the changelings would likely make for quite the little legieon of living anti viruses.
9422640
and there is the old saw about not being able to put the genie back in the bottle, someone out there is watching whats going on i garuntee it, if not the groups that rarity has been chating with on the darkweb forums then someone else
even if they do manage to wipe windego out lock stock and code, someone somewhere is going to try to recreate it out of either malice or sheere intelectual curiosity...and if they trie hard enough and get lucky....once agian, a new generation of smart viruses...baaaaaad shit go down there
I think you were trying to go for showing her to be career student, or at least a very studious person, but I've never heard of someone being an undergrad that long without failing a lot of classes. The longest time to be an undergrad that makes sense to me is six years; a four year course extended by a year with credited work experience and another year with honours.
It would make more sense to me if she was doing a post-grad course (or in American terms, grad school)
9423173 She's repeatedly doing undergrad courses in different disciplines. I am not sure what the US name for such a thing was and went with my gut.
9423485
As far as I understand the American system (which is not far), almost all students pick subjects from multiple disciplines through their majors and minors. I think a fair phrasing would be to say she is working through her third major, or something along those lines.
I'm just surprised that after six successful years she still hasn't moved onto any graduate degree (more likely a masters than a doctorate, at this point). College and university is expensive in America and scholarships aren't indefinite, so I would have thought she'd move to something where she could learn and pay the bills (but not a lot of bills).
9424116
That seems to fit your description better. Thanks for the headsup!
9509582
You mean that?
This story is never going to end.
Oh..... oh........ fuck......
Poor little nymph....
Okay, Twilight, Rarity, find a way to blast enough concentrated rainbow friendship lasers through the internet to fry this fucking thing! Ideally straight through Suri.
Also, Spike doing good enough as a streamer to buy his own stuff is hilariously awesome. Now, how many were sure this was just someone with a really really well trained pupper and good editing, and how many thought it was just a a V-Tuber situation with one hell of a rig?