The Ties that Bind

by the7Saviors

A Noble Cause

Trotting through the streets of Canterlot's shopping district always made Moon Gazer irritable—the presence of so many ponies in one place grating on her nerves without fail. Even this early in the morning, countless ponies milled about here and there, window shopping, making pointless conversation, and just generally contributing nothing to ponykind.

At least, nothing that would matter in the long run.

That was Moon Gazer's problem with other ponies, and really, all sapient creatures in general. Few, if any, thought about how their actions, beliefs, and ideas would affect the future. They were all stuck in the present, content to blindly worship their Sun Goddess even as the world gradually fell to Disharmony around them.

Moon Gazer had traveled all across Equestria and beyond in her youth, and had seen the signs of Harmony's waning influence first hoof, but these ponies... they didn't even notice, trapped in their bubble of contentment as they were.

Moon Gazer despised contentment, it was one of the biggest killers of progress, and Moon Gazer wouldn't and couldn't abide that.

And who's fault was it that they remained blissfully ignorant and unaware of the coming storm? Who was it that kept them sheltered and stagnant, never to evolve beyond their current existence and tap into their true potential as a superior race?

It was all thanks to the very Princess they adored.

It was because of Celestia that Moon Gazer had to work in the shadows, hidden deep in the caverns below Mount Canterhorn. Oh, she had tried to convince the Princess to fund her projects in the past. She had prepared documents of her findings, charts, graphs, lectures, demonstrations...

And she refused to hear a word of it.

Not only did she deny the one thing that could possibly save the equine race from their eventual fate at the claws of Disharmony, she had demanded she cease her research on pain of death.

Well, that settled it.

By that point, Moon Gazer had already gone too far, sunk too much time, effort, and bits into her projects to stop now, so she didn't. Instead she continued in secrecy—finding a small cave that had led deep into the mountain by sheer luck.

Not only was the massive cavern empty, isolated, and big enough to fit a small town in, it was also practically overflowing with ambient mana. It was almost as if some higher power had wanted the mare to continue her research unhindered, and she would've believed it was so, had the very notion not been so utterly ridiculous.

What started out as a passion project quickly became an obsession, and—making use of her affinity for Dark Magic and her not insignificant knowledge of Mind Magic—she procured the means to begin building her own hidden research facility.

Then came the test subjects.

It took several years of hard work, manipulation, and subterfuge, but Moon Gazer had acquired both the equipment and a number of ponies—very few willing—to use to further her studies and gain insight into what she had called a pony's 'evolutionary trigger'.

Once she had that, the equine race wouldn't need to worry about the plague of Disharmony that was slowly but surely encroaching upon the land of Equestria. As the number of test subjects grew, Moon Gazer realized she alone would not be enough, and required an assistant, but didn't trust anypony to get the job done without screwing things up or exposing her work to the public and, most importantly, the Princess.

So rather than choose one, she decided to create one instead. Thankfully, she had quite a large host of male subjects to choose from by that point, so insemination was far from an issue.

A year later, Moon Dancer was born and, with some tricky, but ultimately successful long term Mind Magic, she had a loving father. For the first six years or so, Moon Gazer allowed the foal to live a normal life in Canterlot, visiting every so often in order to remain a constant in Moon Dancer's life.

She was particularly pleased to see that the filly took to science as well as Moon Gazer herself had at that age—possibly even more so. The time eventually came to mold Moon Dancer into the perfect assistant, and she did so with splendid results.

Things had gone well for Moon Gazer over the next few months. She had made significant progress in her research regarding the evolutionary trigger, and had come close to creating a solution that would increase the rate at which a pony evolved exponentially.

But then she came.

A mare unlike any she had ever seen, had somehow single-hoofedly broken into her facility and stolen two of her most valuable subjects. She tried to take more, but Moon Gazer had managed to put a stop to anything else she would've done.

She had also destroyed some of the more important research documents and equipment, setting Moon Gazer back by a large amount. She had been furious, but beneath the fury, there was intrigue.

The mare clearly wasn't a pony—or at least, not a normal one—and if she ever got a chance to see her again, she'd have a very interesting subject to work on. On top of that, Moon Gazer had decided that the escape of her subjects wasn't an entirely bad thing.

She had, after all, taken precautions in case of such an event, and could find out where they were at any time. Rather than immediately go after them however, she chose to gather more data via a Mind Splicing spell she had created.

It had actually been another stroke of luck that the subjects had escaped when they did, as they were the first two she had tested the spell on just before that bat-like mare had broken in.

She had been able to plant a little piece of her own consciousness into their minds, which—while not perfect by any means—allowed her to observe the two and what they witnessed from within at her leisure.

Or at least, that had been true until just last night.

While she could still feel part of her consciousness inside of one of her subjects, she could no longer feel it in the other, and she had caught a glimpse of why. It turned out her spell had been completely undone by a mere filly.

She didn't understand how or why, but she needed to find this filly. Such power over Mind Magic in a foal was unprecedented, even in the foals she had collected back at the facility.

As she thought about the filly and what she could contribute, a small smile crept upon her muzzle, her irritation at the ponies around her slowly ebbing away and being replaced by anticipation.

She was certain that if she could find this filly, she'd also most likely find her wayward subject as well. Even if she didn't there were many ways to track her down, she'd just have to be patient.

As she made it past the shopping district and into the middle class section of the residential district, she couldn't help but chuckle to herself. She had never considered herself a lucky mare—seeing the many setbacks in her plan as rather ill luck.

Looking back on both past and recent events however, had caused her to reconsider. She had found the perfect place for her research and still had yet to be discovered even after all these years and she had gained the perfect assistant without any problems.

Even when that bat pony had raided her facility, taken two of her subjects, and destroyed important parts of her research, there had been a silver lining. She now knew of a possible new variant of pony with extraordinary ice based magic, her Mind Splicing spell had been a successful... for the most part, and even when that failed, she had discovered another extraordinary pony in the process.

On top of all of that, one of her missing subjects had finally returned to Canterlot, though it seemed it had caused a bit of a disturbance in town. That was fine though, after all, Moon Gazer wouldn't let something like the mistakes of her test subjects get in the way of scientific progress.

She'd bring Subject C-38 back into her care soon enough, along with two new subjects once she figured out where they were. As of now though, she had to focus on retrieving Subject C-37, and she had to do it quickly before it caused any more trouble in town.

After all, she hadn't finished fine tuning C-37 just yet.

Author's Note:

I was actually having trouble coming up with the next chapter, and whenever that happens it usually means it's time to focus on another character. Lo and behold once I had shifted my focus, the words came pouring onto the keyboard.

Comments

[badninja]

Wow I was partially correct. There was more going on with Fell Wind but not in the direction I thought. I hope Moon Gazer gets her cuppance at the hands of three fillies and finds out she was only hastening the fall of ponykind.

[DracoDarastrix]

Wait so Fell wind was freed?
Intriguing.

[The Cynical One]

Wow I wouldn’t want to be Gale right now... it’s like saving someone and some random stranger taking the credit. Oh well whatever pushes the plot . Still a good read author!

[Octoskan]

Wow, ok Wesker.