Hello?

by Prince Polaris

Somepony new?

After hanging up the phone, Silver took in a deep breath, and he let out a long, quiet sigh instead of an exhale. "Okay" he said, and he slowly stripped out of his armor. Taking only his lantern with him, in case the lights died, Silver walked out of the room, and he stretched his wings. Searching the bunker would be much faster with the use of his wings, so he flew all the way to the end of the first hallway- the one holding Labs 11 through 20. The first one he looked inside was Lab 20, and it was empty. Lab 19, 18, and 17 were also empty. It didn't look like they had always been empy, it looked like they had been cleared out. Certainly not all of the labs were stripped clean, right?

Thankfully, 16 actually had something inside of it. Well, it was a huge mess, but that still counted as something. At some point since the bunker had been abandoned, something within Lab 16 had formed a chemical reaction, and there was a huge lump of weird looking foam covering what Silver assumed were lab tables. Where the foam met the ceiling, it looked like it had dissolved the plastic light covers, and the lightbulbs too! Silver wasn't going to go anywhere near a substance that appeared to dissolve all but stone, so he kept going. 15 was empty, 14 was empty, 13 had nothing but books strewn around, and 11 and 12 seemed to be filled with nothing but boring experiments. Lab 11 was full of chemicals and papers, but Silver could barely understand any of the chemicals that the papers mentioned. Lab 12 was pretty much the same, but this time with rocks. That was silly enough to make Silver laugh, saying, "Really? You ponies needed a whole lab to look at rocks?"

The first hallway had been a bust, so Silver flew to the other one. This one seemed much messier, and more dangerous. Carts and shelves littered the hallway even moreso than the main hallway, and he could see odd light coming from one of the rooms way down the line. Lab 1 was the closest, so Silver walked inside to see what was there. It was impressive that somepony had managed to stack lab tables up to the ceiling, yes, but that meant there was nothing of worth there for Silver.

Labs 2, 3, and 4 were much the same. Items of all sorts stacked haphazardly in the rooms, piled high. Why? Why did the ponies move everything around before abandoning it? Why not just shut the place down and leave? Silver remembered Lab 5 from the paper he had been looking at, and the room certainly seemed different than the rest. It was full of weird cages, with tiny bones at the bottoms. The cages had such tiny bars, too... was this what they kept parasprites in? What was a parasprite, anyway? Silver managed to find a sheet of paper that listed off warnings, most notably about Parasprites and their eating habits. Those made Silver glad they were dead.

Off to Lab 6! This lab seemed to be full of what Silver supposed were robotics components, and he was right with his guess. None of the half-assembled masses of wires and metal seemed to be functional though, so he deemed it not worth investigating. He was also a little creeeped out that some of the parts closely resembled pony legs, and there was what looked like a torso in the corner. Lab 7 was full of plants, or rather, what were once plants. All of the pots were litered with shriveled, dusty little remnants of what once used to be living plants, kept there for experimentation of some sort.

Once Silver walked out of that lab, he picked up on something. The light he could see was coming from Lab 10, but there was a clear line in front of him between labs 7 and 8. it took him a while to notice what looked off, but he soon realized that it was the dust. Where he was standing, there was no dust whatsoever. But the rest of the hallway? There was a noticeable layer of the stuff. When he looked closer, Silver could actually see the line on the floor and walls seperating the two parts of the hallway, and it reminded him of a magic forcefield with the odd way it seemed to curve.

He didn't see a forcefield in front of him, but Silver poked an old book through the air first, just to check. And it brought up nothing. Feeling a bit silly, Silver continued on, looking into Lab 8. This one was a huge mess, but in a different way than the others. Books, half of them laying open, were littering the room. Almost all of them had writing in them, ranging from neat and tidy to almost deranged-looking. At one end of the room, there was a huge, blackened machine, with a rounded port on the front that was empty. Flanking it on either side were computers, all of them turned off. Something about the room unnerved Silver, so he decided instead to head to Lab 9. And Lab 9 was even worse. Large wires were coming through the walls of Lab 10 to Lab 9, and they were all converging on the right side of the room, to what looked like a pony!

Silver was confused at first, and a bit scared, but he crept into the room to look. The robot really did look like a pony, but sleek, and metallic, its mane and tail made of shimmering, synthetic hair, and parts of its body made out of an odd, fleshy material. it was coated in dust like everything else, so Silver didn't worry too much about what it was. He walked deeper into the room, looking at the books and papers strewn about on tables. More writing, and little of it made sense. He tried to read the notes in one book, but it was just scrabbled codes, something to do with a computer. He turned to go, and that's when he saw it. That's when he saw her.

Silver's heart lurched in his chest as he laid eyes on the body curled up behind the robotic mare. Somehow, the bunker's controlled atmosphere had prevented it from rotting completely, and after such a long time, it had simply mummified somewhat. But Silver wasn't stupid. Unicorn horns didn't rot away, and this mare obviously had one. Feathers tended to hang around too, and he could clearly see the wings on her back. Silver didn't want to believe it, but every detail on the mare's body pointed towards the missing Princess, Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Silver could barely tell what emotions he was feeling at that point. He wanted to throw up, he wanted to turn tail an run from the awful laboratory, he wanted to investigate to find out what had happened all those years ago, and lastly he felt like he needed to...

Oh no. He would have to tell Celestia, wouldn't he? Silver had no idea how he would even begin to explain it! Ponies had been searching for the purple mare for so long and he just happened to stumble onto Equestria's best-kept secret!? Silver tried to push it all away, and he instead walked out of the room, to Lab 10. When he walked in, Silver had been looking at the floor, still trying to process what he had seen in Lab 9.

And then she spoke. "Oh, Hi!" Chirped a voice in front of Silver, making him yelp and stumble backwards a few steps as he looked up in a panic to see what it was. The first thing that caught his attention were her eyes. There was a large monitor mounted to the wall, and on its black background, flickered a set of white, outlined eyes, belonging to what Silver assumed would have been a rather beautiful mare. "Somepony New?" the voice asked, as the eyes flickered, replaced with Text that came up on the screen. "I-I... uh..." Silver said, unable to think of anything to say. As he began to get over the shock, he looked to the left of the screen, to a few smaller monitors. One of them was displaying a full-screen error in red text, reading an alarming "SERVER ACCESS LIMITED, CONTROL UNITS OFFLINE".

Silver didn't know what it meant, and he looked back to the screen as it spoke up again, saying, "Who Survived? Anypony else but you?" Silver didn't know what it meant. Was this thing sentient? It sounded like it was struggling to come up with words, and the speech sounded odd and weak. And somehow sad... Silver felt like he needed to try to help this thing. Well, if he could. He looked to the computer again, taking note that it mentioned "control units". He didn't remember seeing one of those before, but it also mentioned server access. Could there be something in the server rooms he could do to help? Silver looked to the screen, and he stammered out a "I-I'm going to try to help, okay?" As he opened his wings.

Silver took off, and he began to fly down the hall again. The voice chased him, growing soft as he got distance. "On a lonely night... a blinding light..." What did that mean? Did it relate to twilight? Was she working on this thing? Silver was full of questions, and he had nothing resembling an answer. Silver was deep in thought as he flew into server room 1, and he landed to take a breath. Looking along the servers, Silver found something that made him sigh with relief. The first server on each row had "CONTROL UNIT" plastered on the side, along with a number. And some of them weren't making noise, so that meant they were off, right? Silver began to walk along the rows, and he decided to start at the end. The control unit was off, and Silver pushed a button on the front. To his delight, it turned on! And the entire row behind it began to boot up along with it!

Silver was excited. He had figured it out, and he spent quite a while going down the lines in both server rooms, turning on each control unit that he could find. When it came time for him to leave the large hallway, Silver was grinning, wings snapping open as he took off to head for Lab 10.

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Tired. She was Tired. She could not feel her body. Her voice sounded weird, and it was so hard to say anything anyway. She could barely see. Her eyes couldn't move. She was trapped. The incomplete final works of an alicorn that had gone mad were being dug out from the murky waters of time, but the subject of those projects could barely even comprehend that she was alive.

However, she could. She could think, slow as it was. It had worked. One by one, memories began to come back. They didn't make sense, though. Who was this yellow mare? Was this her? Did she know this pony? She rembered a purple mare. Were they friends? What was a friend?

In the corner of the room, a deeply enchanted magical artifact was beginning to glow. Each set of servers that came online provided more processing power to the mare, and she was quickly experiencing the sensations of regaining sentience. She felt herself floating through angular landscapes, her own body pointy and strange looking. Was that her body? Or had she created it?

Wingbeats approached the room. Destiny was approaching, and it all came down to one stallion who knew nothing about the forces he was about to work with.

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"It's been down here the whole time!?" Northern said, looking at his computer with wide eyes. "Are you sure? Silverwing, it was?" He asked. Celestia quickly nodded to the Underworldian King, and his guards were already picking up their helmets before he even spoke. "You two, hunt down Silverwing, and if you can't find him, start getting a train ready"

As they ran out of the hall, he went back to the computer. "He's okay, right? I can't believe we left somepony down there... and you say the power core is going to be down there too?"

"Well, I think so, Northern..." The white mare said. She looked weary, her snout a bit of a mess, and there were some frazzy bits of her mane that stuck out from the main, flowing portion. Now, the king put his focus on Celestia. "Tia, when did you last sleep? You need to get in bed right now, it looks like it's all on us now"

"I-" The mare said, but she didn't even bother to say anything when she saw the look on his face. "I will tell Luna" he said, and the white mare made a face at that. "All right, I get it... just, be careful down there" she said. And in a softer voice, she said, "I wonder if she's down there..."

Northern's stubborn look faded, and he sat back down in front of his computer. "If she is, we... if we can, we'll gather what's left, she can be buried on whatever new home we happen to find" Northern said, offering the princess a smile. "Thank you, North" She said, feeling an odd sense of Relief. "And before you say it again, yes, I'll sleep" She said.

An exchange of goodbyes, and both ponies went to sleep. Tomorrow would be a long day.

Author's Note:

is this even good? no idea lmao

more proofreading

Comments

[Brony1337]

is this even good? no idea lmao

Hell yes it is.