(26) The Ambassador...
Twilight stepped inside the throne room in Canterlot castle with her friends at her side. The velvet and soft carpet leading directly to the twin thrones on the dais. Twilight looked around the room, her eyes settling on the colorful stained glass as the setting sun shone through them. She saw her and her friends in a mural she had seen many times before. It depicted them, the Elements of Harmony bound together as one.
It had thankfully been years since there had been a crisis of the current sort. Years without having to use the Elements on an opponent. Hopefully, Twilight sighed as she walked toward the thrones, It won’t come to that and we can keep it that way. I’m sure that we can find a compromise with them… they reached out to us… so that means they at least want to talk. Twilight glanced at her friends at her sides.
I don’t know if I could forgive myself if any of them got hurt because of me, She blinked back forward as they made the final approach to the throne. Celestia, however, wasn’t there. Her friends had been talking about it as soon as they entered, but they kept following Twilight down the long red carpet.
Twilight stopped in front of the empty thrones and gave a quiet sigh. Time to take stock of the situation, the princess told herself, the humans have come to us, wanting… something, maybe to give Flurry back. She looked down at the floor and slightly shook her head, No… that can’t be it… maybe it’s something more niche… information maybe? They might have somehow detected us in Baltimare… Twilight steeled herself as she brought her head around, Hopefully, Princess Celestia knows.
“Are we late?” Rainbow’s voice cut through Twilight’s thoughts. She briefly glanced up at Rainbow Dash as she hovered above the group, “I thought we actually got here pretty early.”
“Rainbow Darling, Princess Celestia’s probably just lowering the sun,” Rarity answered as she gestured to the receding light, “It is about getting to that time I suppose, and in all honesty, I wouldn’t mind if she wanted to go to sleep early. Given everything that happened and all.”
“It’s like this year has just been one huge disaster after another!” Pinkie burst into the conversation on her hind hooves.
“I… you…” Rainbow hovered down to the ground next to Applejack, “I mean… she’s definitely not wrong there,” Rainbow shrugged.
Twilight gave a small smile and a stifled chuckle at that. “Wow, look at that Pinkie, we were actually able to make Twilight laugh.”
“Wha-?” Twilight asked with a slight smile to the rest of her friends, “Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad! Sure I was a little stressed and all, but-.”
“Twilight,” Fluttershy of all ponies cut her off, “you’ve been bottling up these encounters for months,” The butter Pegasus said, “You might’ve had some sort of breakdown like what happened in the hospital on a much larger scale.” Twilight sighed and nodded, “Just… talking about it makes it better though, riiiight?” Twilight nodded.
“Right,” She answered as she looked at the rest of her friends, “It actually really does. Though… I already did tell my Brother and the other Princesses… I guess they just… I don’t know… didn’t understand… maybe?”
Pinkie swept up right next to Twilight and put a hoof around her, “Well if you ever need a quick pick me up, just come and get your good friend Pinkie Pie. I’ve got Cakes, Games, and super-duper funny stories!”
“Alright Pinkie,” Twilight laughed and simultaneously tried getting out of Pinkie’s chokehold, “I promise, if I need anything, I’ll come to you.”
“Oh, I’ll hold you to that.” Pinkie said.
“And,” Rarity said, “If you ever want to talk to all of us, we’ll be there for you. Wherever you go, we go.”
“Uh-huh!”
“Yeah!”
“Yay!”
“Mhm.”
Twilight actually felt secure for the first time in a while. She had her friends with her, ready to help her at a moment’s notice. But… “And if you girls need anything, you can count on me too.”
The wooden door behind them opened and Princess Celestia walked into the throne room. She quickly made her way over to the group. “Pardon my lateness, I’ve been having some… issues with the Griffonian Emperor, he’s been… he’s convinced other leaders to convene together to discuss the current matters at hoof...” She sighed and stopped just short of the group, “Thank you all for showing up on such short notice.”
“No problem Princess,” Rarity said, “But perhaps we could down to business, these constant trips to and from places are quite exhausting.”
“Oh, don’t worry Rarity,” Celestia smiled, “Hopefully you won’t be moving around so much after this next one.”
“And what is the next one?” Twilight asked as she stepped through her friends, “Is it something to do with the humans?”
“Yes,” Celestia nodded, “Luna sent me a letter. It says that she and Cadance, along with a contingent of Lunar guards ran across a team of human soldiers.”
“COOL!” Rainbow soared up, “Did she kick their flanks and send them running with their tails between their legs?!”
Celestia simply stared at Rainbow, “Nooo…” She somberly answered, “In fact, it was quite the opposite, She, Cadance, and the guards were all taken, hostage.”
“Oh…” Rainbow floated back to the ground, “But she sent the letter?”
“Yes, it seems these humans are seeking help for some reason. From the way Luna described it, the humans chose to go to the Crystal City instead of their base.” Celestia sighed, “She doesn’t really go into much detail after that.” Celestia steeled herself as she got back on track, “So, I’m asking you all to go up there and see if you can lend a hoof and figure out more.”
“Let me get this straight,” Rainbow Dash said as she hovered in front of Princess Celestia’s face. “You want us to go back to the Crystal Empire and actually talk with these things?!” Celestia for her part was more amused at the fact Rainbow Dash was in her face than the actual essence of her question.
“Rainbow, get your butt out of the Princess’s face right now!” Applejack yelled, attracting the blue pegasus’s attention. Rainbow sighed and rolled her eyes as she slowly floated back down to the ground next to Applejack with a huff. “Now, Princess,” Applejack said, “What do you need us to do?”
Celestia seemed to refocus in on Applejack, “Oh.. yes,” Celestia cleared her throat, “I’m not ordering you to do anything actually. I am asking you.” She looked at the group of ponies, “The humans are in the Crystal City as of a few hours ago, and I’m sure the new ponies are going to get that story out any second now, but…” Celestia sighed as she lost her smile. “There was also… something else, a destructive force so powerful it could possibly destroy the city. Luna said that it was all being handled, but-”
“You’re worried about Luna?” Twilight asked, interrupting Celestia. “The way you described the letter, it sounded like a completely different pony.”
Celestia nodded weakly, “Her wording of the letter was… lifeless, devoid of any emotion. I… I can’t describe it...”
Maybe the pressure is getting to Princess Luna too, Twilight asked herself, And she really only has Cadance up there. Twilight looked at her friends, “I’ll go, Cadance and my brother could use the extra hooves anyway.”
“I... “ Celestia started before cutting herself off, “Thank you, Twilight. It means a great deal to me.”
The stars were in the sky as she and her friends got onto the train platform and the cool breeze of the night was in the air. Twilight looked out at the train, I guess it was only a matter of time before I had to go back up there again, She thought to herself, I guess I had hoped I would’ve had more time at home. Twilight looked to her left. Her friends were a few yards away all carrying hastily assembled items.
She frowned, Do I really want them to get caught up in all of this? I would never forgive myself if any of them got hurt. She looked down at her hooves and began to think.
Twilight thought back to the vision 990 had given her. Of her in the Crystal City surrounded by undead ponies. By my undead friends. And then there’s this giant blast of light, the one that can destroy a city.
She saw herself back on that hill outside the human equivalent of Baltimare, Baltimore. She saw the blinding light, and the blinding lights off in the distance, destroying other cities. Am I playing right into its hooves? Twilight shook her head, No… If I continue to tell them the truth and keep them in the loop, everything will be alright. I just need to keep talking and communicating with them, She smiled and exhaled, I’m sure of it.
Twilight looked back at her friends, I doubt they would let me go up there alone anyway. Twilight looked to her right and saw Princess Celestia looking back at her, “Worried for them?” Her peer asked.
Twilight nodded, “I’m worried about them… We tend to get stuck in stupid and dangerous situations.” She replied with a smile. “Though we always get out of it in the end. I think we can do it again.”
Celestia gave a small chuckle, “That you and your friends do, I’m surprised none of you have been hurt yet.” Celestia laughed again, “You know, every time you fought some great menace with them you gave me a heart attack.”
Twilight joined in on the laugh, “Yeah, I can see that…”
After a few seconds of silence, Celestia’s demure changed, “I... um… never properly apologized to you… or the others, about… what I kept from you.” Twilight turned to her former teacher, “I just wanted to say, I’m truly sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize for something you thought was right,” Twilight answered, “Though… It is appreciated. And I accept your apology.”
“Thank you,” Celestia put a hoof up to her chin, “I honestly don’t know what I would do without you, Cadance, and my sister.”
“Have to govern alone?”
“Oh heavens no! If I had to do that again I’d collapse with all the stress.” The alabaster princess put her hoof to the chin, “Actually I’d just cope with cake.”
“Ah yes, Princess Celestia and her cakes.” Twilight smiled and shook her head, “I never thought I’d have to organize an intervention with Luna about you and Cakes!”
“I’ll have you know it was never a problem,” She turned her head away from Twilight, “I just liked cake.”
“Oh, here we-”
*DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO*
Twilight glanced at the clock on the train platform, “Looks like it’s time to go,” Twilight said, she began to walk towards her friends before turning her head to face Princess Celestia, “Hopefully we’ll be back soon, and stay off the cakes. That last one is an order.”
“Me too,” Celestia replied, “I’ll try to be up there after I have affairs here in Canterlot taken care of, and I can’t promise anything.” Celestia began to walk away, “Oh!” She turned around and looked back at Twilight, “One more thing Twilight.”
“What?” Twilight turned around halfway, “What is it?”
“Because of the… creatures where you are going, you might find a lot of press on that train, so I had a car cleared for you at the front. No beds this time, but you and your friends will have some privacy.”
Twilight nodded, “Thank you. I don’t know how much more of the press I can take.”
“Believe me... You never get used to it…” Celestia sighed... “Alright now, get going!”
Twilight and her friends boarded and made her way to their train car, passing all the other passengers along the way, most of them already sleeping, or half asleep, barely noticing them. She sat herself down on the window seat facing the train platform. Princess Celestia was still standing there with her escort.
Twilight rose her hoof and waved at her. It took a second for Celestia to notice, but when she did, she popped up and waved back. The train’s whistle sounded off again, and then the train lurched forward. Twilight turned back and laid her head against the cushioned seat and closed her eyes.
For the first time in a long time, she slept without a care in the world.
“Twilight… we’re here.”
The princess stirred and opened her eyes. She came face to face with a familiar yellow pegasus, “Good morning Fluttershy,” Twilight greeted as she got off her chair. “When did we arrive?”
“Only a few minutes ago, you sorta slept through the whistle and Pinkie,” Fluttershy knelt down and put on her saddlebags, “How’d you sleep?”
“Pretty good actually,” As Twilight knelt down to pick up her bags she stretched out her wings and back, “Though, I wouldn’t mind sleeping on a bed tonight.” Twilight wrapped the bags in her magic and floated them to her back, “I don’t think my back likes sleeping vertically.”
“I read somewhere that it messes up a pony’s posture,” Fluttershy replied as she let Twilight walk down the aisle in front of her. “Anyway, I’m sure your brother will be happy to see you.”
Twilight turned back to Fluttershy as she stepped off the train, “He better be…” She looked forward, “Or I’m going to- huh?” As she stepped off into the station with the rest of her friends, she noticed something. Where is everypony? Usually, whenever she and her friends had so much as stepped outside for a bit of fresh air, there was usually a small to a large crowd of ponies hoping to get their pictures taken or autographs signed or whatever. But now, Everypony else is gone. I almost miss it. She breathed a sigh of relief, keyword: almost.
The six friends hastily made their way outside of the station and out onto Crystal Boulevard. There, the friends saw the oddest thing. A group of humans, just standing there. Behind them were two giant behemoths, that were most likely their strange transportation machines. Twilight immediately turned around and faced her friends, “We’ll deal with this later, for now, let’s just get to the palace and see what’s going on.”
As the group passed the crowd of ponies surrounding the human guards and machines, Twilight could hear the shouts for answers and questions. She turned her head towards them as they walked to the palace. The ponies were so hard-pressed to get answers from the humans that they didn’t give her and her friends any heed, and it seemed that the humans gave the other ponies the same treatment. Two of the humans just stood there, scanning the crowd, probably to make sure nopony gets any closer. Twilight thought.
She turned back towards the palace and continued walking at a brisk pace. “We’re nearly there girls, let’s just see what they need help with, ok?”
The door to the situation room opened and the six friends walked in, Twilight was hit with a rush of information. Inside the room, was her brother, Princess Luna, and shockingly two humans. The two humans and Shining Armor were in the middle of a heated debate while Luna was simply looking over some papers. The debate, however, did not stop as Twilight and her friends entered the room.
One of the humans, a female with a brown mane and pale skin was facing away from the group of friends, and the other, a male with black hair that had hints of gray. He was facing them, but chose not to acknowledge the group. Shining for his part gave a small and weak smile and wave to his sister and her friends before going back to whatever their debate was. Luna got up from her seat and began to walk towards them.
“It’s strange,” Rarity whispered with enough volume to only allow their group to hear, “To see them without their facial coverings. They actually are quite... normal.”
“Normal?” Pinkie asked with a slight cock of her head, “What did you think they looked like?”
“Some sort of… ugly green… things, I suppose,” Rarity answered as she lifted a hoof to her chin, “To be honest, it seems a bit ridiculous now that I think about it.” She shrugged.
Luna reached the group with a look of discomfort on her face, “Princess Twilight, I… was not expecting you or your friends…” She stated with wide eyes, then they fell as she realized, “You are here because of my sister, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Twilight said, “And to see what we can help you with.”
“I assure you that the situation is in hoof,” Twilight briefly looked back at the humans, then back to Luna. The blue princess sighed, “Mostly, In hoof.” She relented.
“No it is definitely not,” the male human said without batting an eye at the group. "If you're gonna lie," He got up from his leaning position and walked over to the new group, "At least do it to give everyone hope that we'll last the year."
Shining sighed, dejected from what must've been hours of arduous discussion, “Well, looks like we can at least talk about something else,” he said as he got up from his chair and walked across the room to his sister.
“What do you mean,” The female asked, “We haven’t decided on-” She turned around, “Oh… there’s more of you.” She fully turned around and Crossed her arms, “Wonderful.”
Shining glared at the female human for a moment, then turned back towards his sister. “Twilight and friends, this is Colonel Abigail Velvet and Colonel Jack Nye.” He scratched the back of his head, “They’re from the… SCP Foundation.”
“Uh, yeah,” Rainbow Said, “I think we got the message.”
This earned the cyan pegasus a stern glare from Applejack.
“Oh my gosh, does everything I do make you mad?!”
“OKAY!” Shining interrupted the bickering couple, “Colonels, This is my sister, Princess Twilight Sparkle,” The named mare nodded her head, “and her friends.”
“Pleased to meetcha!” Pinkie exclaimed and burst through the other mares, much to everypony chagrin. Luckily Twilight was able to preempt the pink pony by stepping forward and pulling her back.
“Sorry about that,” twilight nervously said as she practically stuffed the ecstatic pink pony back into the group. After dealing with that, She cleared her throat, “I think all of us want to know what’s exactly going on with your… Foundation,” She asked with a smile, “I know you’ve probably told Princess Luna and Prince Shining Armor, but can you please tell us?”
The female sighed and hung her head. “So it’s going to be one of those days… not that we’ve ever had those days.”
“I get that it's probably annoying, but I’d like to know all the details.”
“Not that, just haven’t been able to sleep,” She replied, “Fine, here goes.”
“Three days ago, our site got orders to send our-” She pointed at herself and Nye, “-teams to a red zone- basically an off-limits area.” She looked at Luna briefly before going back to focusing on Twilight, “We were told that someone was breaking into an abandoned facility, it was theorized at the time that it was insurgents trying to overthrow the O5.”
“But it was actually your princess right there, along with another one and a whole lotta guards,” She looked at her for a brief second, “And well… we were ordered to take them hostage and back to our facility.”
Twilight blinked, “So… you went against your orders?”
“Not exactly…” She replied, “We did go back to the facility… it was just… everyone was dead by the time we got there.”
Twilight felt her friends all react with bouts of horror and confusion behind her. “Dead?” Rarity asked, barely maintaining her composure.
“Yes, every single one. Turns out, in the time our mission had started, and we captured your group, and we returned to our base, some assholes in the military overthrew and terminated the O5. There’s only one left who still wants what we’ve always been now.”
“A-and the others?” Fluttershy asked, her voice stammering a bit, “W-what does the other side want?”
“The Chaos Insurgency,” Velvet nodded, “They want to take over and enslave the world, like it was thousands of years ago, apparently.”
“Which brings us back to now,” Nye said, “O5-3 wants an ambassador or a representative to come here, someone more official than just us.” He turned back to the table, “Apparently some poor bastard already volunteered for the job. And we also need to send out teams to every remaining site, and every away team, and long term teams away on missions to the east.” He leaned down toward the map.
Twilight turned to her friends, “Go to your rooms Girls,” She said, “This is going to take some time.”
With varying degrees of protest, all six of them left the room, leaving her, Princess Luna, and her brother with the two humans. “You said that a human wants to come down and act as an ambassador?” Twilight asked.
“Yes,” Nye replied, “But mister Knight here says that he doesn’t want them.”
Twilight eyed her brother, “Hey we’ve had bad luck with you guys as far as humans coming to this city are concerned,” Her brother turned to the humans, “And you never did tell me who exactly is supposed to come here. For all I know, they could be more decaying monkeys that ruin lives.”
“You know that is basically the definition of a human, right?” Velvet said with wit in her voice and a sarcastic smile on her face.
Twilight looked at her brother and sighed, “Wait for just a second Shiny,” She turned to Nye, “ Do-”
“SHINY!?” Velvet laughed, “Jesus man, what a nickname.” She stifled herself, “Oh, by all means, don’t stop on my account.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes for a moment at the human female before refocusing on her brother, “Do you… know the human who is supposed to come here and act as the intermediary?”
“Met him once,” Nye said, “Really sarcastic fella, smart as hell, and has great insight… apparently,” He looked up as he thought before he shrugged, “He seems trustworthy to me.”
“Alright,” She turned to her brother, “Given that Shining, do you think they can go and bring him back here?”
He sighed in resignation, “Sure, I guess…”
“Great!” Twilight said, “We can leave when you’re ready.”
“We?” Shining, Nye, and Velvet all asked at the same time.
“Of course, I’d like to see one of your towns, or sites, or… whatever you have, for myself. She looked at the humans in particular, “And given you are sending more humans here, I’m sure you can accommodate some ponies for a few hours.”
Nye and Velvet looked at each other, “We’ll… have to ask the Overseer…” Nye said, “She’ll decide from there.”
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This Ambassador isn’t a certain Dr. Jack Bright, is it?
Here is a thought about world building... Unless humans use Yellowstone facility or similar to reproduce, they should have some habitat and manufacturing bases that separate from containment zones. They simply would not be able to maintain their population and tech level otherwise.
Due the lower stress on internal security those are prime targets for CI. Also they could be places where CI festered all this time.
Is Dr. Bright still alive?!
10508999
Next chapter. You will know how the Foundation has lived so long with little to manufacturing base. Trust me, I thought about this for a good long think.
Addendum: Also, I am not throwing it in the chapter to sate your bloodthirsty need for knowledge. You just have impeccable timing.
I wonder what her reation is going to be once she realizes humanty are jail gards to things that make the denizions in tartarus look like fluffy kittens.
10508834
OH GOD PLEASE NO!
-Senior Researcher Schwabauer
You know it’s going to be quite interesting when the ponies realized how much the humans suffer from the scps
Always look forward to more AWESOME chapters! Xd
Scp-106: exists
Ponies:that things the worst thing ever
Scp-628 and 49: hold my beer