Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

xCho*ces

Twilight opened a map of the nearby areas on to a table, spreading it out and flattening any creases with her fingers. She had her calculator by her side, just for the sake of double checking her results, and a long ruler in her other hand. She quickly levitated a couple of pins from a nearby shelf and placed one down on top of Canterlot High, the other almost exactly on top of Crystal Prep. Convenient reference points to start from.

She began to take measurements, drawing a few lines with the pencil she lifted from her desk in her magic. The equations she was running through in her head were anything but easy, yet she'd practised them enough to get through them pretty quickly. Being familiar with what the earlier results were supposed to be helped a lot, giving her confirmation that she was actually on the right track with each new intersection the lines traced.

But maybe her brain moved a tad too fast for her own good. While her fingers were still tracing the earlier stages of her work, while her calculations were still taking care of building up the path to what she was looking for, she already was theorising where she might end up once she was done with it. She had an idea, if a vague one, and the pool of potential results only shrunk with each new step of the process. And so, naturally, her eyes wandered to the section of the map where she suspected she'd end up.

And then she stopped. She stopped running through the numbers in her head, she stopped tracing lines, she stopped wondering where the next portal would be found. For one moment she just stared, in silence, at the small red X she'd drawn on the map. The one she had no memory of ever having drawn, yet clearly looked the way she would draw one. The one that was exactly where her equations could take her, if...

A moment later she wasn't staring anymore. She was crunching numbers again, twice as fast as before. Her calculator lay forgotten on her chair, she'd never really needed it anyway. In those times where she needed to think fast, she allowed herself to recognise how good she actually was at what she did. She even began to skip drawing some of the lines, her head moved faster than her fingers and hands ever could anyway. But she didn't skip the final ones, of course. And just as she'd thought, they crossed right on top of the X on the map.

Twilight stepped back. She was confused, more than anything. Was there something there, something she'd once marked and then forgotten about, something that had nothing to do with what she was doing then and everything to do with some earlier part of her life she'd lost her interest in and her memories along with it? But none of the names she read on the map ringed any bells, and she wasn't that awful with remembering things.

But the alternative? That she'd somehow already found that one particular portal, and then forgotten all about it? The implications were frightening, whichever way she tried to spin it.

"Oh," a voice said from behind her, and Twilight felt herself freeze for a second. "So you found that one again."

The laboratory door was locked. Yet, Twilight was not at all surprised by who she'd heard. But partly to make sure, partly to understand what was happening, she turned nonetheless. "Pinkie?"

Comments

[Skywalker215]

How many chapters is this gonna have?

[Venerable Ro]

Ah yes, the difficulties of information control. Pinkie is learning that it is sometimes not enough to simply make someone forget something, not if they are likely to rediscover it again. Usually a subtle mental block or perception filter would do the trick, but this is one of those rare situations where the subject will simply brute-force their way through it.

It's honestly quite a conundrum, delaying tactics aside there's not much else she can do. Sterner measures could prove, damaging, and would likely be noticed by Sunset.

At the very least she could take the time to erase evidence, that's basic tradecraft right there.