Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Meanwhile

"Just another cycle, eh?" the stallion asked.

"Yeah. Just another one." The mare sat on her chair with her head on the table, lazily scribbling something on a piece of paper with a pencil she held in her magic. "If we did a good enough job, maybe we'll even live through it."

"Or maybe we won't." The stallion smiled. "Maybe if we did a good enough job it'll mean she doesn't need us anymore, and she'll finally get rid of us."

The mare chuckled. "Always a possibility, I suppose. Hopefully she'll dispose of us more elegantly than how the guards did. Has anyone cleaned the stain yet?"

"Oh, please." The stallion took a sip of coffee. "Of course not. Honestly, I think they're leaving it there as a reminder."

"It's kind of a tempting reminder though." The pencil's tip broke. The mare looked annoyed by it, and stood straight as she began to sharpen it again. "Do you think we'll get new prisoners sent here again?"

"Maybe? Probably, if she asks us to work on an improved version or something different." The stallion took another sip of coffee. "The researcher in me is almost tempted by the ideas of what else we might be able to make. Just a couple of tweaks and we might end up with something completely different."

"I hope the sane pony in you is trying to beat the researcher to death." The mare paused to admire the newly sharpened point of her pencil. She looked at it like she was tempted to shove it into her own eye. "It might not even be prisoners if she sends more ponies here. It would be the easiest choice, but if she feels like it she can just pick random ponies off the street and make it so no one even remembers."

"Makes you wonder why she bothers running the country as normal when she could just have it all running on rails." The stallion looked at the empty bottom of his coffee mug, and set it on the table. "Maybe she just enjoys the show."

"Because that's hard," said the mare. "I'm pretty sure she tried, at one point. She couldn't keep it going. For all I know, what we're doing here is just the first step in her plan to get to a point where she can actually do it."

"Making everyone so stupid they're way easier to control?" the stallion asked. "I wonder if there's a way to alter the process so it doesn't affect mental functions so much. So we aren't..." He shook his head. "Well, I was going to mention we wouldn't be murdering ponies, then I remembered why we're putting them through the process in the first place."

"There's probably a way for the process to enhance mental capabilities, even," said the mare. "And there ought to be a reason she's using herself as part of it. She'll probably keep us around a while longer, or at least keep the project going. Probably the former, it's easier when you don't need to train new researchers."

"Like training new ones would be hard for her." The stallion leaned back into his chair. "Oh well. We'll have to wait and see, I guess."

"I guess we will," said the mare, going back to scribbling on her piece of paper. "Not much else we can do, after all."

Comments

[Speckle]

"doesn't know whether or not to cry or punch the wall"

[Saix]

=(

It makes sense in retrospect, having two semi-openly rebellious unicorn researchers living in the castle unknowingly having their every move potentially monitored is a great way to get information any potential problems, and could theoretically work as a great honeypot for rebels.