Bionic Titan: Operation Damocles

by KorenCZ11

She's Extraodrinarily Nice

Her violet ears perked up. She’d been reading a new paper on nanite technology that had been posted for peer review when her mother’s presence suddenly showed up behind her. Turning slowly away from her holographic terminal, Twilight caught sight of the alabaster mare filling her living room. She swallowed. “Good morning.”

Celestia scanned the little apartment. Books everywhere, written pages gathered in loose piles here and there, terminals here and there running various programs. Canned coffee and energy drinks, both full and empty, scattered about. Paper plates and food wrappers in an overflowing trash can. Celestia knew she didn’t have many, but what little clothes Twilight did care to wear seemed to be strewn about the floor.

I should have come sooner. She hasn’t had a room this messy since she was in high school. Selecting the empty cans and finding the trash bags in the same place they always were, Celestia cleaned up after her daughter. “Good morning, my darling Twilight,” she said sadly.

Needing to find some excuse for the mess, Twilight stammered. “I-if I’d known you were coming, I–”

“Would’ve skipped town, I imagine,” Celestia remarked. The trash bag full and put by the door for later, Celestia then went on to gather the clothes. She picked up a few things that were relatively new, but stopped when she found the old jacket she made for Twilight. How time flies. It’s been almost two hundred years since I’ve seen this.

Embarrassed, Twilight combed her hair down with a hoof. She probably hadn’t woken up but less than an hour ago. “Um… you don’t have to do that.”

Celestia sent one eye to the violet alicorn, made contact with her eyes, and then continued as she was. “No, no, this is nostalgic for me. It was a simpler time when I used to do this for you. Don’t you agree?”

Twilight sighed. “It was.” Getting up from her chair, Twilight turned the lights on in the apartment and set a kettle on to make tea. Between her and her mother, the apartment was totally cleaned by the time the water was ready. It wasn’t a huge place. One bedroom, one bath, a relatively large living room and kitchen area separated by a counter. She had a couch and a TV with a coffee table and an easy chair. This too, was set up just like her childhood home. Among the many books in here, a complete collection of the novels her step-father wrote sat on their own shelf above everything else. They’d been moved recently.

“Sit with me, won’t you?” Celestia asked.

Twilight had grabbed the teacups and was coming to deliver them. Instead of sitting in her easy chair like she’d planned, she obeyed her mother and sat next to her, not really wanting to.

With a foreleg and a wing around her daughter, Celestia laid her cheek on Twilight’s head and held her. Before too long, Twilight started sniffling.

“D-did you come here for a reason?” she asked, slowly sinking into Celestia.

“Do I need one? Your birthday was nine days ago, Twilight. You won’t answer my calls, respond to my texts. The least you could do is let me know you’re alive every now and again.”

Giving into the warmth, Twilight reciprocated the hug. “I’m sorry. I’m just… so tired of the arguments. Between you, Dusk, and Oxford, it’s like I always have to be prepared for a fight every time we talk. I hate it.”

Celestia felt a very heavy iron ball in her stomach right then. Perhaps the changelings weren’t that far along on their mechanical monster. Perhaps the action needed could wait. Maybe she could cause an internal struggle in White Hive that didn’t require Luna’s approval, something on a smaller scale. Disrupt their production lines a bit, just to slow it down.

Regardless of what her original task was, now, she was going to attend to her lonely girl. “Please, Twilight, you know you can always come to me. I am not your enemy, nor will I ever be.” Letting her go, Celestia clapped her hooves. “We should go for a walk! When was the last time you saw the sun?”

Again, Twilight was a bit embarrassed. She did work for Alicorn Electronics, Equestria’s research and development company, but she’d been avoiding going to the office for the past week. It had been so bad that the mare who ran her favorite café, Orchid Shy, stopped by one day to check on her. Alicorns don’t get sick, but to stop her routine for the first time in years alarmed poor Orchid.

“It’s… been a few days, I think.”

Celestia frowned. “Did something happen?”

Twilight knew how this went, so she didn’t bother trying to hide it. “I’ve been dating a college student for a while.”

Celestia raised a brow. “You have?”

“I… had.”

“Ah.”

Twilight sniffed. “It started getting real. He wanted to take me back to Equestria to meet his parents. I tried to tell him as much as I could to push him away after that, but he just wouldn’t give up. I didn’t want to do it, but he made it clear where he wanted this to go. We’d… you know, and I… I don’t know if I loved him or not, but I couldn’t just tell him everything, and I couldn’t be the mare he wanted me to be! So…”

“So you broke it off. I’m sorry, my darling.”

And then, Twilight fell into her mother. “Is this what you went through? Is this how it happened every time? You devote months, years, decades of your life to someone only to lose them and be left alone like this over and over again? Why didn’t you warn me this is what it would be like? Why didn’t you tell me how it could go?”

Holding her tightly, Celestia sighed. “I’m sorry, my darling. It’s always like this. It feels like this, but so much worse, every single time. Sometimes, you might be betrayed. Sometimes you might be left behind. Sometimes, you might simply find yourself different ponies in his old age. And every time, every single time, it will feel this way.”

She looked desperately into her mother’s eyes through the tears. “Then how did you keep doing it? Over and over again for centuries?”

Celestia smiled softly. “Your wounds will always heal with time, and there is no end to your time. Is he totally gone? Because, if you really felt like it might be love, why not roll with it? The first time I took a husband, I was about your age.”

Twilight shook her head and rubbed at her eyes. “He wanted foals.”

Biting her lip, Celestia sighed. For all that had changed, alicorn mares were still practically barren. It had taken all the power in the world and a miracle for Twilight’s conception. She’d almost destroyed the world when it came to Dusk and Oxford. If not for Twilight, she would have. The weight of simply being in a relationship with Twilight was a lot for a stallion to bear, and if she really loved him, it’s certain that she pushed him away to keep him from it.

“Twilight, my darling–”

A wave passed through Celestia. Twilight shot up straight too. Luna had just expended a great deal of magic somewhere down on the planet.

Going into queen mode, Celestia ordered, “Turn on the news. I’m calling your brother.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Twilight turned on the wall terminal. She set it to the national news and gasped.

Canterlot was on fire. The wreckage, the destruction, the death, it was everywhere.

Celestia called Dusk from her personal terminal.

He answered immediately. “Mother!”

“Dusk? What happened?”

“Th-the machine!” Dusk said breathlessly, “They finished it! Outline is dead! My team wasn’t ready, we lost sight of it, and it headed straight for Equestria! I’d been trying to call aunt Luna, but she won’t answer. What happened? Why are you calling me?”

The camera panned until it stopped on Luna, hovering in front of the castle. She was breathing hard, staring down at something as the air in front of her still crackled with her energy. The face she was making, Celestia couldn’t remember seeing on her. It made her think back, and back, and back.

When they’d been children, in their home world. Celestia was sixteen, Luna was eleven. The world had devolved into chaos. Her mother had told her to take Luna and hide. Alicorns were being slain left and right, one after another in an attempt to stop their father from destroying the world. They’d been left in that chamber with the elements of harmony, and the scared little filly she used to be, looked up at Celestia with that same face.

“Sister, are we gonna die?”

Celestia swallowed. “Dusk, Twilight, I have to go.” She ended the call, not waiting for Dusk.

Twilight struggled for words. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

Celestia took a very long breath. “I don’t know yet. But Luna needs me. Oxford is at the port. Please tell him what’s happened and that I have left.”

Before Twilight could respond, Celestia gathered all of her magic, located Luna two hundred and forty thousand miles away, and warped.